• Starting the program

    • When you start up Newsviking in Windows, you should see 2 black windows appear, and then after a few moments a third black window and then finally a disclaimer screen as shown below. Read the agreement and agree ('yes') to continue.
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  • Tab Screen 1 - Download News

    • This is the first order of events. You always start by clicking 'download news' to get new stories (make sure you are connected to The Internet). It also contains a status window to tell you what the program is doing when it is processing.

    When click the 'Start News Download' button, newsviking's main screen will 'freeze'.
    However, you can still see the news stories as they are being downloaded by clicking on the black (DOS) window entitled "Newsviking-NoSplash-Screen.bat" such as in the picture below.
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    The main graphical newsviking will eventually become operational again when all the news stories are downloaded for that day. Be patient, it takes 10 or 15 minutes to download all the daily news on a modem connection.
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    Once all the news is downloaded you can have access again to the main screen - it will be possible to bring it to the foreground again.
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  • Tab Screen 2 - HTML/Web News Digest

    • For now this only contains the button to create the digest - this is a web page version of whatever records are stored in the database. Keep in mind it you don't want to create a digest of more than 2 weeks of data at a time or the web page will be huge (a digest of one-month's worth of news took approx. 8 hours of time for the computer to process and the file was too big to exist on the web).
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  • Tab Screen 3 - Article Viewer/Editor

    • Besides Tab Screen 1 - Download News this will probably be the screen you use most often. This is where you read through the stories previously downloaded and stored within your database. This screen contains the following features: the ability to selectively search, read, edit, delete, rate and insert commentary into the news articles which you've downloaded.

    The following four thumbnails show a simple example of inserting commentary into an article.
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    Here a main category of comment types is selected. For instance, this article is about an economic topic, thus 'economics' was selected from this user's customized list of comment topics.
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    Once the main topic comment is selected, the next selector is populated with the first default comment associated with that group of comments.
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    At this point, the user selects which comment to use from that topic
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    Once selected, that comment is automatically pasted at the point the cursor left off within the news article's body. It is initially highlighted for clear viewing of where the comment was inserted.
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    The story in the above example was retrieved using the 'freeform search' feature of newsviking. You may then perform searches or 'SQL Queries' to sift through and retrieve the news you downloaded earlier.

    The thumbnail picture below shows how you can perform a simple search based on selecting a news category as criteria. Note the abbreviations n for national, w for world, wash for washington d.c., and the rest being abbreviations for the continents of the world. After selecting the basic criteria click 'populate news table'. The more complex searches are manually typed into the 'freeform search' window per the instructions that appear when you hover the mouse pointer over that window. After entering your freeform search, click 'freeform search' to perform the search.
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    There is also a feature to have the news read to you via a speech program. Windows users can use 'Speakonia' which will auto-read anything copied to the Clipboard. You may download Speakonia for windows at
    http://www.cfs-technologies.com/home/download.phtml?id=4
    or visit their web page at
    http://www.cfs-technologies.com
    Mac Users also have similar settings that allow auto-speech of anything copied.

    You may also select a 'rating' for the story. Ratings are useful as a way to mark a story for importance. For instance you might want to rate a story '8' as very important but not extremely important then months later search your database for all news stories that were rated '8' in importance.You may also choose to delete a story in your database by clicking delete or simply rating it 1 for unimportant or 0 as unrated.
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  • Tab Screen 4 - Comment Editor

    • This is where you customize the comments and categories to appear in your comment selectors. The comments and comment categories are actually a separate table within the newsviking database.
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  • Tab Screen 5 - Newsgroup Poster

    • This screen acts as a simple newsgroup poster client. Whatever story you have chosen (along with any comments) can be edited and summarized and then posted to an appropriate discussion group on Usenet Newsgroups.
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  • Screenshots from latest release

    • download screenshots from Sourceforge
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