Microsoft has created a "bridge" that allows users to access the forums with
a newsreader. I'm not sure they're ready to announce it publicly, but if you
google for "NNTP bridge," you will find more information. Since the first
hit is
http://connect.microsoft.com/MicrosoftForums, I don't think MS can
keep the wraps on this much longer. (Although the information is widely
available, I'm not sure the software is publicly available yet.)
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org
"Yves Dhondt" wrote in message
...
Although this probably is an automated message and questions won't be
answered, I'm still going to try one:
Will there be any API (like the NNTP protocol) allowing the development of
3rd party tools to access the forums?
Because accessing forums through a browser is just slow and not nearly as
customizable as the current setup. If there were some kind of API, I'm
sure some smart programmer could come up with a decent user-friendly
interface for people who mostly respond to questions rather than asking
them.
Yves
wrote in message
...
Date 5/4/2010
Starting in early summer 2010, Microsoft will begin progressively closing
down the Microsoft public newsgroups to enrich conversations in the
rapidly-growing forum platform. This decision is in response to
worldwide market trends and evolving customer needs.
Microsoft continues to invest in forums to reduce customer effort,
consolidate community venues and make it easier for active contributors
to retain their influence. Forums provide a healthy community environment
with less spam and make answers easier to find by customers and search
engines. Additionally, forums offer a better user and off-topic
management platform that will improve customer satisfaction by
facilitating discussions in a clean space.
We understand that some newsgroups are still active, and important to the
community. In the coming days and weeks, we will be rolling out tools
and resources to minimize disruption to the community discussions.
We are working diligently on providing additional resources and
information in local languages later this week. In the meantime, please
refer to the official Microsoft Newsgroup website
http://www.microsoft.com/communities...s/default.mspx concerning
this issue. The Microsoft Newsgroup website will be made available in
additional languages in the next few days.