This is not what the Anchordudes really look like. We actually look much better.The Anchordudes have been developing and updating their Newsgroup FAQ for over 15 years now. We’re known for our unbiased Usenet Provider reviews and our annual back-end usenet server cross-reference.
What started out as a hobby over 10 years ago has now become one of the most respected usenet and newsgroup review sites in the industry. Why have the Anchordude’s reviews been so successful? 3 reasons:

The AnchorDudes are three guys dedicated to Truth, Justice, and the pursuit of Online Freedom.

Most people know us by our alter egos: Bruce, Peter, and Clark.

How did we come to be known as the AnchorDudes? Well…

We all grew up in a small coastal town in the Florida panhandle, and while our classmates were into sailing and water-skiing, we were more interested in the emerging technology of the Internet. Effectively, we were “Anchored” to our PC’s, while our peers were out playing in the sun. OK, so we were geeks.

Our friends, enemies, and even teachers picked up on the term “Anchor Dudes” and it just stuck.

Now we’re all in the working world, and we think back to all those “cool” kids from high school like “Jonathon” the rich kid with the cigarette boat who had it all in high-school. Now he’s a vo-tech drop out working at Wal-Mart, and we’re the ones with the interesting lives. Revenge is sweet.

Bruce is a successful media mogul. He made some good friends in the early days of hip-hop, and before long he had his own record label. Bruce is pretty opinionated, and goes against the flow in the industry. Thankfully, Bruce sees the future of the media industry the same way the rest of us do, so we all get along fine. Bruce needs a newsgroup server that specializes in high completion rates for mp3 and video binary groups so that he can see what bands are popular with the underground market, as well as to see how well non-traditional distribution mechanisms can work.

Clark was promoted from reporter to editor for a national newspaper. You’ve probably seen it at the supermarket. In the checkout lane. He’s the guy who always had the best ghost stories when we were all sitting around at 4 AM working on our 20th cup of coffee. Clark needs an uncensored newsgroup server so that he can pick up on some of the more radical ideas that are discussed in the newsgroups. This is where he gets his best tips.

Peter travels all around the world taking photographs. Most of his work is in European magazines. Peter is a real hoot. When Quake II first came out, we were all playing a deathmatch game, and Peter shows up with these new skins you wouldn’t believe from his latest model photo shoot. No matter what you may have heard, there are some amazing looking British women on that little island. Peter needs a newsgroup server that retains messages a long time so that he can see what other photographers are doing, and sometimes even find new models. Peter seems to really enjoy doing research.

Together, we are the AnchorDudes.

OK, Seriously now –

We’re just guys who grew up with computers in the days before the Internet, back with the old “Bitnet” and Fido and other early online communications tools. Usenet preceded all the web forums we have now and was the best way to stay on top of emerging trends in many fields. It held together many counter-culture groups and kept many of us Fido users going until good forum software was developed for web browsers.

Call us Luddites, but we don’t want to see this important pioneer of the web slip away. We want to introduce as many people as we can to the greatness that is Usenet, and see it continue to grow and find new uses.