Various people have sent mail enquiring about the robot so I am replying to
all: 

1. The robot I use is exclusive to my participation in the PIPELINE access
service, which is based here in NYC. (You can subscribe to pipeline from
anywhere but you have to pay fairly steep connect fees except for NYC where I
live.)

2. The robot will scan all 1,000 newsgroups for any criteria I give it. For
example, I could direct the robot to scan all the alt.sex newsgroups for any
mail posted by anyone on this list. I could then see what this person posted,
and repost it to the group so we could all see what they said. 

I can also can by any word or any subject. 

3. I set the robot to scan for my name, for example. This way, any time
someone mentions my name, I get to see what they said. I like this feature
becuase it means I can post a message to a newsgroup, and not have to scan
that newsgroup for the answer because my robot will grab any replies with
either my subject or my name in it. 

4. Since I don't see anyone else on here coming from Pipeline, I don't think
you will have robots yet. However, I noticed the following, and perhaps you
can all get access to robots there: 

Stanford Netnews Filtering Service scans Internet newsgroups for the
information you want, then delivers it by e-mail. To sign up send e-mail to
"netnews@db.stanford.edu".