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A Major Newspaper's Server

The Daily Telegraph is one of England's foremost quality newspapers. It was also the first to provide the entire paper online (at least up until yesterday's edition). It can be found at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/, as shown in 7.16.

The first thing that you find here is that they have thought a bit about future possible access control.

 
Figure 7.16:  The Electronic Telegraph

Once you have registered, you will be given (and e-mailed) a PIN (Personal Identification Number, just like the one you might use to access a cash machine). At a future stage, it is clear that the telegraph could contact users via some secure mechanism (letter, fax, phone, or anything adequately covered by law) and establish a charging mechanism. This could simply involve direct debit or standing order or any standard means of charging. While a user was in credit with the provider, their PIN would remain valid. If a user stopped paying, the PIN could be withdrawn. There might be some concern over interlopers wiretapping, and seizing a legitimate PIN and misusing it. This could easily be prevented by the use of one-time passwords. These are changed each time the user uses the service. If a user finds that the next password they have been given fails, they contact the service provider and complain, and can be issued with a new unique starting identity, thus minimising the value of intrusions. We discuss further security mechanisms in the final chapter of the book.

Then you can proceed to the real top page, as shown in 7.17. This, as can be seen, is a graphical and text index of the rest of the edition. Note that although there are a lot of graphics here, the bottom of the page is a text only menu, which is nicely designed for Lynx access. The large number of graphical items may overload even quite reasonable speed access links. However, since the Telegraph was the first quality national on the net, we believe that they have gained more kudos by having a well designed service. Later refinements might entail reducing the size and quantity of images (albeit networks will also get faster).

 
Figure 7.17:  The Electronic Telegraph today

 
Figure 7.18:  ET Features Top Page

The features page 7.18 again contains graphics and pointers to the actual contents. Below this are pages with text and photographs as in 7.19 for example. It would be quite simple to provide onward links from these to related information from other servers - for example, a holiday page should be linked to the regions weather server.

 
Figure 7.19:  Holiday Places in Spain

The City of London is a major economic center. All quality dailies carry City News, and here in 7.20 and 7.21 we can see the Top Page and the City Diary.

 
Figure 7.20:  City News Top Page

 
Figure 7.21:  City Diary

It is not enough to enter the electronic world simply as a broadcaster or disseminator of information. The Internet is interactive, and all good servers portrait this. Most newspapers have a page for letters to the editor. The Electronic Telegraph is no different. In 7.22, is the page for E-Mail to the editor.

 
Figure 7.22:  E-mail to the Editor

The telegraph carries home and sports news - over a period of time, such an online resource could build up to replace special purpose publications such as almanacs, which a more rapidly searchable facility that could end arguments about famous results or as an aide memoire.

 
Figure 7.23:  Home News

 
Figure 7.24:  Cricket

 
Figure 7.25:  and the Cricket Score...

Finally, newspaper photographers are famous for their still images of important moments in time, either for the world or an individual. You will have to guess which 7.26 represents.

 
Figure 7.26:  Child and Pope



next up previous contents
Next: Where are we Up: Commercial Web Servers Previous: A Major Television



Jon Crowcroft
Wed May 10 11:46:29 BST 1995