Football!

In the Sports section you can find the football banner. The Premier league is one of the most important leagues in the world, and The Telegraph has an excellent and detailed section about it, and of the England soccer team too.
This week latest news is that the Chelsea (one of the most important clubs and the actual champion of the Premier league) was beaten 3-0 by the Sunderland.
The match was played at Stamford Bridge today, and was qualified as: “the biggest defeat Chelsea have suffered since Roman Abramovich bought the club back in 2003 and changed the landscape of English football” by the Telegraphs columnist Jason Burt.



The page also offers the tables, results, fixtures, and statistics of the league. Here is the actual table of the Premier league:

And one of my favorite sections in this part is “tickets”, because here you can buy tickets for the matches at the lowest prices! Here is the link for it:

http://tickets.telegraph.co.uk/football-tickets/

Puzzles!

If you love newspapers puzzles you should hate online versions, but in the Daily Telegraph UK you can find a lot of these games!.
First you have to make a click in the section “lifestyle” and then in “games”. A whole new page will appear and then you can choose which game you want to play, there are crosswords, sudokus, word games and puzzles. But that`s not all! You can also win cash prices!

But like anything in life, this is not free. You have to join the page and pay £2.99. if you want to try first you can get seven days of free playing.
So, if you are a puzzle addict you can enjoy them in: http://puzzles.telegraph.co.uk/site/index.php

FINDING COMMON GROUND

So China finally released Aung Suu Kyi and, guess what? The telegraph has the whole thing on hot topics! Nothing spectacular, you’d think, taking in consideration the daily influx of international news that the British website boasts. The question here, though, is how is the information handled on The Telegraph?

The first article available to the reader is the actual news story – “In recent weeks, Beijing has underlined its commitment to Burma, calling it a “friendly neighbour” and warning the world not to meddle in its internal politics. Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, also received Than Shwe, the head of the ruling junta, for a state visit”, says the fourth paragraph, referring to the gradual evolution in Burman-Chinese relations. In fact, the article refers only marginally to the actual release of the activist; most lines are devoted to Chinese foreign policy. It definitely favors the reader who’s not up to date with the diplomatic debacle.

In fact, the final paragraph sums up the whole ordeal with more context – how the whole scenario fits in with Indian relations is also an important part of the news story. “Yesterday, the Indian Foreign minister, Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna, expressed hope that the release would be the beginning of a process of reconciliation and a “more inclusive approach to political change”, that’s how the final paragraph closes, giving it a positive and somewhat lighthearted undertone.

But there’s more.

READER'S DELIGHT

Another article (“Release of Aung San Suu Kyi puts pressure on China”) is of much more analytical value, as it scans through the repercussions of the renowned political leader. The interesting part of this “related article” is how it fits right in with other news. This time, the emphasis is on the remaining imprisoned nobel winner: Liao Xaobo. “One of our Nobel Peace colleagues is imprisoned. We cannot be silent in the face of pressure from the Chinese government. Liu Xiaobo is not forgotten, we will work as diligently for his release as we have for that of our sister Aung San Suu Kyi” is the quote selected by the Telegraph that, coincidentally, also best describes the utility of this piece.

The editorial line of The Telegraph seeks to nurture context over everything, considering how “hot topics” are handled at the whim of the daily news agenda. In the end, what could be considered “stale” news is reinvigorated in an updated body, delivering not only a richer message, but also allowing new readers to join the talk.

This is, without a doubt, one of the better aspects of the Telegraph’s online portal.

HANDLING THE BIG GUNS

In our last posts it’s been made clear that the telegraph is an extremely well rounded newspaper, dealing with topics ranging from UK politics to fashion. What’s one of the bigger topics this week? The G-20 summit. The telegraph –as stated in a previous post- works with a well developed tag system. If it’s “hot”, it’ll be linked on the front page. Needless to say, this meeting of the world’s most influential nations is one of the few highlighted themes.

The G-20 summit page offers a sleek look at just about anything related to it. There’s more conventional articles, for instance, the prime minister David Cameron talking about the protectionism that characterized 1930’s economic policies. Clearly an interesting suggestion, one that we would’ve liked to see bounced up higher in the news hierarchy.

A QUESTION OF DESIGN

Looking strictly at the layout, one would think that the prime minister joking that “he's spending more time on World Cup bid than G20” (an article that, by the way, only encompasses only a couple of paragraphs) is much more important than the finance-related comment. As much as the world cup seems to drive the world (and especially brits), in times of slow economic recovery, these headlines must be aligned correctly. It’s safe to say that they’re ordered chronologically, but we think that the main page should obey strictly to the rules of journalistic relevance.

Now, the bad thing about this G-20 special is the way content is handled. Looking at the aforementioned article, we’d like to emphasize on the layout. Notice how after three –rather short- paragraphs the “related articles” block pops in? This selection of links, while extremely useful, has a downside to it. The screenshot at hand is a scaled version of the real webpage, so unless you own a 24” monitor, you’d probably think that the article ends right about there.

But it doesn’t. In fact, most of the context and numbers are delivered after the “related articles” option. So in other words, the link box is confusing the reader. The moment we read the first three paragraps, we immediately went looking for a new article, ignoring the bigger chunk of text waiting for us down below. The layout definitely doesn’t favour the broad reader.

ONLINE APPROVED?

That said, there is a good side to it. All of the G-20 articles published so far obey (to a certain extent) this three-paragraph-method, followed by the rather obnoxious block of links. Going through each piece of writing, we noticed that the most relevant information was placed within the first lines. That whole inverted pyramid scheme? Yeah, they got it down on the Telegraph and it favors the skimming online reader to boot!

It does take a while getting used to it, though.

Telegraph Ipad app

The Telegraph media Media Group (The Sunday Telegraph and The Daily Telegraph) launched the application for the new Ipad. With it users can read the most important news of the day, “including UK News, World News, Sport, Business, Comments and Features, along with the day's cartoon by the Telegraph's award-winning cartoonist, Matt.”
The daily edition will be available at 5 am and it can be read offline. The application can be downloaded freely from the iTunes page, only for a few days and in partnership with Audi UK.
If you want to download it click on this link (remember it’s for England):
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/the-telegraph-for-ipad/id388947468?mt=8

Keeping in line with ergonomics - A first look

Managing a website parallel to a newspaper is no small task and the team behind www.telegraph.co.uk knows it. Being one of the papers with most circulation in the UK, The Daily Telegraph has managed to confront one of the bigger issues that stems irrevocably from the very nature of the web: audience lifespan.

With everyone browsing a website for no longer than a couple of minutes, it's crucial to make the user feel at home, extending his value to the media in the process. The quality of actual news coverage, while important, doesn't have as big an impact as a well crafted, well designed layout. The content is by itself useless if its vehicle isn't doing the job. What we're talking about is ergonomics.

THE ONLINE NEWSPAPER

The homepage of The Daily Telegraph's web portal is sleek and clean, but also full of information. At a first glance, there's no
clear structure behind what seems to be a digital broadsheet-newspaper. Although if the user manages to look for the header, he'll be pleasently surprised.





Themes are relegated into distinct sections and each one includes several subsections. For instance, the "news" section houses sections divided into the UK and the rest of the World, politics and celebrities, education and science, and so on. This system is nothing new when looking at local websites. It does stand out, however, when one enters a bigger subsection.


Right now, the politics subsection is accompanied by what seem to be tags, all closely related to the Prime Minister and his coalition. If the user still feels that "politics" is way too broad an are to browse in, he can narrow down the content with the tags given to him. What's interesting here is how relevant these sub-menus are to recent news coverage. In fact, it's safe to say that these sections are swapped out as soon as the focus of news coverage changes. Let's take a look at the world section:

Notice that the president of the US has his own section? This is proof to the somewhat dynamic nature -in terms of tags- of The Daily Telegraph. And that structure shows in the rest of the webpage. A user will be able to choose between the "latest of Barack Obama" and "Blogs on Barack Obama" (written by Telegraph staff), but they'll also be able to check on his approval ratings and read articles analyzing these numbers. Even health has its set of unique news chains, with "Swine flu" standing out as the most relevant. In terms of ergonomics, it seems as if every section covers a distinct purpose, and that with a clear sense of relevance.

KEEPING IN TOUCH

The thorough use of tags isn't the only thing noteworthy of this website. Hovering back to the UK section and selecting an article, the user is prompted with several options so that he or she can "share" the article.

The first few options are social networks like StumbleUpon, Facebook and Twitter. In addition to that, every article is bound to a set of themes that help the reader stay connected to the news that he or she has chosen. RSS feeds are there, next to every article, which allows for a more specific subscription to each specific topic.

Rolling back to our previous example with the President of the United States, Barack Obama has his own feed too, as does the Swine Flu and Nick Clegg.

With the 33 chilean miners getting so much attention around the world, we decided to put this reliable system to the test. Using the search function (adequately placed on top of the header), we got to today's news article regarding the miners. The results?



"Chile" is the only local feed available, which contradicts the heavy influx of miner-related news on the website. This lack of integration is a major stepping stone in terms of ergonomics, as it hinders a fluid transition in between related news. Perhaps integrating the community more would establish a more secure foothold for smaller (but equally important) news? At least that's something that we'd prefer to see.


Stay tuned for an in depth analysis of the miner debacle on Workshop's Telegraph!

Milan Fashion Week

It counts with a complete report of 120 articles, explaining the new tendencies in haute couture, accessories, designers and runways. This fashion week is considered the third most important in the fashion world and shows all tendencies that may rule in normal woman wardrobes.Gucci opened the season with a display of an “equestrian style, bright and light colors and tribal-inspired beading which combined Berber and Aztec influences”.

The Dolce& Gabbana collection was inspired in the English garden. The runway was literally transformed in a garden, with a lot of flowers around it and the clothes were mainly stamped with floral motives and a restrained red tartan.

And remember “Telegraph fashion: A brand new web-site for fashion lovers, bringing to you world-class fashion and beauty content”.


For more photos and information visit: http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/hot-topics/11/milan-fashion-week-latest.html