DEMON INTERNET LIMITED ====================== 42 Hendon Lane Finchley London N3 1TT 081-349 0063 (London) 031-552 0344 (Edinburgh) email internet@demon.net WWW.TXT - DEMON INTERNET WWW Server and Services Last updated 16th May 1994. The latest version of this document is available from ftp.demon.co.uk:/pub/doc/WWW.txt Demon Internet provides WWW (World Wide Web) services for Internet users and companies that want to make information available via this medium. WWW is designed to make the retrieval of information easier and more flexible than is currently possible. It allows FTP, GOPHER, TELNET etc. to be used from within it. Most WWW browsers (Mosaic and Cello) are graphical thus information is normally displayed as text but with graphics mixed in. More information follows at the foot of this document. The services on offer range from simple WWW server space to a complete design and build service for both CD-ROMS and WWW servers. The services that can be built range from simple textual information on a WWW page to complex catalogue CD-Roms with ordering and updates done over the internet using Mosaic. In the non-commercial world we are currently developing the eCity and eCity Cafe in collaboration with the Artec and the ICA in London, showing the wide diversity of applications these new tools can encompass. Pricing ======= The server will be available at the rate of #75 per month for 25 megabytes of storage or #25 per month for 5 megabytes. For Design and Build services, time is charged at #500 per day, plus VAT. There is a substantial discount for contracted work. We will be allowing one page free of charge per Demon site - this will be announced shortly. To arrange server space or consultancy mail sales@demon.net or call Grahame Davies on 081 349 0063. An Introduction to the HyperText/Media, WWW and Mosaic. ======================================================= In a nutshell: there are today 10 terabytes of information available publicly on the Internet computer network. That's probably about 10,000 times more data than would fit on your hard disk. NCSA Mosaic allows you to tap into this information with, for most part, a point and a click. What is hypertext? Reading a book is typically a sequential activity. Except for occasional cross references (e.g. ``For more information on ziggledebee, see Chapter 3''), an erstwhile trip to the index and perhaps a peek at the last page to see if it really was the butler who did it, reading is usually turning one page after the next. Hypertext (and its more encompassing cousin, hypermedia) organizes information not as a linear chain, but as an interconnected web of associations. The World Wide Web The World Wide Web is a hypermedia system originated by CERN, a high energy physics laboratory in Switzerland. Initially envisioned as a means of easily sharing papers and data between physicists, the Web has evolved far beyond its original intent and now includes such diverse information as Gaelic texts, art exhibits, movie clips, and electronic magazines. NCSA Mosaic NCSA Mosaic, developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a network information browser (more technically, a World Wide Web client) that allows you to retrieve documents from the World Wide Web system. In general terms, NCSA Mosaic is similar to Apple's Hypercard program, except that instead of traversing information within a single document, you're exploring the entire Internet. The online documents can contain not only text, but also images, sounds and animations. Why use Mosaic? Mosaic is an Internet-based global hypermedia browser that allows you to discover, retrieve, and display documents and data from all over the Internet. Mosaic is part of the World Wide Web project, a distributed hypermedia environment originated at CERN and collaborated upon by a large, informal, and international design and development team. Mosaic helps you explore a huge and rapidly expanding universe of information and gives you powerful new capabilities for interacting with information. What is global hypermedia? Global hypermedia means that information located around the world is interconnected in an environment that allows you to travel through the information by clicking on hyperlinks -- terms, icons, or images in documents that point to other, related documents. Any hyperlink can point to any document anywhere on the Internet. Using Mosiac enables your end user to be platform independent: Windows, X-Windows, Macintosh and Amiga all currently have a version of Mosaic available. It can retrieve its files from CDROM, Hard Drive, or a remote computer on the internet, it does this by using URLs, Universal Resource Locators, a way of specifying where a file or document is whether it is on the internet or your local hard drive. Why Demon Internet for server space. Demon Internet is one of the three leading internet providers in the UK, with over 5,000 UK customers, peering arrangements to the other commercial UK providers and from the beginning of June a 512K link to the Commercial Internet Exchange in the USA. This reults in excellent connectivity for any prospective client wishing to make information available on the internet for both UK and Worldwide distribution of information. Coupled with Demon's 24hr network monitoring to ensure that both machines and network connections are available to our customers and their intended audience or marketplace.