"Portals" (was Re: Web terminology)

[Rich.Harrington at co.hennepin.mn.us]

   I guy I used to work for once described portals as "more than Windows,
and also less."  This makes no sense whatsoever today, because he was
talking about something completely different (I think it was about NCs,
network computers).  This holds two important lessons for us.

   One is that you should only use a relevant quotation.  The other is that
the hot technology of yesterday (remember how "push" technology or the NC
-- Hey, there's my relevancy! -- was going to revolutionize the Net?  How
often are you using your NC or push technology?) could become the cold
pizza on the dormitory floor of today:  certainly usable and containing the
same amount of the fat and sodium of technology, just without the hot
stretchy mozzarella of current buzzword hipness.

   I think one key observation is in that great article referenced by John
Harbison, "Racing to the start line" <
http://www.news.com/SpecialFeatures/0,5,22073,00.html >:

"As users become more savvy, they ultimately have less of a need of a
meta-aggregator of content and may choose a really specific niche along
their own demographic or content," [Patrick] Keane [an analyst at Jupiter
Communications] said.

   Cogno-intellectually, I suspect we also may start to see more
sophisticated bookmark managers that will essentially allow the user to
create, with a minimum of effort, his or her own portal (PortlU PortlMe
(tm)).  You can do this in an ugly way now in Netscape by having your Home
page be your bookmark list, which is in HTML.  Either a feature in the
browser or an add-on program would dress things up and arrange things in a
way that is attractive and reflects how often this item might be used.  An
intelligent program would then even be able to make a link more prominent
the more it's clicked.

Rich Harrington
rich.harrington at co.hennepin.mn.us
Hennepin County Law Library
Minneapolis, MN