See also: Web Site | Home Page | RSS
A Web Page which acts as information gateway and has user-customized destinations and/or content. A portal can be thought of as an assortment of magic mirrors on a wall that display far away places and things. The mirrors are on a Web Page displaying information locally or remote and can be rearranged and altered for relevance and use.
The trick of the portal is to provide key information ingredients most optimally: the right amount of information to a given person at the right time in the way they want it.
The service was originally popularized by Netscape (my.netscape.com) after they diversified their company when they began to lose the browser war but has since canceled many of its services and user-friendly javascript tools. Yahoo followed suit and now offers a much better portal. Now many companies offer portal services for any number of uses from collaboration to stock prices to WebMail to chat.
Many portals contain customizable “columns” or “boxes” that syndicate news from other sources using RSS.
List of web sites with portals:This list is not exhaustive.
TakeDown.NET -> “Portal”