Web Portals

In this Research Starter Kit, WSG describes the parts of the Web Portal and takes you on a tour of Yahoo, a leader in the consumer portal. Our main interest is in the portal as a search tool. Portals can also be useful for connecting with communities and personal publishing.

Parts of a Portal

The good portals will have a strong set of tools and databases for searching the Web, news, images, audio and video programs, local services (similar to the yellow pages) and a marketplace of products. They will also beguile you with personalized services for viewing your e-mail, checking the weather, reading news, getting stock quotes, getting advice for love life and pets, talking with friends, and even managing your photos online.

Yahoo has many search tools and content areas to meet every possible information need, whether at your desk and on your mobile. MSN has a similar range of services. Google, though it doesn't look like it from its main search page, will show as a portal through the personal Google page. And AOL, once the preserve of paid members, offers a free public portal with popular services.

Search Tools

Community Centres

Portals are also like the local community centre with rooms for chat, games, the bazaar and the flea market, and telephone booths - made possible today through VoIP Internet calls through the Instant Messenger. Many portals will have:

• E-Mail: set up an e-mail account on the Web and read and send your mail through your Web browser. Yahoo and GMail from Google lead in capacity and features.
• Online Games: play bridge, hearts, or get into multi-user action games.
• Online discussion groups: set up your own for family, friends or associations. This is available through Yahoo Groups and Google Groups.
• Weblog author: become a writer, publish a weblog. Google has Blogger.com.
• Instant messaging: Use instant messaging so that your friends can know that you are online and can call you for online chat or for a voice call. Add a webcam to Yahoo or MSN/Live IM and you'll be doing video conferencing.
• Weblog reader: use a built-in weblog reader on your personal page so that you can select blogs you'd like to read regularly. Add these to your personal page at iGoogle or myYahoo.
• Social networks: Connect with social networks of friends and groups. Facebook is the most famous - Yahoo.com links to it. Google has Google Friends, MSN has the Live / Hotmail Network. New

Personalized Views

Many portals encourage you to personalize a homepage so that you can pick up the news stories and weblogs you want to read, the Web sites you want to track, searches that you'd like to rerun, and local weather reports or entertainment updates you want to hear about it. Google, Yahoo and AOL will entice you with gadgets (calendar, translations, dictionaries - a gazillion of things) to add to your personal page.

How to Best Use a Portal

Get to know the portal. Check out its offerings and decide what is useful to you. If you really like the news sources at the portal, set up a page for My News. Set up other tools you can use - TV Guide, weather, currency converter, translator, etc. Then make that personalized page your browser's start page.

Where to next?

Tour the many sections to the Yahoo portal.