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Administrator users like to have administrative tools all in a single place to standardize:
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DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONAL PORTALS In the late 1990s , the web portal was a hot commodity. After the proliferation of Web Browser s in the mid-1990s, many companies tried to build or acquire a portal, to have a piece of the Internet market. The web portal gained special attention because it was, for many users, the starting point of their web browser. Netscape became a part of America Online , the Walt Disney Company launched Go.com , and Excite and @Home became a part of AT&T during the late 1990s. Lycos was said to be a good target for other media companies such as CBS . Many of the portals started initially as either web directories (notably Yahoo! ) and/or search engines (Excite, Lycos, AltaVista , Infoseek , and Hotbot among the old ones). Expanding services was a strategy to secure the user-base and lengthen the time a user stayed on the portal. Services which require user registration such as free email, customization features, and chatrooms were considered to enhance repeat use of the portal. Game, chat, email, news, and other services also tend to make users stay longer, thereby increasing the advertising revenue. The portal craze, with "old media" companies racing to outbid each other for Internet properties, died down with the Dot-com Flameout in 2000 and 2001. Disney pulled the plug on Go.com , Excite went bankrupt and its remains were sold to IWon.com . Some notable portal sites ― Yahoo!, for instance ― remain successful to this day. To modern dot-com businesses, the portal craze serves as a cautionary tale about the risks of rushing into a market crowded with highly-capitalized but largely undifferentiated me-too companies. Regional web portals Along with the development and success of international personal portals such as Yahoo!, regional variants have also sprung up. Some regional portals contain local information such as weather forecasts, street maps and local business information. Another notable expansion over the past couple of years is the move into formerly unthinkable markets. "Local content - global reach" portals have emerged not only from countries like Korea ( Naver.com ), India ( Rediff ), China ( Sina.com ), Romania( Neogen.ro ), Greece( In.gr ) and Italy ( Webplace.it ), but in countries like Vietnam where they are very important for learning how to apply e-commerce, e-government, etc. Such portals reach out to the widespread diaspora across the world. Government web portals At the end of the dot-com boom in the 1990s, many governments had already committed to creating portal sites for their citizens. In the United States the main portal is USA.gov , in addition to portals developed for specific audiences such as DisabilityInfo.gov ; in the United Kingdom the main portals are Directgov (for citizens) and Businesslink.gov.uk (for businesses). Many U.S. states have their own portals which provide direct access to eCommerce applications (''e.g.,'' Hawaii Business Express and myIndianaLicense ), agency and department Web Site s, and more specific information about living in, doing business in and getting around the state. Many U.S. states have chosen to out-source the operation of their portals to third-party vendors. One company that is an example of this is NICUSA which runs 20 state portals. One of the issues that comes up with government web portals is that different agencies often have their own portals and sometimes a statewide portal-directory structure is not sophisticated and deep enough to meet the needs of multiple agencies. Over the last few years more sophisticated technologies are allowing loosely-coupled portal integrations bound together by standard interoperability formats (like SIF ) that support a more heterogeneous non-parallel environment. Corporate web portals Corporate intranets gained popularity during the 1990s. Having access to a variety of company information via a web browser was a new way of working. Intranets quickly grew in size and complexity, and webmasters (many of whom lacked the discipline of managing content and users) became overwhelmed in their duties. It wasn't enough to have a consolidated view of company information, users were demanding personalization and customization. Webmasters, if skilled enough, were able to offer some capabilities, but for the most part ended up driving users away from using the intranet. The 1990s were a time of innovation for the concept of corporate web portals. Many companies began to offer tools to help webmasters manage their data, applications and information more easily, and through personalized views. Some portal solutions today are able to integrate legacy applications, other portals objects, and handle thousands of user requests. Today’s corporate portals are sprouting new value-added capabilities for businesses. Capabilities such as managing workflows, increasing collaboration between work groups, and allowing content creators to self-publish their information are lifting the burden off already strapped IT departments. In addition, most portal solutions today, if architected correctly, can allow internal and external access to specific corporate information using secure authentication or Single-Sign-On. JSR168 Standards emerged around 2001. Java Specification Request (JSR) 168 standards allow the interoperability of Portlets across different portal platforms. These standards allow portal developers, administrators and consumers to integrate standards-based portals and portlets across a variety of vendor solutions. | ||||||
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