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Web Portals

WWWThe Web is studded with "portal sites," sites that want you to use them as your "gateway to the Web." They give you a smorgasboard of news, weather, shopping offers, chat options, links to sites within and without their pages, and whatever else they think will entice you to keep coming to their site. Some of these are outgrowths of Web search engines, some are not. Here's some of the most ubiquitous. Also included are some of the new "voice portals," which use speech-recognition technology to access the Internet through telephones.  

Alfy (a large, well-designed Web portal for children)
www.alfy.com/

AOL (not the content provider, but their portal page...although they'd love for you to sign up)
www.aol.com/

Argus Clearinghouse (a portal for the more erudite user)
www.clearinghouse.net/

Audiopoint (new voice portal, still a bit bare at this writing)
www.myaudiopoint.com/

AvantGo (more of a push provider than a classic portal, and focused on handhelds)
www.avantgo.com/

BeVocal (another voice portal, still buggy but steadily improving)
www.bevocal.com/

Blink (build your own directory of favorite sites, accessible from any computer at any time)
www.blink.com/

Bomis (sort of a cross between a portal and a Web community -- users sign in and then build rings of sites that interest them)
www.bomis.com/

Chello (a European portal and ISP site with limited search capabilities)
www.chello.com/

Earth Station Nine (highly personal and well-organized portal and informational site)
www.earthstation9.com/

Excite (highly recommended)
www.excite.com/

GO Network (a badly organized morass of content from ABC/Disney, reluctant to offer the user a link outside their own content areas; Disney has decided to cut back on the Go service, leaving some former features in limbo)
www.go.com/

iVillage (large, multi-featured site mainly for women, and affiliated with plenty of medical and commercial sites)
www.ivillage.com/

Lycos
www.lycos.com/

MSN.com (highly customizable and lots of content, but very busy)
www.msn.com/

My Netscape (Netscape's reconfigured portal site)
www.netcenter.com/

My Way (nice configurable portal, less advertising than most)
www.myway.com/

Octopus (combination Web portal and information nexus; lets you put together your own "portal"; now part of Yahoo)
www.octopus.com/

Plastic (nice combination between a chat/BBS community and a news portal)
www.plastic.com/

Quepasa (bilingual English/Spanish site)
www.quepasa.com/

Seniors.com (caters to senior citizens)
www.seniors.com/

Slashdot (hi-tech oriented Net community) www.slashdot.org/

Snap! (now merged with NBCi's portal site)
www.nbci.com/

Tellme (voice portal, still in beta but quite usable)
www.tellme.com/

TwoToads (portal designed for kids and "family" use)
www.twotoads.com/

Yahoo! (still the big dog of portal sites and the standard-setter)
www.yahoo.com/

Zeeks (good kids portal)
www.zeeks.com/

 

 
 

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