OS/2 e-Zine! - Internet Portals

Internet Portals - by Chris Wenham

Summary: We take a look at the wildly popular Internet portals and decide which ones are the best from the point of view of an OS/2 user.

The idea that all the portals revolve around is providing you with a 'home base' from which to start your browsing with. A good portal will be linked with an up-to-date search engine and web site directory, include descriptions of the sites you find, and provide you with news categorized into areas of interest. Other portals will also go further, offering free e-mail accounts, home page customization, chat and discussion forums. What the companies that provide the portals expect in return is attention; they want you to stick around and read their advertising banners. They may also be interested in selling you premium services and merchandise through an online store.

Portals have evolved from the web directories, with nearly all of the major players having some kind of background as a search engine. Only two portals, Snap! and Netcenter, come from companies with no search-engine history and have either no customization features or are late entries. This means that most have a strong emphasis on the parent company's existing directory or search service, and more often than not it'll feel like you're visiting a search page that also has customizable news and features.

Emerging into a new kind of web site, one that begins to act more like an application or utility than a mere page of information, portals have the potential to offer a lot to OS/2 users. There's no upgrades to download, no installation routine, no disk space used, and all the major number crunching takes place on somebody else's computer. With everything they offer now there's little reason not to try them out.

We've reviewed the top Internet Portals from the point of view of an OS/2 user. This means that while we judged each portal based on its merits alone, we also sought to find what content and services relating to OS/2 was available. When there were extra bells and whistles like pagers and real-time chat rooms we tested them for compatibility. We also tested to see how well pages displayed in the currently available OS/2 web browsers.

MyExcite

Chris Wright tells us what the #2 Internet portal does for Warped users and how well it can be customized.

Snap!

Lief Clennon has a look at C|Net's entry, the only portal from a publishing-centered company so far.

Netcenter & My Netscape

Just in the nick of time, the long anticipated customizable portal from Netscape goes online. Chris Wenham reviews it here.

Editor's Choice: My Yahoo

Chris Wenham talks about the one that started the gold rush -- My Yahoo. This was the first mainstream Internet portal and still the best for OS/2 users in our judgment.