Then I discovered portals. Now when I log onto the Net, Iım greeted by my own personal portal, my customized gate to the World Wide Web. These portals used to be called home pages, but, by consumer demand, the corporations behind the home pages allow users to personalize them. My personal portal tracks my stocks, gives me a five-day weather forecast, helps me calculate currency rates, and shows me the latest news on subjects I want to read about. Who said good help was hard to find? You and your students can customize your own portals as well. Add links to your hometown newspapers to get local news (see ALR, May/June, 99). Keep track of sports scores, horoscopes, campus events, and personal events. Portals like My Netscape can remind you of birthdays, exam days, and, should you forget, vacation days. Have your students customize portals; itıs an excellent task-based activity.

Some portals are easier to customize than others; some offer more information than others. Many companies (including the usual suspects such as Microsoft, Netscape, Yahoo, and Disney) are jumping into the portal business because it is a great advertising medium Small companies or associations also build portals around particular themes for people interested in magic, adventure travel, Star Trek, or gay issues. These portals are more like topic-specific search engines and usually cannot be customized. A web search on your hobby or special interest will take you to such a portal somewhere on the Web.

Visit some of the popular portals described in the sidebar. Experiment with them and see which one most closely matches your needs, interests, and skill level. Set your browser to open to your portal by typing in the portalıs address as your browserıs home page. (This option should be available in your Edit/Preferences menu.) After you open a portal, look for the Personalize or Customize option and make it "My Portal."

Portal Possibilities
home.microsoft.com With five-day weather forecasts, constantly updating stock quotes, and news galore, this portal is one of the most useful and one of the easiest to customize.

my.snap.com Because Snap is an affiliate of NBC, the quality of the news coverage is excellent. You can choose the number of headlines to appear in each category, but the search tool is limited to Snapıs own search engine.

my.netscape.com The Netscape portal takes a bit more effort to customize, but the three-column format makes it easier to work with. Unlike microsoft.com, you can get the weather in several cities, so your students can easily compare Kalamazoo with Timbuktu.

my.yahoo.com Yahooıs portal is similar to Netscapeıs; the font is larger and it uses two rather than three columns requiring some extra scrolling. Yahoo offers todayıs TV listings.

Other companies that offer customizable portals:
America On Line __ www.aol.com
Excite __ www.excite.com
Disney/Infoseek __ www.go.com
Lycos __ www.lycos.com
MSN __ www.msn.com
Special interest portals that canıt be customized:
www.m-a-g-i-c.com
www.strek.com (The StarTrek Portal)
www.sierraportal.com