A View on View :: Hey, Portals Are Hot Again

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Hey, Portals Are Hot Again

by Mark Evans on Thu 08 Dec 2005 03:02 PM EST | Permanent Link

Remember the late-1990s when portals were all the rage? Remember when they fell out of favour? According to eMarketer, it's good to be a portal again. So, who's number one? In August, Yahoo attracted 101.3 million unique U.S. visitors who spent an average of 3 hours, 38 minutes and 42 seconds on the site. (How do they this stuff, anyway?!) Microsoft was second with 95.6 million visitors (45:44), followed by MSN (92.1 million and 1:52:39) and Google (80.4 million and 45:40). So, if portals are back, what are Google's plans? Does it beef up its current offering? Or does it create a super-Google site that seamlessly melds together the mini-portal, Google News, Gmail, Blogger, Picasa and Google Earth? Now, that would be cool to have every Google service packaged all together.

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Re: Hey, Portals Are Hot Again

by Mathew on Thu 08 Dec 2005 04:12 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

Well, there's this: Google University

Re: Re: Hey, Portals Are Hot Again

by Mark Evans on Thu 08 Dec 2005 04:25 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

perhaps a sign of things to come?

Re: Hey, Portals Are Hot Again

by Mathew on Thu 08 Dec 2005 04:41 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

All they need is Google Wi-Fi, Google Beer and Google Pizza :-)

Re: Hey, Portals Are Hot Again

by Anonymous on Fri 09 Dec 2005 02:38 PM EST | Permanent Link

not to mention that you can already personalize your Google homepage with content blocks (Google and otherwise). it's essentially a portal already. they just need to create content blocks for some of the more popular non-RSS Google services like Maps, Earth, etc. they already have Gmail on there... /nl

Re: Hey, Portals Are Hot Again

by Anonymous on Fri 09 Dec 2005 03:14 PM EST | Permanent Link

It's worth noting that although Google is the number 1 portal in the US, actually MSN is number 1 in Canada and rack up around 17 million unique users per month to their homepage. Canadian's do not seem fully convinced by the Google portal offering!

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\n"; #File retrieval failed - exiting function pass back old values. return $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); } #TODO - Replace with file retrieval $ad_params = $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); $new_ad_params = $this->_newRowPosition($ad_params); #TODO - Add SlidingExpiration for REFRESH Dates that dont change # Example: REFRESH DATE permanently affixed to 2 days prior, every 30sec refresh will attempt a new page download # Temp Solution is to UPDATE FILE_DATE with AD_ROTATE_DATE $new_ad_params["AD_FILEDATE"] = $new_ad_params["AD_ROTATEDATE"]; #echo "Writing new ad
\n"; $this->_updateAdFileParameters($AdFilePath, $new_ad_params); #echo "Returning updated parameters
\n"; return $new_ad_params; } } /** BEGIN Backwards Compatibility Routines */ if (! function_exists('array_combine')) { function array_combine($keys, $values) { foreach($keys as $key) $out[$key] = array_shift($values); return $out; } } if (!function_exists('fputcsv')) { function fputcsv($filePointer, $dataArray, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { // Write a line to a file // $filePointer = the file resource to write to // $dataArray = the data to write out // $delimeter = the field separator // Build the string $string = ""; // No leading delimiter $writeDelimiter = FALSE; foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) { // Replaces a double quote with two double quotes $dataElement=str_replace("\"", "\"\"", $dataElement); // Adds a delimiter before each field (except the first) if($writeDelimiter) $string .= $delimiter; // Encloses each field with $enclosure and adds it to the string $string .= $enclosure . $dataElement . $enclosure; // Delimiters are used every time except the first. $writeDelimiter = TRUE; } // end foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) // Append new line $string .= "\n"; // Write the string to the file return fwrite($filePointer,$string); } } if (!function_exists('fgetcsv')) { #TODO - Remove or ??? #Originally built to handle PHP4 style of fgetcsv $CSVstruct = array('Sep' => ','); function fgetcsv($handle, $length=1024, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { $rows = ParseCSVStream(fgets($handle),"\n",false); return $rows[0]; } } // append a CSV row containing data converted from source array $data. Actual conversion is done by ExCSVRowWalker() function AppendCSVRow($data) { global $CSVstruct; array_walk($data,'ExCSVRowWalker'.($CSVstruct['OutEOL']=="\n"?'N':'')); $CSVstruct['File'] .= implode($CSVstruct['Sep'],$data).$CSVstruct['OutEOL']; } // returns an array of rows (each row being an array of columns) with parsed data. Returns false when conversion fails. Auto-detects Win/Mac/*nix newline characters, which are converted all to the sequence specified (defaults to $CSVstruct['OutEOL']) for your convenience. function ParseCSVStream($data, $newline="\n", $associative=true) { global $CSVstruct; $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\r","\n",str_replace("\r\n","\n",$data)); if ($newline!="\n") $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\n",$newline,$CSVstruct['File']); $CSVstruct['OutEOL'] = $newline; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = 0; $CSVstruct['Error'] = false; $CSVstruct['EOF'] = false; $res = array(); if ($associative) { $titles = ParseCSVRow(); while (($row = ParseCSVRow())!==false) { $newa = array(); //possible optimization: might use array_combine() - requires PHP 5 for ($col = 0; $col0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',str_replace($CSVstruct['OutEOL'],"\n",$item)).'"'; } function ExCSVRowWalkerN(&$item) { if (!is_numeric($item)&&(strlen($item)>0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',$item).'"'; } // read next line from buffer. function RowInput() { global $CSVstruct; if ($CSVstruct['EOF']) { return ""; } else { $pos = strpos($CSVstruct['File'], $CSVstruct['OutEOL'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); if ($pos===false) { $CSVstruct['EOF'] = true; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); } else { $pos1 = $CSVstruct['Seek']; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = $pos+1; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$pos1,$pos-$pos1); }; }; } /** Initialize ad_network variable */ $ad_logic = new ad_logic($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); $ad_network = $ad_logic->ad_network($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); ?>