Chapter 5 - Getting More...Portals

Portals are gateways to surfing the Internet.  With a little imagination, innovation and information these portals can be very helpful.  There are a few different types of portals, consumer, vertical and Industry.  Consumer portals have a wide range of content, search tools, news and weather.  Popular portals for consumers are Lycos, MSN.  Horizontal portals are more personalized and customized to fit your individual needs. These interactions are person to person or person to business.  Vertical portals or vortals, target specific interests based upon a persons search inquiry.  Then you also have business to business exchanges, these corporate portals are also called EIP's or Enterprise Information Portals.  Business to business partners share and conduct day to day operations.  However, access to business records are secure and access to this data may be limited to the users chain in command at their place of employment. 
Examples of portals are:

http://www.earthweb.com/

http://www.cancer.gov/

http://www.usa.gov/