Section 2.2. Portals: Dashboards of the Web | iPhone: The Missing Manual, 4th Edition

2.2. Portals: Dashboards of the Web

As you may have gathered from this chapter already, the Web is huge . Filled with sites devoted to news, stocks, sports, games , movies, real estate, television, and more, it's hard to decide where to go first. It's like having a shopping list with dozens of things you need to buy, but every item is for sale in a completely different store and you have to drive all over town to get it all.

This is where a portal site comes in handy. As the name suggests, a portal site is an entryway into a larger world. Or, to stick with the analogy above, a good portal site is like an enormous shopping mall that houses just about all the stores that you could think ofand then some. (There isn't, however, a Corn Dog Hut franchise in this mall.)

A search box somewhere on the page is one feature all these portals have in common. These boxes are quite easy to use: Type in keywords related to the subject you seek, click the Search button, and wait to see what Web pages the search engine thinks best match your query. As Chapter 3 explains in greater detail, search engines are the way you find specific information in the Web's massive sprawl.

Portals are more than just search engines, though. This section gives you a guided tour of four of the big ones so you can decide if they'll be useful to you in your online travels .

2.2.1. Google

Google is the Web's card catalog, the closest thing it's got to a master directory. Hundreds of millions of people a day use this simple, streamlined search box to find what they're looking for online.

Google started out as a Web-search company created by two Stanford University students. Although it's officially been around only since 1998, Google didn't take long to explode in popularity to become the Web's dominant search site.

With a well-stocked arsenal of ambition , skill, and venture capital money to fuel its projects, Google soon became much more than a search boxto see what lies behind that clean white fa §ade, go to www.google.com and click the More link. Google's vast suite of software, services, and online tools fills the page. Many of these features like Google Maps, Earth, Froogle, Groups, News, Images, and oh, yes, Search , are discussed in various chapters of this book.

But to turn this page into a portal that lists what you consider the most useful sites, hit the browser's Back button and click the Personalized Home link at the top of the main Google page. With the personalization tools that appear on the left side of the screen, you can knock yourself out cluttering up Google's nice clean interface by adding the local weather forecast, stock market updates, the Washington Post, Forbes magazine, and sports and news headlines from major outlets like ESPN. And if you don't have enough news tidbits on your page to keep your brain burning, you can also add Quote of the Day and Word of the Day sections to your page.

If you sign up for a free Google account, the company will store your personalized page's settings on its servers so you can see it on other computers. And no matter how much stuff you slather on your personal Google page, the tidy blocks of links on the clean white background still make the page look neater and less chaotic than most other portal sites.

2.2.2. Yahoo

Yahoo, too, was founded (in 1994) by two Ph.D. students at Stanford University in California (perhaps the school should change its mascot from the Cardinal to the Fighting Search Engines).

Yahoo was one of the early pioneers out on the Web frontier and has become a major destination for many an online traveler . Although it was first known as a search engine and directory site for finding things on the Web, Yahoo has boomed into an integrated network of software and services, with its own free e-mail accounts and instant messaging software, plus online merchants , news services, personal ad directory, and much more.

The Yahoo home page, located at www.yahoo.com, is a jumble of links, icons, and images, plus a few flickering Web advertisements stuck in the middle of it all. In fact, it has a certain mall-like hyperactivity of many things trying to get your attention all at once. But, if you need a diving board to leap into the deep end of the Web, Yahoo has plenty of spring to it.

Links on the main page lead the way to pages with all kinds of information, including Hollywood gossip, the current weather forecast for your town, financial news, movie listings, sports updates, and even your daily horoscope. The link to Yahoo Maps lets you type in an address and get a map showing its location, plus driving directions to get there. There's even a section of the site especially for children. Dubbed "Yahooligans," the kids ' table at the Yahoo feast offers games, jokes, and research links for history papers about the Teapot Dome scandal and other boring homework assignments.

To use some of Yahoo's "services," which include its free Web-based email (Section 14.1.4.1), online calendars, and discussion groups, you need to sign up for a Yahoo account. Don't worryit's free, but you may find yourself getting a lot of mail and "special offers" from the company and its partners . Once you sign up, you can customize your Yahoo home page more to your liking, like having your own local weather and news displayed.

Note: MSN and AOL are both subscription-based online services, but you can use their portal pages for free.

2.2.3. MSN

Microsoft's MSN portal page, found at www.msn.com, is also crammed with features and links, many of which compete with Yahoo's services. Buttons for Microsoft's free Hotmail email accounts and its MSN Messenger instant message program (Chapter 15) invite you to click and sign up, and headlines from its MSNBC cable television and Web site dominate the news section. Other Microsoft properties, like Slate magazine and the Encarta reference collection also have prominent spots on the MSN portal page.

Topics are arranged neatly in groups according to categories like News & Sports, Living & Finances, and Entertainment. Its handy Look It Up reference section with links to pages containing maps, telephone listings, and city guides can make finding your way around town easier.

MSN also invites you to create your own free account and craft your own My MSN version of the page. Once you sign up, you can see your Hotmail inbox, local listings, news, weather, and other personalized content all in one convenient place. And, if you decide that you're a better designer than the MSN folks, you can change the page's layout, color , and theme.

2.2.4. AOL

America Online, one of the first major online services to jump on the Internet bandwagon and lasso millions of customers in the 1990s, also maintains its own Web portal at www.aol.com. America Online customers who already have an account with the company can use the portal to check their AOL mail from whatever computer they happen to be using.

GEM IN THE ROUGH
Craigslist: The Bizarre Bazaar

Combining classified advertising and an online community of people around the world looking for jobs, love, and used furniture, Craigslist (www.craigslist.org) is a simple, no-frills , no-design Web site used by 10 million people a month. The site grew out of an Internet mailing list started in 1995 by software engineer Craig Newmark, the man who put the Craig in Craigslist.

Since it began , Craigslist has bloomed into a worldwide marketplace and trading post that has put a dent in many a newspaper's classified-ads department. That's because people can post their ads and messages for free on Craigslist (except for the job listings in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York). This non-commercial attitude harkens back to a more innocent, socially oriented time in the Internet's history when people were willing to help other people without charge.

Most major cities around the world have their own specialized areas on Craigslist, so if you're looking for a one-bedroom flat for a summer in Edinburgh, you can click the link for Edinburgh on the main Craigslist page and then browse through all the listings around the Scottish capital. Each ad listed on the site has an e-mail address to use for contacting the person posting the item, service, or personal plea for a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Placing an ad on Craigslist is simplejust click the link for the city you live in on the main page, and then click the "Post to Classifieds" link to get started filling out your ad. When you're going through the ad-posting steps, you can also choose to use an anonymous address provided by the site so that your real email address isn't out there in the open .

Auto parts , music lessons, and college basketball tickets are among the thousands of items hawked on the site every day, and Craigslist also hosts a number of discussion forums where people can post messages on various topics. It's a relatively uncensored space with a fair share of explicit posts, though, and the fact that it doesn't cost anything makes Craigslist an attractive space for people to gathertaste, decorum, or sanity not required.

A block of links called the AOL Directory provide a gateway to the site's popular topics and services, like its Diet & Fitness, Food & Home, and Research & Learn pages, plus all the usual city guides, sports news, and financial information you've come to expect from a portal site.

There are also links to the popular MapQuest mapping-and-driving directions site and the Love@AOL personal ads area. Thanks to AOL's membership in the Time Warner entertainment empire, its corporate partnerships, and its own deep well of content, the site hosts a large collection of video clips from film and television, links to streaming music from XM Satellite Radio, and plenty of news stories and photos.

Tip: If you want a blast from the past, AOL may be the place for you. With its In2TV feature, the company has freed hundreds of old sitcoms, adventure shows, and Westerns from the vaults of time and made them available for anyone to watch on the Web for free. Chapter 12 has details on how you can relive the glory days of F-Troop and Maverick .

And, if you like the portal page enough and are tempted by some of the members -only services, you can find a link to download AOL's own software and sign up for a full-fledged America Online account. You can also download the free AOL Instant Messenger ( AIM) software for your Windows or Macintosh computer here, too. (See Chapter 15 for more about instant messaging.)

Tip: Many portal sites also have alternate versions in Spanish that you can switch to just by clicking an Espa ±ol link or button on the English version of the page. For AOL's Spanish edition, go to http://latino.aol.com.