New Portals May Become Something To Talk About Mike McCue has seen the future of mobile Web access, and it's in the past. While others are creating "smart" kitchen appliances and personal digital assistants that surf the Web, the founder of Tellme Networks is going back to the 124-year-old telephone. To access the Internet, you just dial a toll-free number from any phone and speak a set of one-word commands that even a technophobe can grasp. Tellme, based in Mountain View, Calif., is one of many start-ups trying to create "voice portals"--essentially scrawny audio versions of Yahoo!, Excite, AltaVista or other Web portals. "It's an on-line service for every phone," says McCue, who was vice president of advanced technology at Netscape Communications before leaving in 1998. The race to become the voice portal of choice is no less important than the portal wars waged on the Web. Quack.com of Sunnyvale, Calif., went live nationally April 10. On the verge of launching are BeVocal of Santa Clara, Calif.; Talk2 of Salt Lake City; and TelSurf Networks of Westlake Village, Calif. Others are sure to join the fray. Instead of typing a keyword or clicking on a category, users dial a toll-free number and pick from several categories of information, from stock quotes and weather reports to local restaurant and movie listings. Callers speak commands and listen to responses through the telephone, rather than read a Web site's text or look at its graphics. The voice portal uses speech recognition software to