You also want to know what the local weather holds in store, what movies are playing locally and what concerts are in town. Your custom portal would display the overnight baseball scores, auto racing results, current market averages and prices for individual stocks, and this week s bird migration patterns. It would give you the movie and concert information as well all with links for getting more details should you want them. This is the goal of a number of Internet service firms, so far imperfectly achieved. The idea is to provide a service that people feel they must have and to keep them coming back frequently to be exposed to advertising, shopping opportunities and so on.
Management likes to say it is in the stay page business rather than the usual Internet go to mode.
This has obvious implications for generating more revenue. The software is called i2u. Besides the above, it handles e-mail, allows users to create their own web pages, calendars, private chat rooms, conferencing and more. It does not require knowledge of software languages like HTML or any other major technical skills. The company s WEBBbuilder tool is visual rather than technical, allowing users to start with a blank screen or defined template and then drag and drop specific capabilities onto their portal page.