• The formal models that I’ve discussed are useful for generating a static presentation based on existing properties of the items in the multimedia database (i.e. the parameters must be known at the time we are generating the presentation.)  The web portal must deal with different issues, specifically managing and presenting dynamic content in an effective manner without need for explicit presentation parameters.  The content is usually text based, but there is nothing preventing the administrator from integrating video and sound.

What is a Web Portal?

• A web portal is an integrated software system that allows the web site designer ease of deploying HTML indexed multimedia content.  This can be done with very basic knowledge of HTML - don't need to know how to "program" to add content.
• Usually the concept of a "story" is used as the building blocks.  Each story is posted by the administrator or a user with the appropriate rights.
• Stories can be submitted by anybody, but will not be displayed - they will be queued until an admin approves them.
• Public threads for discussion available, as well as a user feedback system for filtering content.
• Allows truly distributed multimedia by automatically pulling scheduled XML feeds from other web sites.
• Allows customization of content - skinning, languages, filtering