A SHORTE NOTE ON
By: Dr.Y.Bala Murali Krishna (unibalu@gmail.com)
A Web Portal or public portal refers to a Web site or service that offers a broad array of resources and services, such as e-mail, forums, search engines, and online shopping malls.
The first Web portals were online services, such as AOL, (America
The website of the Government of India’s Press Information Bureau( www.pib.nic.in) offers links to various union ministries and departments besides offices of the PMO, the President and the Vice-President besides various directorates such as the Directorate of Audio and Visual Publicity(DAVP), Registrar of News Papers of India(RNI), Press Council of India(PCI) and the Directorate of Field Publicity and the Directorate of Film Festivals.
Incidentally, the website was adjudged the best public web portal as it provides comprehensive links to various central government ministries and departments at the click of the mouse without any hitch even as it provided the user with a “home” link to come back to the homepage of the website.
This site stands another vital news source for the journalists and the media units across the world from India as it offers not only the current official news in English but in Hindi and Urdu also, leave alone photographs and audio clippings.
The photo division of the PIB takes care of uploading the current news pictures into the website to benefit the needy. Incidentally, the photos and relevant press releases of the successive International Film Festivals of India
Another interesting feature of the website was maintaining a portal exclusively for “features” on varied subjects for use by the newspapers and the periodicals on a regular basis. Another facility was provision of backgrounders, which are vital for journalists on different subjects.
So is the website of the Andhra Pradesh Government (aponline.gov.in) working on similar lines providing links to various portals offering information on subjects related to various government wings, some even providing the e-mail addresses and web URL’s besides the telephone numbers of ministries and the secretaries, quite useful to the journalists and the general public. It had even a facility to benefit the people whose complaints to the government had been registered so that they could be informed of the status of the grievance redressal.
Indlaw.com is another website offering links related to various courts including the Supreme Court and the respective state high courts. It also provides links to press notes related to the union law ministry and the courts besides tenders of the courts and archives of various judgments, with an easy search facility. This provides a vital source of news for the media units across the country, particularly on law related subjects at a time when judicial activism and incidence of the scams are on rise.
Thus, web portals have become vital components for the netizen providing quick and easy to guide links for trouble free navigation of the web on related subjects. Another example is www.eureakalert.org which provides stunning links to various sites doling out information on the latest developments on science and technology, medicine, agriculture, archaeology, education, mathematics and related subjects.
The site offers even a facility to the approved list of science journalists across the world who are keen to update their knowledge on scientific developments and keen to find leads to stories on an array of science subjects of their choice, apart from reporting what had been reported by the respective scientific bodies. Unfortunately, similar facility was in vogue with the Indian websites. It was not in tune with the pace of research underway in India
Most of the newspapers, both English and regional language, started using the “portal” facility in the respective websites, offering an array of subjects to attract the customers across the world. Visit any newspaper website, you find the portals that port you to different subjects with easy links and back home.
Thus, the services being offered by the websites with portals providing links to an array of subjects at one go, had been becoming highly popular day after day with netizen population exploding every hour in the modern world. //EOM//
