Portal Sites Organize Wealth of Information on Internet

Oct. 19--Sometimes the information highway seems like a six-lane expressway with no exit.

We've evolved from occasionally checking an e-mail account to a hyper-connected state where we constantly check messages, send out tweets via Twitter, and follow friends and contacts on Facebook and

But there are ways to streamline the ride. Web surfers can handle these multiple information streams without having to leapfrog from site to site -- and maybe even have a little spare time to go offline for a while.

Personalized Web pages are nothing new -- there's iGoogle and Yahoo personalized pages, where users can add their Facebook and Flickr accounts to the mix. But a handful of personal Web portals take it up a notch -- enabling the user to read and post to Twitter, follow Facebook updates, check e-mail and much more on one easy-to-read Web page, which can be accessed from any computer or mobile device.

Netvibes and Pageflakes are two that are easy to set up and use. On both, embedded Facebook and Twitter windows enable the user to follow their accounts without leaving to log on to those sites. People also can check their regular e-mail accounts.

Pageflakes ( www.pageflakes.com ) offers a wide array of add-on widgets. There are "flakes" the user can add, enabling them to follow radio and TV stations, monitor Web site traffic, track eBay auctions and Netflix movie rentals, and more. They can create additional pages beyond their home Pageflakes page that can be used to organize favorite blogs and publications by topic. The Universal News Search feature searches multiple news services and delivers stories of interest to the reader's personal page. There are basic tools, like a calendar, to-do list and weather updates.

Netvibes ( www.netvibes.com ) has similar features. It tracks news and RSS feeds and lets the user link to podcasts (updated episodes appear on the Netvibes home page). Users can create a public page for others to follow.

Other personal Web sites include Pagezz and Zooloo. ZooLoo ( www.zooloo.com ), currently in beta, pull together perennial favorites iTunes, eBay, Craigslist and more, along with popular social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

In addition to gathering news feeds and blog posts, Pagezz ( http://pagezz.com ) has useful basic tools such as a unit converter and calculator, weather and stock quotes. It lets users track Web site statistics through sources such as Alexa, Quantcast and others.

There are other ways beyond personal Web portals and start pages to organize large amounts of content into manageable desktop bites. So-called digital curators assemble links to information from a wide range of sources, letting the reader keep pace with the latest developments in different fields.

Technology news was one of the first areas of interest for bloggers and still is. People who follow it typically had to check numerous blogs and online publications. Techmeme ( www.techmeme.com ) is a technology news aggregator that gathers the best of all of these posts on a single page, along with a brief synopsis and links to the article.

TweetMeme (tweetmeme.com) is designed to cut the Twitter clutter. It gathers popular Twitter posts and organizes them into channels -- comedy, entertainment, gaming, sports, technology -- so that readers can home in on topics of interest.

SmartBrief ( www.smartbrief.com ) is another helpful online assistant, especially for people who need to monitor developments in business, retail, health care, legal issues, technology, entertainment and more. It combs through hundreds of trade and industry publications,and sends information to users in one e-newsletter.

People who follow a lot of blogs can lean on Regator ( http://regator.com ) for help. This site offers a selection of blogs by channel -- arts and entertainment, news, technology, sports and more. The user can create a customized page and receive updated posts from many blogs simultaneously.

Mobile devices are coming up with ways to let users keep up on the go. Motorola's new Cliq gathers updates from different social networking sites and delivers them automatically to the phone. iPhone users can download applications like iFeed, which combines Twitter and Facebook updates.

So when are you going to have time to actually read all this stuff? Say hello to your new best friend Instapaper ( www.instapaper.com ). Procrastinators everywhere will wonder how they lived without this. It creates a "Read Later" bookmark on Web browsers. When you find something you want to check out but don't have time to read, simply hit the "Read Later" button and the article is stored in your account for later perusal. Instapaper applications for mobile devices let you take all this reading matter on the road.

For more Web-based arts and entertainment news, check out the PG's Cybertainment blog at: http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/cybertainment/ Adrian McCoy can be reached at 412-263-1865 or amccoy@post-gazette.com

Doug Oster writes a blog, "Growing With Doug," exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.

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