When is a portal not a portal? When it's a 'destination', apparently.
The rather delicate distinction was pointed out to me by Quentin Bright and Richard Ram, Content Manager and Site Manager respectively of the newly-revamped Xtra website.
I had murmured something, in my barbed way, about the declining number of visitors
to overseas 'portals', those search-engines which last year swelled into bloated doppelgangers hawking everything from hurricane-warnings to horoscopes.
Visit Snap, Excite or Netscape to see what I mean [in your browser's address bar, just type www. before and .com after each name].
"We're not really a portal!" cried the Xtra team, and you can't blame them for wanting to distance themselves from these arid, almost featureless expanses of text. I'm not surprised that newbies would soon rather be elsewhere, pausing only to check their freemail before moving somewhere more stimulating.
Xtra [www.xtra.co.nz] aims to provide cyber-Kiwis with a more attractive and permanent home. Does it succeed?
Definitely.
It's so much improved that there's simply no comparison with the original 'Xville', the cutesy Disneyland Down-Under which used to greet you as the Xtra start-page [actually, it's still there as a small graphic, presumably to let regulars know they've come to the right place].
They've adopted, in their own words, "a new focus on news and information". Surveys show that New Zealand is hungrier for news than most nations, and as a news junkie myself I particularly like the way it's thread-ed through the pages. There's a pleasing consistency to the whole site which it badly lacked in its earlier incarnation.
Below a discreet utility bar for Xtra subscribers, its sensible and easily navigable channels offer the average surfer most things they'll need on a short visit to cyberspace. Supercharged search-engines makes finding easy both within the site [Verity, a system first devised for academia], throughout the country [SearchNZ] and on the Web itself [HotBot].
Briefly, here's what you get:
News: particularly good, thanks to Reuters and IRN, with plenty of photos and features. Updated continuously, including weekends.
Sport: amazingly current and comprehensive. Coverage of US Open tennis is almost better than the official page itself [www.usopen.org].
Entertainment: a nicely-packaged mix of movies, music, TV, video-gaming and gossip with a number of related links, though it could do with even more [Xtra hates to see you go]. The inspired tackiness of Xtra's Loveman continues – push your trundler over to Dateboy's "Dances with Bananas" to get more than just groceries at Woollies 277 [click on the artichokes].
Business: coverage which manages to touch most of the bases for a quick overview. Nice ticker-code search for share-prices, but no currency converter. Even the Motivation Men seem less insufferable than before.
Travel: both tempting and functional,. The Business Travel Fare-Finder works especially well: if you're flying economy to Sydney on November 1st, there's a $440 differential between highest and lowest fares – well worth the click.
Technology: an excellent roundup of what's happening on the electronic frontier, plus downloads for newbies.
Real Estate: over 30,000 properties for sale/rent for every conceivable wallet and lifestyle, with handy links to local councils and a summary of property movements nationwide. Promises a mortgage calculator, but lies.
NZ Life: dolly-mixture of fashion, accommodation, rental cars, America's cup and other stuff which doesn't fit anywhere else.
NZ Jobs: 358 in the IT sector alone, but the bossy will find only 5 under 'Management'.
Shopping: gradually gaining depth and substance; could use even more. You can easily set up your own cyberstore with Xtra's Business Builder.
Auckland Live: events calendar, news, weather, traffic, and a bar-chart of city blood-supplies [if you're AB-, please spare the Bloodmobile a drop or two].
Community: largely chat, plus a modest but adequate personal homepage template. See some of the results, and check out Xtra's Site of the Week.
So the Xtra kaleidoscope has at last been given a good shake, and the result is colourful, pleasing and functional. Congratulations all round, up to and in-cluding Rod Deane... well, everyone else always seems to give him such a hard time...
BOOKMARKS
NEW AND RENEWED: NZ PRIME MINISTER and NZGO
Since the first set of initials usually implies the second, I was ready to dis-miss the PM's official new website as further evidence of her enchantment with PR. Wrong – it's both interesting and informative, especially the guide to Vogel House and biographies of former incumbents. A sample page from the Shipley diary makes you thank God you didn't stand for public office. A fine resource for schools, too.
Then there's the revised "Official Gateway to New Zealand Government", with a shrouded vision of the Beehive apparently glimpsed through heavy drizzle - a depressing graphic for any toiler in the paddy-fields of the Know-ledge Economy who might have been hoping for a ray or two of sunshine in his Bright Future. Typing these words into their search-engine will take you to [www.morst.govt.nz/bright/questions.htm], and I've got to say, with a certain reluctant admiration, that when it comes to begging the question your average bureaucrat is capable of some amazing flights.
Advisory: outlook unsettled ...
[www.primeminister.govt.nz]
[www.govt.nz]
When is a portal not a portal? When it's a 'destination', apparently.
The rather delicate distinction was pointed out to me by Quentin Bright and Richard Ram, Content Manager and Site Manager respectively of the newly-revamped Xtra website.
I had murmured something, in my barbed way, about the declining number of visitors
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