Yes everyone, meet Portals 2.0: all these Ajax-y applications that bring together multiple data sources and bung them together on your own ‘start page’. It’s a little different from Portals 1.0 (which appeared in the late 1990s), in that these include your own data, not just stuff from other places.

Mmm.. Weather.

Whatever happened to Portals 1.0? They disappeared for two reasons: they were a stupid idea (although I’ll admit I thought they were incredibly cool and useful at the time for the purposes of making a site sticky), and there was no sensible way of monetizing them.

Now Salesforce has joined the hype and announced Business Web Desktop. But I wouldn’t classify this a ‘start page’. Is the Basecamp Dashboard a ‘start page’? Of course not, it’s just one View from a particular application. Don’t believe the hype.

What about ad-hoc aggregation of data from different sources? Well, yes, I concede this might be useful if you don’t have your computer to hand. But in any case, over the next couple of years we’ll all be carrying products that either replace desk-bound computers, or seamlessly link with them. Which will end the requirement for Portals 2.0.