feeling listless

Web Paul Carr of The Friday Thing offers an obituary for portals.. When you've got Google and Dmoz, you don't really need anything else. Which doesn't stop them painfully trying again and again:

"Last week Lycos announced that it was relaunching its site and, fittingly for an ex-monarch with delusions of grandeur, it was one of the most spectacularly pointless and pompous relaunches the web has ever seen. For a start the new site is codenamed Nicole29 after the name and age of its imagined target visitor, a 'fairly web-savvy, smart, educated professional, who works hard, plays hard, and has money to spend'. Exactly the sort of person, then, who wouldn't have time to waste on a revamped ex-portal. Not that you'd know it had been revamped - Lycos.co.uk is still full of ringtones, dating and viral movie clips - only now it has a few more targeted ads for lifestyle products. Nicole29 will soon be as cash poor as she is time poor. "

Before I discovered weblogs (in the same way Columbus 'discovered' the new world) the original idea for this site was a portal of unusual subject headings. Gald I didn't go down that route.