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PA PowerPort Goes Live - October 12, 2000
September 4, 2000
PA PowerPort Beta Version 2.0
Talk about a good step in the right direction.
Take a look now. What's gone?
All the MSNBC News feeds from the front page are gone. Instead, we get the press
releases from State Government. VERY appropriate.
Front page link to building your own web site is gone.
Front page link to Microsoft's Money program is gone.
The specific link to Hotmail is gone. Instead, there is a link to several
other providers on a secondary page, including Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, and
other e-mail providers. Not quite sure what benefit the state gets from this, but certainly less of a benefit for Microsoft.
Links to the regional portals from the front page is gone.
What's still there:
Link to MSN Yellow Pages
Link to PA Weather
What's New:
Winning Lottery Numbers
Better linkage to state-based news providers
As many of you know, in the past we have been very critical of what was
going on with the PA PowerPort site. There are still some problems: the
Business section of the site, with the "Promote Your Business" components
of:
Pennsylvania Business Directory Registration (Future Release)
Get Your Business on the Internet (Future Release)
Register Your Business with Web Search Engines (Future Release)
still are not apparently proper state government functions on the state
government web site, and are being provided by the private marketplace in a
sufficient manner not requiring state government competition, BUT...
All in all, we have to say this is a VERY good step towards removing many of
the problematic competitive features of the portal, which should allow the
state to better focus on providing better government service using the
Internet.
July 2000: Color Coding the Real Estate of PA PowerPort (Version 1.0) - please view, it shows the traffic targets of the PA PowerPort Version 1.0 site. There are some large screen captures, but worth for a better understanding of what is being valued on the PowerPort's front page.
To read more of our original editorial on PA PowerPort in early February, please click here.
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