External content, including news, is often an important component of corporate portals. Content vendors such as Factiva, Lexis, Westlaw, etc. try to accommodate customers by creating "portlets", or small, modular applications, for the various portals their customers might use. But as the number of portal products proliferate, this task becomes more burdensome and perhaps unrealistic. (Sorry, I just read an article on alliteration in the L.A. Times, and I couldn't resist.)
A recent EContent article, "Content in Context" (May 2004, p. 37), discusses new standards emerging that may make things easier for customers and vendors. According to the article, "In 2002, Sun and IBM led a joint effort to create a standard portlet API that would enable portlets to be shared across portal servers from different vendors." JSR 168, as it is called, "means that content providers should only have to write one set of portlets that could then be used across the portal software market."
Any advancements that make it quicker and easier to incorporate external data into portals quickly and easily would certainly be a boon to librarians and web developers alike.
Note: EContent articles are not available on the web, but do appear on Westlaw (DTBS is the database identifier) within 6-8 weeks.
RE: Portal Standards for Incorporating External Content
Just in case no one has pointed it out, the article is available on the web here:
http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=6441
Although the third page has some formatting errors