Personalized Web Pages Accessible to Users

Missing Harvard during winter break? Try configuring your own personal portal page, accessible at my.harvard.edu.

For the first time, Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Services (HASCS) made these personalized gateways to the Internet accessible for full-scale testing yesterday. The portals' most prominent feature is an on-line version of a pocket day planner.

To log into the site, users need to enter their Harvard ID numbers and personal identification numbers, which students already use to check grades on-line.

About two years ago, Yahoo! launched one of the first and most popular personalization services, called "MyYahoo!"

Harvard is joining these commercial sites with portals called "My Harvard," that it hopes affiliates of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) will make into their homepages.

"Everyone under the sun has portals today," said Director of FAS Computer Services Franklin M. Steen.

But Steen said HASCS designed portals that would beat the competition. He said Harvard's portals offer solutions to problems particular to college students.

"Students at Harvard don't just use their computer in their room," he said. "[The portals are] an easy way to keep things with you as you move around campus."

For example, he said, many users keep a list of favorite Internet links--called bookmarks--on their personal machines. But they can't access these bookmarks when they move to a different machine in a computer lab or at a kiosk.

With the portals, users can add their bookmarks to a list of personal links--and then call them up through My Harvard wherever they are on campus.

Users can also customize the appearance of their personal portal and put links to frequently-used Harvard sites--like meal plans, shuttle schedules or local weather forecasts--at the top of the page.

The calendar will automatically include announcements about students' classes. Users can add to their own calendars and even request e-mail reminders.

Since the portal automatically sets up links to the homepages for students' classes, Steen said he thinks departments will better maintain their Internet sites.

"People want to see what they're doing. There will be some pressure from users," he said.

Steen said the portals will eventually allow students to view regularly updated information from the Registrar's Office, such as grades.

Steen says he and other HASCS staff were inspired to create portal pages about a year ago, after seeing similar programs at the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Minnesota.

Three staff programmers, led by HASCS Manager of User Services David M. Sobel, designed the portals.

Slow functioning delayed the portals' release, originally scheduled for earlier this fall.

Steen said speed is a remaining problem with the portals. But HASCS, which also provides FAS e-mail accounts and campus kiosks, is working on that concern.

"We need to make it almost instant, but that'll take some time," Steen said.