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Objectives

My dissertation will be divided in three main parts:

Fundamental research: Social web & new medias

First I will observe what was the web, what is it nowadays and then I'll try to give you a taste of what the web should be in few years. I will perform my researches in various ways: reading web news and W3C reports, searching on experts blogs, giving interviews. After that research part, I could see more clearly what the future of the social web is.

Standardization of a web portal concept

In next years how will we access to the information? We will use less and less newspapers, radios and TV channels. Currently we already spend more times on internet and less in front of his TV. Currently internet isn't enough structured to replace TV, but not for a long time.

My researches should bring me to imagine a new kind of web portal, where the information will be structured around a community. A kind of mash-up between a community (ex: Myspace) and Netvibes ?

I will study greatest social web sites and majors web 2.0 portals, strong points and weaknesses.

Then I'll write a list of recommendations and concepts. This document will be a guide to build the PortalLib project components.

PortalLib: Open component library for a vertical portal

PortalLib is an open source library. It issues generic components, highly customizable, for building a vertical portal. Each component will respond to a problematic defined in our guide book.

Basically, PortalLib will provide the following functonalities: user handling, audio and video player, RSS aggregator, search engine. We will take care of accessibility, web semantic and all the latest W3C recommendations.

This library won't be a commercial product because I will just have the time to develop basic functionalities.

Nevertheless my project will be a very nice demonstration of my web concepts and will help me to find a job. After my studies I could also find money to finish my library as a commercial product.