The Encyclopedia of Portal Technologies and Applications offers complete coverage of the nature, characteristics, advantages, limitations, design, and evolution of Web portals. Other topics include semantic portals, philosophical portal issues, and personal portals. This authoritative encyclopedia encompasses the economics of setting up and using personal portals, knowledge management, strategic planning, user acceptance, security and the law.State-of-the-art portal technology and applications are also described in the Encyclopedia of Portal Technologies and Applications. This comprehensive reference source contains more than 200 articles from academics, experts, and practitioners from around the world. It covers technical characteristics of portals and portal applications in a wide range of areas from business to science and will appeal to a wide range of readers.