Kurzbeschreibung
This paper focuses on the requirements, functionality and technology for multimedia Internet portals. Both existing and emerging technologies are presented. Special emphasis is placed on the upcoming multi-user extensions to MPEG-4, a preliminary version of which is briefly described. The paper is organised as follows: section 1 provides an introduc-tion to the rationale behind, and state-of-the-art of multi-user multimedia Internet portals; section 2 describes how MPEG-4 can be seen as the enabling technology for portals; section 3 gives a brief technical description of the proposed multi-user extensions to MPEG-4; section 4 illustrates how this technology can be applied to portals and section 5 draws conclusions as to how portals will evolve in the long term.