The Portal to the Universe: a one-stop universe of news

The Portal to the Universe (PTTU) seeks to provide a global, one-stop portal for online astronomy content, serving as an index, aggregator and a social networking site for astronomy content providers, laypeople, press, educators, decision-makers and scientists. PTTU will feature news, image, event and video aggregation; a comprehensive directory of observatories, facilities, astronomical societies, amateur astronomy societies, space artists, science communication universities; and Web 2.0 collaborative tools, such as the ranking of different services according to popularity, to promote interaction within the astronomy multimedia community. In addition, a range of "widgets" (small applications) will be developed to tap into existing "live data". Modern technology and the standardisation of metadata make it possible to tie all the suppliers of such information together with a single, semi-automatically updating portal.

The vision for the Portal is threefold:

Enabling access: To aggregate (pull) from content providers, including all astronomy-related dynamic content (e.g. RSS feeds of blogs, images, news, etc.) and distribute (push) to users.
Indexing and archiving: To collect and maintain a central repository of useful information, including resources such as educational materials and addresses for all astronomy stakeholders such as amateur clubs, planetariums and observatories.
Enabling communication and collaboration: To create and maintain a network of all stakeholders, including a social network for everyone interested in astronomy.

The PTTU homepage will feature a selection of these resources, with defaults based on editorial decisions decided after assessing the target groups' behaviour and needs, but will gradually move toward a live community-based selection determined by the real preferences of the visitors. The visitors may naturally tailor their own MyPortaltotheUniverse with the widgets that they wish.

Editorially PTTU is a selective aggregator with a non-painful editorial mechanism in place.

PTTU will have the latest stuff first.

Task Group
Lars Lindberg Christensen (Denmark, ESA/Hubble & IAU) (chair)
Pedro Russo (Portugal, IYA2009/IAU, ESA/Hubble)
Suzanne Jacoby (USA, LSST Corporation)
Pamela Gay (USA, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville)
Jan Pomierny (Poland, Astronomia.pl)
Raquel Yumi Shida (Brazil, ESA/Hubble, IAU, IYA2009)
Lars Holm Nielsen (Denmark, ESA/Hubble)
Daniel Fischer (Germany, Interstellarum Magazine)
Fraser Cain (USA, Universe Today)
Edward Gomez (UK, LCOGT, Cardiff University)
Mark Newhouse (USA, NOAO)