I should have used the portals package for this demo but my lack of understanding about the dynamics and usage of the new-portal/portal package led me to just create my own mechanism which I'm sure pales in comparison to the portals package used in dotlrn.
If you are referring to the drag and drop function, the blind down/up effect to hide/show portlets, I beleive these can be worked in to the existing portals package with some minor modifications.
How to create drag and drop portlets is a topic of another tutorial I am brewing.
