i am the author of the new-portals package and many of the portlets, so i can make the relevant decisions while ben is on vacation.
new-portals in its current form works for dotlrn, but it's dm, apis, and other parts are not as clean as i would like for a package that
people will be building on. i'm working on a thorough refactoring that should be completed in time for inclusion into 4.6.
