By accident I came across the NiftyPortal webpart while searching for webparts..
NiftyPortal.com is a private enterprise by Teun Duynstee. Teun is the (co-)author of several books on technical and Internet related subjects with WROX publishers (who tragically went bankrupt recently). He wrote the code for NiftyPortal to fill his own need for a personal newsroom. Coded in C#.
You can follow NiftyPortal.com development through the weblog