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By Liu Nanjie

Communication consumption has shifted focus from phones to information services and the cyber world of the Internet. At the same time, the competition between portals has largely evolved into a contest for users. Operators are seeking to add value in a variety of ways to control portals, increase network value, and retain and attract users. As a result, portals are increasingly complex and cumbersome, which contradicts their original purpose. Is it possible to provide each user with a private and proprietary customization interface? Like a retina that reflects the world and gives vision, this interface will always be with each user and guide his/her perception of the world. 


User base counts in the Internet era 

PCs formed the earliest personal Internet access portal. Through its operating system, a PC acts an integrated desktop that controls all Internet access information. By launching and controlling PC operating systems, Microsoft dominated information consumption in the early pre-browser IT stages. Next, browsers took the lead as the Internet access interface via modems and the World Wide Web, before Microsoft regained its lead by bundling browsers with operating systems. 

After this, comprehensive portals offering diversified content emerged, such as Yahoo!, MSN, and many other vertical and professional portals. While user loyalty has become divided among an increasing number of portals and applications, confidence in the Internet is returning as search bars enable rapid information retrieval, filtered from an almost unimaginable ocean of content. Shadowed by several other successful search engines and products, Google has emerged triumphant during the transitional stage of portal development. 

A welcome by-product of intense competition to attract users is the stimulus this has on Internet evolution. After building a large user base, a portal can become well positioned to further tap into related market areas. For example, Google generates advertising revenues from ranking websites. As such, we can broadly interpret communities, blogs, podcasts, games, online stores and transaction platforms as user distribution centers that deliver immense value and significant room for innovation. 

So Internet evolution can be regarded as the competition for users that exists among portals. 


Why and how Personal Portable Portals work 

Nowadays, the ubiquity of the Internet is unequivocal and is spearheaded by an increasing number of terminals and applications. Given the massive amount of currently available cyber information, how do millions of users choose from millions of applications (M2M)? Basically, people are swamped with a staggering array of choice. 

It is thus unfeasible for a single portal to attract any meaningful user majority thanks to the world' s huge user base, the wide spectrum of consumer demands, and the mass of information that draws us inexorably to the zettabyte era. Does the transition that cycles from complex to simple and then back again no longer apply to portals? The story of the invention of the airplane can illuminate the nature of prevalent technological trends. 

Before the Wright brothers were born, our ancestors had for centuries sought the gift of flight in vain by continually increasing wing area, studying birds, and attempting to replicate their oar-like principle of motion. Success arrived on December 17th, 1903, after the genius of the Wright brothers' had taken them to develop a fixed-wing design that acted as a sail to achieve flight. Their achievement provides an example of how innovation can arise from shifting focus from one established concept to another that is completely new. 

In turn, surfing paths and consumption habits differ from user to user and most people frequent a few dozen web sites and services at most. Assuming that all individual consumption information converges as represented in Fig.1, the platform created to carry these personal applications actually functions as a personalized portal that supports unified management and control. 

Possibilities arise apparently from nowhere as nascent technologies build new development paths. These include mobile bandwidth, intelligent terminals, widgets, and cloud computing. As such, fully personalized portals are set to flow from a platform to myriad terminals in the form of Personal Portable Portals (PPPs). This represents another oar-to-sail transition by shifting the focus of competition to personalized portals. 

Based on intelligent Internet devices (IID) as displayed in Fig.1, a PPP is generated by integrating frequently used personal applications into a terminal platform for easy and quick access. These applications include vertical portals, professional services, communities, directories, personal information management (PIM), location-based services (LBS), work, entertainment, activities, images, IM, sports, music, reading materials, and Emails. PPP features the following: 

1. One PPP is allocated to each user. Unlike public blogs, a PPP is designed for the individual. Users need their own portal to access the Internet, which positions PPP as a digital assistant.  

2. As a snapshot of user network applications, a PPP is ubiquitous. An extended PPP page integrates application widgets–typically ranging from a few dozen to hundreds–into a personal portal. Thus, the PPP is a private room for personal services.  

3. PPPs vary with users in form and content. Personal portals are easily configured, combined, updated on the web, and loaded onto various terminals. The PPP service platform stores information, status, content breakpoints, past records, and the relationships between the application widgets uploaded to each PPP.  

4. The application widgets used in PPPs derive from the digital asset transaction platform. They are easy to inquire, search, obtain, configure, or cancel and follow the "0123" principle of the Internet: 0 manual, learned through 1 use, activated within 2 clicks, operable after 3 seconds.  

5. The business model for PPPs and application widgets is clear and easy to understand. The model supports two-way transactions and settlements and is compatible with all existing applications.  

6. PPPs provide strong service integration capabilities and support a wide array of new models. The PPP is destined to evolve into a platform oriented to massive volumes of personal applications. An application store supplies a steady stream of services and is expected to maximize the spending power of personal information. 

A PPP is distinguished by its inherent freedom, flexibility, and adaptability. Its features include a framework, user data hosting and management, virtual resources, and independence from terminals. The solution addresses a string of problems found in traditional Internet access methods, such as repeated paths, lack of memory, scattered content, the absence of personalized and private services, low efficiency, and poor privacy and security. 

With the rapid development of mobile Internet, PPPs respond to Internet users' needs for personalized, accurate, efficient, and private information access in varied environments. Users obtain only and precisely what they want as soon as they activate their terminals, and are free from the distraction of a superfluous information flood. Obviously, this is the experience that users desire the most. 


How to configure a PPP 

• Initial configuration 
  
  A PPP grows from a collection of personal widgets. Users with different demographic profiles are beginning to gain access to home pages that suit their own preferences in the real sense. While these users can share some application widgets, no two identical PPPs exist; that is, no one will quit his or her own portal for another. This fully mirrors the Internet' s "first sight" strategy. 
  
  The main difficulty arises in converting applications into personal widgets given that time, venue, and personal data vary with locations. Each application widget is loaded with personal information and a background color scheme that reflects user preferences, much like home decor. User data management forms the initial basis for configuring basic personal data, and the "personal communication fingerprints"–or user information features–that reside on the Internet are the basis on which a PPP is founded. 
  
  The following section describes two methods for configuring and using widgets: terminal configuration and PC/web configuration.

• Client-based App configuration 
  
  Assuming that the broadband Internet connection and the smart terminal are necessary for the "0123" experience, users can choose items when prompted in the same way as facilitated by the online stores for the iPhone and the GPhone. 
  
  Terminals can directly access the widget market to order applications. Several users can share the same application widget, and information from same-type widgets can be synchronized. For example, parents and children may synchronize content that covers class schedules, extracurricular activities, and teachers' feedback. Personal information, however, can differ between individuals depending on access rights and status. Equally, software as a service (SaaS) provides identical applications in My Bookshelf, but each private reading room stores different books and bookmarks. Another example is restaurants: A restaurant chain may provide information regarding reservations, directions and offers based on location, which changes as users move from city to city.

• Web-based App configuration 
  
  App configuration can also be performed through the web. Depending on selected terminal type and model, users can drag their favorite application widgets onto the interface in the application market shown on the web-based virtual interface. This enables users to easily and quickly select content and personalized widget parameters, all of which are stored in the PPP configuration files that encapsulate a personal profile and which can be synchronized with a user' s terminal. 
  
  Through subscription convergence, only one widget is needed to accommodate similar applications. For example, a user can locate applications for BT, YouTube, and MTV in My Video, and MSN, BBC, Yahoo! News, and Business Week in My News. Users can lay out their portals according to preferences in a highly personalized web mall model that greatly simplifies and facilitates web configurations on terminals. 
  
  In addition to being quick and easy to configure, web-based configuration also facilitates terminal software upgrades, portal updates, data sharing, fault recovery, service updates, virtual terminal settings, replacement, rebooting, and widget synchronization.

• Terminal pre-installation mode 
  
  PPP gives everyone a unique portal to cater for individual needs. The home page generally comprises frequently used application widgets. Then the profiles of personal portals are stored in the PPP service platform; if a user replaces or loses a terminal, he or she can simply synchronize data into a new terminal to reproduce or restore the original PPP settings. This is just called as a ubiquitous PPP. 
  
  To simplify and facilitate configuration, operators can attribute frequently-used widgets to particular profiles through widget profile management, which can then be recommended to customers as samples. New terminals can be shipped with preset common profiles, and users can adjust and select widgets as needed in web configuration mode. Through terminals pre-installed with PPPs, users can directly reflect their personality by setting personal information. This greatly simplifies terminal customization and transforms a smart terminal into a credit card for information consumption in the digital world. 
  
  Operators can readily identify market segments by data mining on integrated PPPs to identify consumption trends, customer group requirements, and new service opportunities, all of which have huge market potential and much room for innovation.

The unlimited possibilities of PPP 

PPPs are designed to help identify and manage digital customer bases. Future information consumption will move toward service matching and transactions between digital customers. Any related market activity and business innovation generates a fresh source of revenue and a new service growth point. 

From the perspective of operators and networks, customers embody a collection of terminals and applications. PPPs provide the possibility to identify different terminals, manage scenarios and applications, classify business models, integrate applications, obtain service snapshots, and manage information transactions. 

The PPP platform provides rich operational resources that allow operators to precisely target market segments and orient marketing to each PPP user' s network type, service content, behavior, security, multi-terminal features, service integration, application statistics, and data mining. Furthermore, all operational approaches for other portals are suitable for PPPs. 

To exploit users' personalized PPP profiles and data assets, operators can save personalized PPP profiles as part of a PPP cloud. Each user connects to the Internet via his or her own portal, while all PPPs combine into a virtual portal platform through which operators can identify customer groups, their requirements, devices, and internetworking associations. Thus, the PPP platform creates revenue and stimulates competition in the same way as a permanent portal. 

PPPs require application stores to support widget transactions. Built on the virtual digital asset transaction platform, these stores house multiple application brands, numerous long-tail suppliers, and third-party suppliers such as exclusive stores. The stores must incorporate mechanisms that facilitate legal and secure transactions. These include process management, the ordering process, Web 2.0 qualification review, security, and inspections. The mechanisms also include digital rights management, supplier certification, authentication, payment, accounting, taxation, customer relationship management (CRM), and after-sales services. The platform must also answer the M2M challenge through rapid matching so that customers are immediately directed to the right supplier to allow a fluid transaction process. 

The competition among application stores extends to resources on the digital asset transaction platform in a way that mirrors physical economies: Each widget is an SaaS commodity and each application store a transaction center. 

Individual PPP configurations, service orientation and usage predictions combine to provide accurate market information for application store operations, which can help tailor production to accurately reflect customers' varied requirements and paint a clear picture of supply, demand, and inventory through which developers and SPs/CPs can increase the productivity of application stores. Currently, the demand for information exceeds the supply offered by application stores, which in turn may open up market opportunities. The resulting free-market model streamlines digital asset transaction centers and boosts information consumption activities. 

Traditional phone applications require users to repeat the same path each time. To read a book online, users must start the application, enter the correct SP store and follow the menu, before locating their chosen book. This process is at least five clicks away. PPPs, however, provide the same service in two clicks: one to access My Bookshelf and another to locate the previous visit' s material. 

Many users are both application consumers and creators. PPPs transform the pervasive one-way charging road between operators and customers by creating a market environment that supports multi-way charging and transactions. Long-tail consumers can create value and applications for other consumers anytime. Mobile TV and home whiteboards provide two examples. 

All TV channel resources to which households have subscribed are first centralized and then distributed from the virtual content source to mobile terminals according to subscriptions. In effect, users break down barriers and can carry their home TV sets wherever they go in the world. Combined with Wi-Fi and X terminals, this application can even cut fees and promote CP activities by providing 3-in-1 network convergence and 3-screen services. 

With respect to home whiteboards, a public information screen is integral to the digital home. By fully utilizing mobile broadband connectivity, the screen can centrally manage all household display devices and present, for example, family member notices, community bulletins, family schedules, reminders, favorite TV shows, preset information, filtered external information, and digital decor. The family whiteboard serves a range of centralized and distributed home information needs. 

A growing number of applications will cause commodities to widely diversify. The existing application store model is likely to stifle the digital application market due to its lack of flexibility. It is difficult to change or replace application widgets, which in turn inhibits freedom and the individualism necessary for widespread commercial success. The PPP model circumvents this problem, and acts as a platform to evolve widget applications and services through profile memory. Furthermore, as enterprise PPP profiles emerge, tremendous business opportunities will arise to expand dedicated terminal markets. In fact, preset industrial terminals are set to yield market peaks and create the Matthew effect. 

The PPP model features enhanced graphical capabilities for terminals to process complex text with simple graphical operations. Three-screen services will enhance experience and revolutionize the traditional "3-put" model that combines input, throughput, and output. The PPP platform enhances applications based on personal information that spans location-based commerce, advertisements, online reading, PIMs, e-commerce, and digital infotainment. 

As stated, there are multiple scenarios in which real-life business models are relocated to cyberspace as operable and profitable "clouds" that integrate multiple functions and services. These in turn create huge potential for market growth and innovation. 

However, opportunities are nothing without adequate preparation and operators must rely on PPPs to retain their customer base within their portals by offering network and service access anytime, anywhere, via any terminal, network, or screen. 

As the only future portal to attract users at first sight, the PPP will inevitably become a mobile Internet platform that no operator can afford to lose or ignore. Operators are likely to transform special clouds into services that can deliver service features and generate a source of revenue. These clouds can be any PPP-derived combination of network, service, content, behavior, and security capabilities. 

PPP innovation, evolution, and development provide a glimpse of how this innovative platform can reshape current industry practices. It offers both opportunities and challenges, and eliminates many of the problems associated with the current Internet model. Notably, the PPP revolutionizes traditional business models and restructures the value chain in a new business model. The industry is compelled to explore this brave new world.

Fig. 1 Introduction to Personal Portable Portal (PPP)

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