Personal portals for work and play - Essay Example

Personal portals for work and play Personal portals for work and play Personal portals have evolved over the years owing to the advancing nature of technology and Internet connectivity to a large percentage of the population. Access to the internet by an increasing number of people via mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers has facilitated connectivity and increased the presence of personal portals globally. Understanding the evolution, features, and benefits of using personal portals is an important undertaking in the current fast-changing global environment. The impact will be a better understanding of the role of personal portals in the users lives and the benefits of work and productivity for global corporations, small and medium enterprises, as well as government and non-governmental organizations. This study seeks to provide an in-depth analysis of the evolution of personal portals, features, power & benefits, and specific examples demonstrating the use of software/apps in accomplishing knowledge-intensive personal or work tasks/. Evolution Initially, a portal referred to internet search and navigation sites allowing users a starting place ion accessing information from the World Wide Web (WWW). The start of personal portals was in the form of search engines that provided personalized pages for the users. The early personal portals in the 1990s were Netscape, Go.com, prodigy, @Home, and Excite that changed over time owing to acquisitions and merging. These personal portals were aimed at accessing internet market by the companies that developed them owing to customized service provision to the consumers and provide an opening to the Internet via the personal portals. The benefits of having a personalized search engine page included access to indexed contents and hyperlinks to preferred sites allowing for easy navigation while surfing. Early personal portals were characterized by content management, customized content, search and categorization, limited application integration and development, and limited infrastructure (Jafari & Shyeehan, 2007). Following these pages, the advancement in personal portal represented navigation sites such as Yahoo, Infoseek, AOL, Excite, MSN, Lycos, and Netscape Netcenter. These sites offered users an entry platform to web surfing because of the structured navigable interface improving surfing experience. The main personal portals that were used at this era were iGoogle and My Yahoo that offered users access to sports, news, and web searching platforms for free. iGoogle provide mechanisms for integration to personal pages of Gmail and Google News increasing their access to information while accessing their emails. The dot com but in the early 2000s saw the disappearance of personal portals with new software and applications available on mobile phones and other electronic gadgets with internet connectivity raising the bar and changing the meaning of personal portals completely. The changes to the personal portal are represented in the use of software and applications in mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and computers. Currently, a lot of personalized software and applications play the role of personal portals providing user’s access to a host of internet information and capabilities that were not available in the early personal portals. Some of this software and applications that have taken the space of early personal portals and revolutionized the mobile internet access market include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin, MySpace, MSN, among others. Blogging has also grown over the years and provides users a platform to publish content that is personal, professional, academic, or otherwise to a large audience and receive feedback increasing the individual access to a large public audience. Newsreaders have opened a new wave of access to new information with its applications available for use on mobile phones, tablets, desktop, laptop, and web opening further access to new information in an instant and providing readers the chance to manage their subscription and achieve real-time news as they occur (Bailey, 2011). Other software and applications in mobile phones that have aided in revolutionizing the portal industry is provided by companies managing access to news, customer information, sports, career opportunities, books, financial opportunities and stock trade, online purchases, and e-commerce among other opportunities as required by users. An individual could be having software and applications in a mobile including AOL, Amazon.com, Citibank, Hertz, ESPN, Facebook, E-Trade Financial, FedEx, Apple Store, Blockbuster, Dailymotion, Flickr, Google, iLike, Linkedin,Home Depot, American Airlines, Library Thing, Best Buy, Delta, and Craigslist among others. These software and applications serve different purposes and provide for easy access to information personalized and structured considering the individual’s needs playing the same role as early personal portals. It is evident that software and applications have tremendously changed the personal portals giving consumers more access to information on their mobile devices in an instant. Features Personal portals have some features allowing users to use conveniently the sites in their surfing and personal needs. The main features include single login information allowing the users to have access to a wide range of services and information owing to integration and personalization of information features of personal portals to meet user needs (Tatnall, 2005) A unified search across all databases is the other feature of personal portals providing users the chance to search for information or news from a wide range of databases conveniently and within a short time (Collins, 2003). The personal portal provides easy access to information outlined well and personalized to meet the user’s needs (Collins, 2001). Collaboration is the other feature of personal portals with most of this implemented in new software and applications. Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Twitter are the main examples of personal platforms that individuals have access to groups, chats, and online forums for sharing of information and other activities that bring people from different states, regions, districts, continents or countries globally. Security is a key feature for personal portals with the security levels differing for different personal portals and personal differences in terms of usage and position. For example, personal portals for employees at different levels may be supervisor and employees have different security measures with the employee having access to limited information compared to a supervisor from a comp intranet. Personal portals also provide the user to publish content on the portal with main examples being social networking personal portals and blogging. The users are free and make decisions on the kind of content shared on the personal portal. The other feature of personal portals is scalability allowing for the evolving of portals from a single user portal to thousands of users. An example is a pilot project consisting of ten or fewer users accessing and using the portal for the intended purpose as a means of testing effectiveness and later rolled out for use by the employees, customers, partners, suppliers, and management of a corporate organization consisting f thousands of users. Portals also provide for integration of applications for efficient use, for example, moving data from one application of document to another allowing for analysis and transfer between applications. Application integration augments the benefits and use of personal portal for completion of predefined tasks. Web services support and availability are the other features of personal portals. The availability features include “automatic failover of both stateful and stateless components and servlet session information” (Firestone, 2007). Web services support that are available on personal portals is access to major web services, universal description, discovery, and integration registry and portlets connection to allow e-business collaboration (Firestone, 2007). Portal services available to the users include navigation, personalization, channel search, mobile and wireless connectivity, and indexing augmenting usability and personal portal effectiveness in meeting the needs of the users. Power & benefits Personal portals have several capabilities that make them a preference for use. These include personalization where information is channeled and directed to a single person considering preferences that they set. The personal portal provides sources of information with a dedicated area to display information with the user deciding on which of the sources of information to be displayed depending on personal preferences. In addition to search engine features in personal portals, other services mainly added to allow for user convenience include email, stock prices, news, entertainment news and content, and information from different databases as required by the user. Personal portals confer several benefits to the users depending on the manner of use of these portals. The main benefit of personal portals is access to a wide range of information and databases easily and conveniently. The information is also personalized and tailored to meet the needs of the users owing to personalization considerations. Access by users to a lot of information offers the other benefit of personal portals better decision-making both in personal and professional life. An example is a decision to sale or purchase stocks is made on the basis of real-time stock prices accessed via the personal portal. Personal portals also allow people and companies to navigate easily a complex, expensive business environment. Personal portals provide business people and companies avenues to manage information in a structured and cohesive manner. Employees, customers, and partners have access to information from a single point in a personal portal developed for business allowing the business to achieve better knowledge management. Intranet portals in a business allow for collaboration and business intelligence informing decision-making and augmenting business productivity. Other benefits to the users are easy navigation of sites and provision of opportunities for collaboration and knowledge sharing in case of company portals. Corporations use portals for management and sharing of information and improve information dissemination to the employees. Portals have augmented e-business access to customers and improved sales for businesses owing to the development of applications, software, and personal portals connecting consumers and the business easily and at a lower cost. Access to heterogeneous enterprise applications is another advantage of personal portals that should be achieved without sacrificing reliability and security of the user’s information (Townsend & Schaffer, 2004). Use of specific software/apps to accomplish knowledge-intensive personal or work tasks A workspace portal provides a clear example of a software/application used in the completion of knowledge-intensive work task. Enterprise collaborative portal offers users within a work setting the chance to access information and people with different knowledge and skills required for the completion of a project or task. Enterprise collaborative portal brings together office applications including email, workflow, groupware, email, and critical desktop for users to perform well in terms of task completion owing to high collaboration rate among participants. Information searching, content production, and access are the other facilities availed to users by Enterprise collaborative portal with the aim of enabling work/project completion be done jointly by members of the project team. Personal portals have also made it easy for students to learn and study conveniently wherever they are via student portals. Students can easily access course information, books, tutorials, and even chat via instant text and video with their professors enabling learning to occur despite the distance. These portals also offer channels to undertake examinations and present for marking as well as review past examinations and prepare for examinations. Business must have customer services available for 24/7 access by customers as well as supplier information present for suppliers in corporate portals augmenting customer and supplier relation. References Bailey, B. (2011). The Blogging Church: Sharing the Story of Your Church through Blogs. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Firestone, J. M. (2007). Enterprise information portals and knowledge management. New York: Rutledge. Jafari, A., & Sheehan, M. (2004). Designing portals: Opportunities and challenges. Hershey, PA: Information Science Pub. Townsend, J. J., Riz, D., & Schaffer, D. (2004). Building portals, intranets, and corporate Web sites using Microsoft servers. Boston: Addison-Wesley. Tatnall, A. (2005). Web portals: The new gateways to Internet information and services. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Pub. Collins, H. (2003). Enterprise knowledge portals: Next-generation portal solutions for dynamic information access, better decision making, and maximum results. New York: AMACOM. Collins, H. (2001). Corporate portals: Revolutionizing information access to increase productivity and drive the bottom line. New York: AMACOM. Read More