P.cn is temporarily a not very well-known website and has already existed for two years when its side products were developed at the same time. The leader of the product development is Lin Xinglu, a 26-year-old young programmer who has been dedicated in the IT industry for 10 years. He called P.cn a Personal Portal.
(Lin Xinglu, founder of P.cn)
P.cn was originated from a sudden idea
Three years ago, when Cai Wensheng, founder of 265 Navigation, was using Outlook Express, an email-receiving tool, he found that he need a technician to set up advanced settings for him even though he had already been a senior Internet user. It was this incident that triggered the idea to create an application that all citizens can use without additional learning or help, as easily as using the Internet.
With three-year efforts, Lin can proudly announce now that he makes it! P.cn, which he developed, allows netizens to enjoy software services on a web page.
Lin introduced us his masterpiece that P.cn personal portal was a new application based on Web browser and client technology. Its interface is as simple as website, but its function is as powerful as software and its background and server are as stable, safe and reliable as software.
Lin continued, “P.cn personal portal provides personalized customized home pages for users with different needs and characteristics. By using News Subscription function, users can read ten types of news, hundreds of information resources coming from major newspaper websites, original media and integrated portals and so on. Users can also add any popular functions into the homepage, such as My Calendar, My Bookmarks, Web Search, Weather Forecast, Online Navigation, Online Dictionary, Latest News, Stock Market, KingSoft PowerWord, Login Mailbox Entrance, etc. Not only P.cn has the characteristics of personalized portals like iGoogle, Live, Netvibes and P ageFlakes, but also it has more functions like network acceleration, bandwidth saving and off-line operation. It’s hard to believe, which is true, that this excellent product is made by a 26-year-old programmer who is not even a high school graduate and was completely self-taught.
Self-taught after dropping out of school
Lin dropped out of school at 13 years old and self taught the knowledge on computers. He started working in 1995 and became a programmer later, which was the beginning of his IT career. “There were not many netizens at that time, I am lucky to be the youngest netizen.” Lin shared excitedly. “In 1997, Song Yizhi, general manager of InfoHighway in Shenzhen branch, hired me to be a network engineer!” From Lin’s point of view, Song was the one changed his life significantly.
In 1999, Lin transferred to Beijing China Motion Development Center and charged of the development of personalized websites. “I am responsible basically for two parts, personalized application development and wireless application.” Lin said. “This gave me an opportunity to get involved in client application.”
With many years’ practical experiences, Lin gains the ability that surpasses his peers. In June, 2004, Cai Wensheng appreciated Lin’s talent and assigned him as CTO for 265 Website Navigation.
P.CN is consistent with PARAKEY
Lin developed P.cn when he was working in 265 Navigation.
On July 20, 2007, when Facebook announced the acquisition of Parakey, it gave Lin an encouragement about his P.cn. Baker Ross, founder of Parakey, described that Parakey was a WebOS that could operate in any systems, and it was planned to be a tool platform that could operate everything on hard disks, such as email, photos, videos, recipes and calendars, and that it could easily transmit images, videos and writings uploading to the network. But the problem currently with data transmission to the network is that users have to extract the image from the digital camera, and then upload it to the digital location like Flickr. When Facebook acquires Parakey, it makes it easier for users to send desktop data like photos, videos and emails to Facebook page.
“These functions are exactly the characteristics of P.cn. Parakey can also be operated offline and automatically synchronized with the network once on line, which is kind of similar to Google Gears services and coincides with P.cn’s offline application.” Lin said. These two products apparently share the same idea, which gives Lin more confidence about his product that proves his insistence is right. Because when the program just started, Lin tried to recruit a person with talent in this field, but the person wasn’t positive about it. But now, Lin makes it!
It’s said that P.cn will introduce venture capital soon, amounting to millions of dollars.
From: CNET (August 8, 2007)