Patent Application
20080201645
The present invention relates generally to electronic data processing and relates specifically to deploying portlets or web parts on portal pages based on social networking.
A “metatag,” referred to herein as a “tag,” is a keyword or descriptive term associated with an item as means of classification. Tags are typically used in the metadata of items such as computer files, web pages, digital images, and internet bookmarks. Tags can be added automatically or manually when the item is created. Tags can also be added automatically or manually when the item is accessed, copied, transferred or classified.
One use of tags gaining in popularity is the generation of tag clouds. Tag clouds have been popularized by TECHNORATI, an Internet search engine used for searching blogs, and FLICKR, a web based collection of photographs. Tag clouds allow web users to select displayable web pages from an ordered list of tags. In the most common form, tag clouds display the most popular tags in a larger font while listing the tags in alphabetical order. Tag cloud software records the number of times users select a tag in the tag cloud. By displaying tags by popularity, tag clouds reflect the preferences of a community of users. When a user clicks on a tag, the user is directed to a web page or listing of web pages that relate to the selected tag.
Many web pages are set up as a “portal page,” which is a web page comprising a collection of non-overlapping portlet windows where each portlet window displays a portlet. A “portlet” is a component of a web page that may provide useful information to the user. “Portlet applications” run in each portlet window on a portal page. Examples of portlet applications include email, weather reports, discussion forums, maps, and image viewers.
Today the administration portal pages is implemented in a fairly rigid and centrally managed process. Portal page users are able to select and display only portlets configured and approved by a central portal administrator. Some prior art has allowed for seeding or polling of users about the types of portlets they wish to display. Central portal administrators use the seeding and polling information to determine what portlets to provide. However, users cannot quickly display portlets based on frequency of use by other users. Web users cannot quickly assign their own tags to portlets and immediately have the ability to display portlets based on their own preferences.
The capability for each user in a community of users to label each portlet with which they interact with their own tags is needed. A mechanism to display the portlets most frequently associated with a tag by previous users would capitalize on the community's collective knowledge of such issues as which portlets are easiest to use, which are most reliable, and which provide the most information. Additional utility could be derived from allowing users to quickly sort the tags, associated with one or more portlets, by how frequently the portlets associated with those tags were favored by the users in the portal community. Thus, the ability for users to create custom tags for portlets, to display the tags in a tag cloud, and to display preferred portlets in a portal page is needed.
A Portal Page Customizer (PPC) provides a tagging component and a portal page generator that enables a user to quickly display portlets most preferred by a community of portlet users. Each tag is associated with one or more portlet. A user can add new descriptive tags to portlets using tools on the portal page. When a user selects a tag from a tag cloud, the PPC displays portlets associated with the selected tag.
The novel features believed characteristic of the invention are set forth in the appended claims. The invention itself, however, as well as a preferred mode of use, further objectives and advantages thereof, will be understood best by reference to the following detailed description of an illustrative embodiment when read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
The principles of the present invention are applicable to a variety of computer hardware and software configurations. The term “computer hardware” or “hardware,” as used herein, refers to any machine or apparatus that is capable of accepting, performing logic operations on, storing, or displaying data, and includes without limitation processors and memory. The term “computer software” or “software,” refers to any set of instructions operable to cause computer hardware to perform an operation. A “computer,” as that term is used herein, includes without limitation any useful combination of hardware and software, and a “computer program” or “program” includes without limitation any software operable to cause computer hardware to accept, perform logic operations on, store, or display data. A computer program may, and often is, comprised of a plurality of smaller programming units, including without limitation subroutines, modules, functions, methods, and procedures. Thus, the functions of the present invention may be distributed among a plurality of computers and computer programs. The invention is described best, though, as a single computer program that configures and enables one or more general-purpose computers to implement the novel aspects of the invention. For illustrative purposes, the inventive computer program will be referred to as the “Portal Page Customizer” (PPC).
The PPC is described with reference to an exemplary network of hardware devices, depicted in
PPC 300 typically is stored in a memory, represented schematically as memory 320 in
A user of web browser 330 accesses web page with portlet tag cloud 340 hosted by web indexing and hosting component 350. Although web indexing and hosting component 350 is shown here as a single application, the indexing functions and hosting functions can be, and often are, separate applications. The indexing functions of web indexing and hosting application 350 collects tags from indexed portlets 380 and stores the tags in portlet tag table 360. Additionally, web indexing and hosting application 350 collects other statistical information related to indexed portlets 380, such as how often a portlet is displayed by a user and added to a portal page or when a new tag is associated with a portlet by a user. The collected information is stored in portlet association table 370 with the corresponding tags. When a user changes association between a portlet and a tag, tagging component 400 updates portlet association table 370. PPC 300 generates a tag cloud on Web Page 340 using tags and tag attributes from portlet tag table 360. An example of a tag attribute could be the font size of a tag, with increasing size for greater frequency of use. The portlet tag cloud may display in its own portlet, in a fly-out or pop-up window, on a navigation bar, or directly on the portal page. PPC 300 sorts the tag cloud alphabetically by default. The default tags initially associated with each portlet are assigned by the portal administrator.
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A preferred form of the invention has been shown in the drawings and described above, but variations in the preferred form will be apparent to those skilled in the art. The preceding description is for illustration purposes only, and the invention should not be construed as limited to the specific form shown and described. The scope of the invention should be limited only by the language of the following claims.
