Patent Application
20090157683
1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to a recipient accessing content received by means of an anchor, and more particularly to a recipient receiving an anchor pointing to highlighting content and directly accessing the highlighted content which is automatically displayed when the accessed by the recipient.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet, also referred to as an “internet-work”, is a set of computer networks, possibly dissimilar, joined together by means of gateways that handle data transfer and the conversion of messages from protocols of the sending network to the protocols used by the receiving network (with packets if necessary). When capitalized, the term “Internet” refers to the collection of networks and gateways that use the TCP/IP suite of protocols.
The Internet or the World Wide Web (www) as it is popularly known is a collection of documents, sometimes also referred to as web pages, that is accessible on the Web. The document or file which is written in XML (HTML, SGML etc.,) are typically stored on a server, for example a web server, and can be viewed over the Internet using a web browser, typically referred to as a client. The document or file on the Internet is identified by a unique identification, referred to as a unified resource locator (URL). A number of documents can be linked to each other in terms of the URL. The documents can be accessed by a uniform resource locator (URL) on the Internet, and typically a server that is connected to the Internet is dedicated to serving Web pages to a client or user.
A web page or “page” is an electronic document that integrates text and graphical information into a single interface, and a single page can have several other links or anchors to other pages defined within that particular page. Different web pages are linked together by means of hyperlinks. Web pages are often collected under one broad address or site. Usually, web pages are stored as HTML documents on a web server. Static pages show the same content each time they are viewed. Alternatively, web pages may be generated dynamically as they are accessed through the use of scripting language such as Active Server Pages (ASP), Java Server Pages (JSP), PHP, Perl, and others. Dynamic pages have content that can change each time they are accessed. A web server is generally a system such as a computer that is configured to provide HTTP services to HTTP clients (users). A web server stores web pages that are accessible to other computers, that may access the web pages using a typical web browser or a predefined user interface which can display the contents stored on a web server. Further, a web server offers security services to prevent unauthorized access to some or all of the web pages on the server.
Though there are several advantages of accessing content over the Internet using web servers and clients, a disadvantage with web pages is that it is not possible to have a link (such as a hyperlink) to an internal location within the webpage. Therefore, whenever a user wants to transmit a particular content on an existing web page to be viewed by another user, the main web page link or a link referencing an existing anchor within the web page is transmitted. Without a way to provide an improved method to access selected content to an existing web page to a user, the promise of this technology may never be fully achieved.
A method and data processing system for sharing content are provided in which an anchor is received as input, where the anchor is associated with selected content within a document and on accessing the anchor, the user being displayed with the selected content. Also, provided is a method and a data processing system for creating shared content where specified content is identified, an anchor is created for the specified content, wherein the specified content associated with the anchor consists of a different visual appearance from the unspecified content and transmitting the anchor to a designated set of recipients over a network. Advantages of the present invention involve the use of minimal overhead and no specific protocols being required, thereby saving time, cost and ease to implement. Additional embodiments are also disclosed.
The foregoing is a summary and thus contains, by necessity, simplifications, generalizations, and omissions of detail; consequently, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the summary is illustrative only and is not intended to be in any way limiting. Other aspects, inventive features, and advantages of the present invention, as defined solely by the claims, will become apparent in the non-limiting detailed description set forth below.
The present invention may be better understood, and its numerous objects, features, and advantages made apparent to those skilled in the art by referencing the accompanying drawings.
The following is intended to provide a detailed description of an example of the invention and should not be taken to be limiting of the invention itself. Rather, any number of variations may fall within the scope of the invention, which is defined in the claims following the description.
In the depicted example, server 104 is connected to network 102 along with storage unit 106. In addition, clients 108, 110, and 112 are connected to network 102. These clients 108, 110, and 112 may be, for example, personal computers or network computers. In the depicted example, server 104 provides data, such as boot files, operating system images, and applications to clients 108-112. Clients 108, 110, and 112 are clients to server 104. Network data processing system 100 may include additional servers, clients, and other devices not shown. In the depicted example, network data processing system 100 is the Internet with network 102 representing a worldwide collection of networks and gateways that use the TCP/IP suite of protocols to communicate with one another. At the heart of the Internet is a backbone of high-speed data communication lines between major nodes or host computers, consisting of thousands of commercial, government, educational and other computer systems that route data and messages. Of course, network data processing system 100 also may be implemented as a number of different types of networks, such as for example, an intranet, a local area network (LAN), or a wide area network (WAN).
Referring to
Peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus bridge 214 connected to I/O bus 212 provides an interface to PCI local bus 216. A number of modems may be connected to PCI local bus 216. Typical PCI bus implementations will support four PCI expansion slots or add-in connectors. Communications links to network computers 108-112 in
Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the hardware depicted in
An operating system runs on processor 302 and is used to coordinate and provide control of various components within data processing system 300 in
A further example of the data processing system 300 may be a stand-alone system configured to be bootable without relying on some type of network communication interface, whether or not data processing system 300 comprises some type of network communication interface. As a further example, data processing system 300 may be a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) device, mobile phone etc., which is configured with ROM and/or flash ROM in order to provide non-volatile memory for storing operating system files and/or user-generated data. The depicted example in
The software may be stored in a computer readable medium, including the storage devices described below, for example. The software is loaded into the computer system 200, 300 from the computer readable medium, and then executed by the computer system. A computer readable medium having such software or computer program recorded on it is a computer program product. The use of the computer program product in the computer system preferably effects an advantageous apparatus for performing the method as implemented by the present invention. Further, the method of the present invention consists in receiving a data signal containing functional requirements from a readable medium, the data signal when executed on a processor capable of performing the method as described within the scope of the present invention
In the document 400 of
Consider the following portion from a not so unheard of email conversation
Let's port this example to a blog scenario. The first two lines will be part of the first (in time) post. The lines in italics may then be a part of a second (in time) post which shall quote a link to the particular text in the first post, before providing the comments. The LAST TWO LINES will then be part of a third (in time) post linking to the particular text in the second post.
In addition to leverage hyperlinks to reduce redundant data, as well as fitting with the web pattern, there are two significant advantages that the blog format offers.
For example, An ecologist is planning to blog on the effects of tweaking the traditional crop patterns and would like to quote certain paragraphs in this regard from the online article http://www.narmada.org/gcg/gcg.html. Checked out the article? Well that covers a multitude of issues and is reasonably long. Now how does the ecologist quote what he/she wants to quote? Quoting such long text as ‘inline’ would not only distort his/her own content but causes to miss out on providing context or authority to the quoted content. If he/she were to link, he/she has to specify the URL, http://www.narmada.org/gcg/gcg.html, and ask the user (reader) to scroll down to the 191st paragraph and read the next 5 paragraphs from there on.
Hyperlinks are one of the prominent reason for the success of the World Wide Web. The number of links in a page is taken to be more or less directly proportional to the usefulness of content or popularity of the page. It is the ability to link to a page without the ‘knowledge of’/‘support from’ the page itself that attribute to the power of hyperlinks. Internal hyperlinks is one simple and very common example of their usage for a document (article) spanning a webpage and consisting of an “index”/“table of contents” to link to different sections within an article in a web page. However what contributes to the inability to extend their use is that there cannot be a link to a region in a webpage unless there is an explicit anchor defined by its owner/author at that point when the page is created.
One reason the above inability did not show up earlier is due to the consumption of internal hyperlinks being limited from within the same page or from mutually aware pages (pages from the same site etc). But as demonstrated previously, for example blogs require to ‘quote from’/‘refer to’ paragraphs or sentences contained with in other articles where the referred article laid out as a webpage may not have any anchors defined for the particular paragraph/sentence to be referred.
The designated set of recipients may be provided automatically by the system or may be manual chosen by the user from a list that may be displayed to the user. While creating the anchor for the selected content, different visual appearances can be created for the selected content based on the choice of the user, for example highlighting the content etc. The unselected content will have a different visual appearance from the selected content. In one embodiment, the selected content may be stored in a data structure. For example, the anchor is communicated over a communication link which could include an electronic mail, where the anchor can either be located in the body of the electronic mail message or may be provided as an attachment with the message.
One of the preferred implementations of the invention is a client application, namely, a set of instructions (program code) in a code module that may, for example, be resident in the random access memory of the computer. Until required by the computer, the set of instructions may be stored in another computer memory, for example, in a hard disk drive, or in a removable memory such as an optical disk (for eventual use in a CD ROM) or floppy disk (for eventual use in a floppy disk drive), or downloaded via the Internet or other computer network. Thus, the present invention may be implemented as a computer program product for use in a computer. In addition, although the various methods described are conveniently implemented in a general purpose computer selectively activated or reconfigured by software, one of ordinary skill in the art would also recognize that such methods may be carried out in hardware, in firmware, or in more specialized apparatus constructed to perform the required method steps.
The accompanying figures and this description depicted and described embodiments of the present invention, and features and components thereof. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that any particular program nomenclature used in this description was merely for convenience, and thus the invention should not be limited to use solely in any specific application identified and/or implied by such nomenclature. Therefore, it is desired that the embodiments described herein be considered in all respects as illustrative, not restrictive, and that reference be made to the appended claims for determining the scope of the invention.
While particular embodiments of the present invention have been shown and described, it will be obvious to those skilled in the art that, based upon the teachings herein, that changes and modifications may be made without departing from this invention and its broader aspects. Although the invention has been described with reference to the embodiments described above, it will be evident that other embodiments may be alternatively used to achieve the same object. The scope of the invention is not limited to the embodiments described above, but can also be applied to software programs and computer program products in general. It should be noted that the above-mentioned embodiments illustrate rather than limit the invention and that those skilled in the art will be able to design alternative embodiments without departing from the scope of the appended claims. In the claims, any reference signs should not limit the scope of the claim. The invention can be implemented by means of hardware comprising several distinct elements. Therefore, the appended claims are to encompass within their scope all such changes and modifications as are within the true spirit and scope of this invention. Furthermore, it is to be understood that the invention is solely defined by the appended claims. It will be understood by those with skill in the art that if a specific number of an introduced claim element is intended, such intent will be explicitly recited in the claim, and in the absence of such recitation no such limitation is present. For non-limiting example, as an aid to understanding, the following appended claims contain usage of the introductory phrases “at least one” and “one or more” to introduce claim elements. However, the use of such phrases should not be construed to imply that the introduction of a claim element by the indefinite articles “a” or “an” limits any particular claim containing such introduced claim element to inventions containing only one such element, even when the same claim includes the introductory phrases “one or more” or “at least one” and indefinite articles such as “a” or “an”; the same holds true for the use in the claims of definite articles.
