Patent Application
20050144258
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
When presenting in front of a group of people it is often convenient to show demonstrations and to have visual aids to help in the conveying of information. Currently presentations often involve the use of electronic slides. Products such as Microsoft PowerPoint have become valuable tools in providing electronic visual aids to presenters.
Products such as PowerPoint enable an individual giving a presentation to progress through a series of electronic slides that aid the viewer in following the content of the presentation. The slides may contain key points to which the presenter or narrator is focusing or they may contain diagrams or images to which the presenter may refer.
In giving a presentation, the presenter may wish to show a multimedia or video stream to the audience. This usually involves showing a movie or playing an audio track accompanying the presenter's narrative.
With current enterprises today spread over large geographic areas, it becomes difficult to gather employees in a single location. In such a case, when potential audience members are not within geographic proximity, presentations to fellow employees or group members may be difficult. In order to overcome this limitation software has been developed to allow presentations to be conducted over the Internet or over corporate networks. Software such as Lotus Sametime allows an individual to give a presentation to a remote audience. The audience may view the presentation using a web browser and is no longer required to be present at a single location. Such remote presentations may include slides or multimedia as well as a video stream of the presenter giving the talk.
It is often the case in presentations, both online and in person, that audience members have questions regarding the content of the presentation. Frequently the questions refer to a specific slide or a specific moment in the multimedia stream. In those cases the audience member may either interrupt the presentation to ask the question or he must wait until the speaker has completed his talk. If the speaker postpones all questions until the end of the talk, or if the presentation is being conducted remotely where the audience cannot interrupt by raising a hand or shouting, the context of the question may be lost. Any questions asked at the end based on the context of a particular slide or moment will require the presenter to rewind through the presentation in order to return to the context in which the question was asked. This is often a cumbersome, time-consuming process that must be repeated for every question asked.
What is lacking is a mechanism that alleviates the need for a presenter to return the context of the presentation at a particular time. By doing so questions asked regarding a particular time during the presentation may be answered without the need for cumbersome backtracking and searching.
The invention is illustrated in the figures of the accompanying drawings which are meant to be exemplary and not limiting, in which like references are intended to refer to like or corresponding parts, and in which:
In some embodiments, the present invention provides methods and systems for facilitating associating content with a portion of a presentation to which the content relates. Methods are provided in which a presentation is received by a client computer to be sequentially presented. Content is input during the presentation, the content relating to a particular portion of the presentation. The content, and an indication of an association between the content and the portion of the presentation to which the content relates, are stored. The stored indication is transmitted for use in retrieving the portion of the presentation to which the input content relates in association with the input content.
In one embodiment, the invention provides a method for facilitating associating content with a portion of a presentation to which the content relates. The method includes receiving from a server computer at a client computer a presentation to be sequentially presented. The method further includes, during sequential presenting of the presentation on the client computer, allowing input of content, the content relating to a portion of the presentation. The method further includes storing the input content, and an indication of an association between the input content and the portion of the presentation to which the input content relates. The method further includes transmitting the stored indication for use in retrieving the portion of the presentation to which the input content relates in association with the input content.
In another embodiment, the invention provides a method for facilitating associating content with a portion of a presentation to which the content relates. The method includes transmitting the presentation from a server computer to a client computer to be sequentially presented. The method further includes receiving and storing input content associated with a portion of the presentation, and an indication of the portion of the presentation to which the input content relates. The method further includes using the stored indication to present the portion of the presentation to which the input content relates in association with the input content.
In another embodiment, the invention provides a system for facilitating associating content with a portion of a presentation to which the content relates. The system includes a server computer and a client computer connected to the server computer. The client computer is for receiving from the server computer a presentation to be sequentially presented. The client computer is further for, during sequential presenting of the presentation on the client computer, allowing input of content, the content relating to a portion of the presentation. The client computer is further for storing the input content, and an indication of an association between the input content and the portion of the presentation to which the input content relates. The client computer is further for transmitting the stored indication for use in retrieving the portion of the presentation to which the input content relates in association with the input content.
In another embodiment, the invention provides a system for facilitating associating content with a portion of a presentation to which the content relates. The system includes a server computer and a client computer connected to the server computer. The server computer is for transmitting the presentation from a server computer to a client computer to be sequentially presented. The server computer is further for receiving and storing input content associated with a portion of the presentation, and an indication of the portion of the presentation to which the input content relates. The server computer is further for using the stored indication to present the portion of the presentation to which the input content relates in association with the input content.
In another embodiment, the invention provides a computer usable medium or computer useable media storing program code which, when executed on one or more computerized devices, causes the computerized devices to execute a method for facilitating associating input content with a portion of a presentation to which the content relates. The method includes receiving from a server computer at a client computer a presentation to be sequentially presented. The method further includes, during sequential presenting of the presentation on the client computer, allowing input of content, the content relating to a portion of the presentation. The method further includes storing the input content, and an indication of an association between the input content and the portion of the presentation to which the input content relates. The method further includes transmitting the stored indication for use in retrieving the portion of the presentation to which the input content relates in association with the input content.
In another embodiment, the invention provides a computer usable medium or computer useable media storing program code which, when executed on one or more computerized devices, causes the computerized devices to execute a method for facilitating associating input content with a portion of a presentation to which the content relates. The method includes transmitting the presentation from a server computer to a client computer to be sequentially presented. The method further includes receiving and storing input content associated with a portion of the presentation, and an indication of the portion of the presentation to which the input content relates. The method further includes using the stored indication to present the portion of the presentation to which the input content relates in association with the input content.
Embodiments of the present invention are now described in detail with reference to the drawings in the figures. As described in more detail, the present invention, in some embodiments, provides a system and method for associating questions asked during an electronic presentation to a particular context. In addition, in some embodiments, the present invention describes a system and method facilitating associating questions or comments to a context of the presentation to which the question or comment relates. In addition, in some embodiments, the present invention describes a system and method for retrieving a particular portion of first content, the first content being sequentially presented while a second content may be entered.
In other embodiments, the server may pull content from the moderator device 200 and the client devices 204 may pull content from the server. In some embodiments, the moderator device 200 may also act as a client device 204.
The presentation server component 304 receives the image of the next slide and generates an identifier, such as a uniform resource indicator (URI) for the image. The presentation server component 304 sends a message to a World Wide Web server 306 running on the server 202. The image of the new slide and the URI for the image are given to the web server 306. The presentation server component 304 sends a message to all clients 204, which are viewing the presentation. The client devices are executing a presentation component 300. The message from presentation server component 304 to the presentation component 300 on the clients 204 contains the URI for the image of the next slide. Upon receipt of the message containing the URI of the next slide image the presentation component 300 causes the browser within which the presentation is being viewed to download the image from the web server 306, based on the received URI.
During the presentation the viewer at a client computer 204 may wish to type a question or comment for the moderator. In one embodiment the viewer may type the question or comment in a text box in a browser window 106. When the viewer begins typing the question the presentation component 300 on the client computer 204 records the URI of the current slide image being viewed. When the viewer finishes typing the question or comment the question is sent to the presentation server component 304 along with the URI for the image being shown when the questioner began typing. The presentation server component saves the text of the question or comment along with the sent URI. When the moderator retrieves the list of questions from the presentation server component 304 both the question and the image associated with the URI are returned. By doing so the moderator will have available the context in which the question was asked.
In some embodiments presentations use multimedia streams rather than slides during the presentations. In these cases different mechanisms may be used to indicate the context of a question. Rather than sending a URI along with the text of a question or comment, an index or time-stamp may be sent indicating a point in time during the multimedia stream when the question was typed.
In some embodiments, the moderator presentation component 300, the server presentation component 302 and the viewer presentation component 300 may be executed on the same device or computer. Such an embodiment, may in some instances, be used when viewing a multimedia stream on a machine. If the viewer, for example, wishes to annotate the stream, the system may be used to record the context of the annotations. In such an embodiment, the moderator presentation component could stream the multimedia to a server running on the same computer, which transmits the multimedia to a viewer component running on the same computer, as well. Annotations typed and entered using the viewer presentation component would record the context of the annotations and facilitate retrieving the context after the completion of the multimedia stream.
In some embodiments, the present invention describes a system and method for retrieving a particular portion of first content, the first content being sequentially presented while a second content may be entered. An identifier may be used to identify a portion of the first content that is temporally related to the entry of the second content item. The identifier can be stored so as to facilitate retrieving the first content. The stored identifier may be used in retrieving the first content while reviewing the second content.
When the moderator selects a question or comment to address the image associated with the identifier is pushed to the viewer devices, thereby loading the context associated with the question or comment. If there is another question or comment the steps repeat, otherwise the presentation ends 411.
While the invention has been described and illustrated in connection with preferred embodiments, many variations and modifications as will be evident to those skilled in this art may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention, and the invention is thus not to be limited to the precise details of methodology or construction set forth above as such variations and modification are intended to be included within the scope of the invention.
