Patent Application
20090319947
Mobile communication devices, such as Internet-enabled mobile telephones, have become increasingly popular in recent years. In some countries, they represent the primary device that most users utilize to access information online. Another trend in modern computing is that users increasingly store information in multiple locations, such as at an online portal site, a desktop computer, and a mobile communication device. While mobile communication devices can offer convenient access to information when a user is traveling, one drawback of such devices is that they have a screen and keypad that are small compared to desktop devices, and therefore space on the graphical user interface of such devices is at a premium. In particular, as applications and services for mobile devices grow increasingly feature rich, they can become more difficult to use. This may present a barrier to users accessing services at online portal websites via mobile communication devices.
Systems, methods, and devices for accessing portal services via a mobile communication device are provided. The mobile communication device may execute a menu program having a graphical user interface. The graphical user interface may include a service menu screen including a plurality of service selectors, each service selector having a respective service icon positioned within a boundary, the service icon graphically representing a service of a communications portal with which the mobile communication device is configured to communicate. Each respective service icon may be selectable by a user to access a corresponding client program of the associated service served by the communications portal. At least some of the service selectors may further include a shared status icon indicating an operational state of the service and/or associated client program.
This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter. Furthermore, the claimed subject matter is not limited to implementations that solve any or all disadvantages noted in any part of this disclosure.
It will be appreciated that the mobile communication device 115 may be a web enabled telephone or other suitable portable communications device, and may be configured to communicate with mobile host 190 over any of several networks using various cellular protocols, including code division multiple access (CDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), global system for mobile communications (GSM), evolution-data optimized protocol (EV-DO), or other suitable mobile communications protocols. Additionally, mobile communication device 115 may use wireless or wired networking protocols, paging protocols, etc.
In an example embodiment, servers 160 may include a server 1 with a search service 161 and an advertising service 162; server 2 with a map service 163, messenger service 164, and a spaces service 165; server 3 with a contacts service 166 and a calendar service 167; and server N with a desktop share service 168, wherein server N is in communication with a remote computing device 110.
The mobile communication device 115 comprising a processor 125 and associated volatile memory 124 and non-volatile memory 121. The mobile communication device 115 may further include a camera 120, keypad 118, microphone and speaker 119, display 130, transceiver 117 for communicating with the network of mobile host 190, and a global positing system receiver, or GPS receiver 116, for ascertaining a geographic location of the mobile communication device 115 from satellite signals.
The mobile communication device 115 may be configured to execute a menu program 122 in a graphical user interface, such as service menu screen 135 including a plurality of service selectors 136. Each service selector may include a respective service icon, such as message icon 137, positioned within a boundary 134, the service icon graphically representing a service of a communications portal 150 with which the mobile communication device 115 is configured to communicate. For example, the message icon 137 may represent the messenger service 164 in communications portal 150. Each respective service icon is selectable by a user to access a corresponding client program of the associated service served by the communications portal 150.
In an example embodiment, a menu program may provide a service menu screen 135 containing service icons including a message icon 137 to indicate if there are any messages in a user's account and to provide a link to a message service; a weather icon 138 linked to a weather service, for example to display the current weather in a user specified location; an RSS feed icon 139 to provide syndications from user specified web-pages, news feeds, or other services. Further, service icons may include a share folder icon 141 linking to a spaces service for a user to send content the user wants to share to a favorite folder, a blog, etc.; a local icon 142 to further provide a map or connected services related to the users location or storing location specific information, such as the Microsoft® Windows® Live service; a search icon 143 linking to a search service. The example embodiment in
At least some of the service selectors further include a shared status icon 140 indicating an operational state of the service and/or associated client program. The status icon 140 may represent, for example, that a client program of the service is currently being executed on the mobile communication device. The operational state may also indicate, for example, that content available from the service has been updated, that new content is available from the service, or that a new version of the service client is available.
The graphical user interface may further include a respective text label positioned adjacent to each service icon. It will be appreciated that a preferences interface may be provided and that a color of each icon and associated text label, a font of each text label, and a style of each icon may be selectable by a user via the preferences interface.
The service icon may be of virtually any suitable form. For example, a drawing or other graphic may be used. Or, the service icon may be a preview of a screen of a graphical user interface of a client program for an associated service.
The plurality of service selectors may be arranged in a grid, and the boundaries of the selectors may be formed along lines of the grid.
The grid may be scrollable both vertically and horizontally within the service menu screen 135 of the graphical user interface.
Each selector may be configured to be browsed by a user, for example by the user clicking once with a finger or stylus on the selector or using an input device. In response, the service menu screen 135 may be configured to display a highlight graphic 145 positioned around the boundary of the browsed menu item. The highlight graphic 145 may be configured to present additional information to the user related to the service.
It will be appreciated that the user may freely add and delete selectors 136 from the service menu screen, according to the user's preferences. The identity of the selectors that are included in a user's service menu screen may be communicated to each of the associated services. Based on this information, these services may be configured to exchange cross-service data with each other, either through the mobile communications device, or directly. This cross-service data may be used by each service to generate a customized user experience for the user. The mobile communication device may be configured to present the customized user experience via a client program of each service based on the cross-service data exchanged between services.
The cross-service data, for example, may be user specific settings for each service, such as GPS data, permissions settings, peer lists, etc. Although all of the services are illustrated in
As one example of cross-service data sharing, the map service may be aware of a photo service in the system, and may be configured to send GPS meta data to the photo service. The photo service, in turn, may be able to tag photos that are taken with the GPS meta data, or may be configured to search for similar photos based on the GPS meta data, for example.
As another example of cross-service data sharing, the messenger service may be configured to communicate permissions assigned in the messenger service to a new peer of the user to the calendar service, and the calendar service can then determine whether or not to allow the new peer access to information in the user's calendar.
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It will be appreciated that the services may be selected from the group consisting of a search service 161, an advertising service 162, a map service 163, a messenger service 164, a spaces service 165, a contacts service 166, a calendar service 167, and a desktop share service 168, as discussed above. In the case where the user selection corresponds to the desktop share service 168, the desktop share service 168 is configured to display a real-time image of a desktop of a remote computing device 110 on the display of the mobile communication device 115, as discussed above.
Further, the desktop of the remote computing device may be larger than the display of the mobile communication device, and in such case the desktop share interface may be scrollable and/or zoomable by the user, to enable the user to navigate to a desired portion of the desktop of the remote computing device.
The appearance and layout of the graphical user interface may be as illustrated and described above. Thus, it will be appreciated that the status icon may represent that a client program of the service is currently being executed on the mobile communication device. Further, the plurality of service selectors may be arranged in a grid, and the boundaries of the selectors may be formed along lines of the grid. The grid may be scrollable both vertically and horizontally within the service menu screen of the graphical user interface, to enable a user easy access to the various selectors.
The above described systems and methods may be utilized to provide a user with seamless access to one or more services at a communications portal from a mobile communication device. The graphical user interface described above presents a plurality of selectors, each of which includes both a service icon representing the service itself, and a status icon conveying information related to the state of the service and/or a client program associated with the service. In this manner a user may quickly ascertain which services the user desires to use, saving time and communication costs. Further, features of the specific services that may be accessed by such an interface, such as the remote desktop share, offer increased flexibility for communications between users and peers.
It will be appreciated that the embodiments described herein may be implemented, for example, via computer-executable instructions or code, such as programs, stored on computer-readable storage media and executed by a computing device, such as a processor of server computing subsystem, for example. Generally, programs include routines, objects, components, data structures, and the like that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. As used herein, the term “program” may connote a single program or multiple programs acting in concert, and may be used to denote applications, services, or any other type or class of program. Likewise, the terms “computer” and “computing device” as used herein include any device that electronically executes one or more programs, including, but not limited to, personal computers, servers, laptop computers, hand-held devices, microprocessor-based programmable consumer electronics and/or appliances, etc. The mobile communication device described herein may, for example, be a hand held device, such as a web-enabled mobile telephone, personal digital assistant, music player, or mini-computer, for example.
It will be understood that the embodiments herein are illustrative and not restrictive, since the scope of the invention is defined by the appended claims rather than by the description preceding them, and all changes that fall within metes and bounds of the claims, or equivalence of such metes and bounds thereof are therefore intended to be embraced by the claims.
