Patent Grant
9153000
Within the field of computing, many scenarios involve a social network, such as a database of users and associations established thereamong to represent various types of relationships (e.g., familial relations, friendships, and academic, professional, and business relationships). A user within a social network may establish a set of contacts, such as individuals with whom the user has a relationship, and may add new individuals as new relationships are formed. The social network may enable users to share with his or her contacts within the social network various types of messages, such as personal status messages. The social network may also allow a user to view the messages shared with the user by his or her contacts, such as a news feed comprising the personal status messages of the user's contacts.
Within a social network, a user may share with his or her contacts one or more content items hosted by various content sources. Such content items and content sources may include, e.g., web pages hosted by a website, images hosted by an image database, audio or video recordings hosted by an audio or video sharing service, and files hosted by a file server. A user may share these content items with his or her contacts in many ways, e.g., by adding an item to a set of shared content items that are of interest to the user and that may be viewable by all contacts of the user, or by sending a message to a contact that references a content item. The user may also annotate the content item with a comment, such as a summary of the content item or the user's personal opinions of the content item, and his or her contacts may also be permitted to annotate the content item with comments. The social network may promote this sharing of content items by generating a presentation thereof; e.g., upon request of a user, the social network may generate a content item feed comprising the content items that have been shared with the user by his or her contacts. For a particular content item hosted by a content source (e.g., an image hosted by an image database), the social network may be configured to integrate the content item with the presentation, or to provide a reference to the content item hosted by the content source (e.g., a preview version of an image hosted by the image database, and a hyperlink to an area of the image database where a full version of the image may be viewed). The content source may also permit users to submit comments regarding a content item.
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 factors or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.
A user of a social network may find that many contacts are sharing content items with the user. For example, the content items shared with the user of a social network may include content items sent by contacts of the user in private messages; content items that are posted by a contact on a public message portion of the social profile of the user; content items posted on a public message portion of the social profile of a contact; and references to content items that are included in personal status messages of a contact. For some of these content items, the user may have to view the content item outside of the social network, e.g., by visiting the content source and requesting the content item. The contacts of the user may also post comments regarding the content item, but these, also, may only be viewable by the user upon visiting the content source. However, if many content items hosted my different content sources are shared with a user, the user may have to visit many content sources in order to view the content items. Additionally, after viewing the content item at the content source, the user may wish to submit a comment regarding the content item. However, if the user is viewing the content item at the content source, the user may have the options of submitting a comment to be added to the content item at the content source (which other users may have to visit in order to view the comment of the user), and of returning to the social network and submitting a comment there (e.g., by navigating back to the area of the social network where the contact of the user shared the content item, and by adding a comment to that area of the social network). However, the comments of the user stored by the content source are not frequently combined with the comments of the user stored by the social network, resulting in a disjointed user experience. For example, for a particular content item shared with the user by a contact, some comments may be stored by and may appear within the social network (e.g., in a news feed including the content item), while other comments may be stored by and may appear in the content source (e.g., in the presentation of the content item viewed at the content source). This scenario may become even more disjointed if the user belongs to several social networks, such that content items may be shared with the user by contacts from several social networks, resulting in an undesirable distribution of shared content items and comments relating thereto across several social networks and many content sources.
Presented herein are techniques for aggregating content items hosted by content sources and shared with a user within one or more social networks. In accordance with these techniques, a device may be configured to retrieve content items shared with the user within the social network(s). When the user visits a content source (such as a website, an image database, an audio or video sharing service, or a file server), the device may retrieve the content items that are hosted by the content source and that have been shared with the user by a contact within a social network. The content items so retrieved may be included in a presentation of the content source to the user. The device may also permit the user to submit a comment to a content item, and may send the comment back to the social network where the content item was shared.
As an exemplary application of these techniques, if a user visits an image database, a device may identify the set of images that are hosted by the image database and that one or more contacts of the user within the social network have shared with the user. For example, the device may retrieve the actual content item, a preview version of the content item (e.g., a title of a post or a thumbnail of an image), and/or a reference to the content item (e.g., a hyperlink to the content item hosted at the content source), as well as any comments submitted by the contacts of the user regarding the content item, where such comments are posted either within the social network or at the content source. The device may then supplement the presentation of the image database with a list of content items hosted by the image database that have been shared with the user by a contact within the social network, including any comments posted about the content items within either the social network or the content source. Moreover, if the user submits a comment regarding an image, instead of (or in addition to) submitting the comment to the content source for association with the content item, the device may send the comment to the social network, which may associate the comment with the instance of the sharing of the content item. In this manner, these techniques may improve the integration of content sources with one or more social networks by reducing the distracting transitions of the user between content sources and the social network.
To the accomplishment of the foregoing and related ends, the following description and annexed drawings set forth certain illustrative aspects and implementations. These are indicative of but a few of the various ways in which one or more aspects may be employed. Other aspects, advantages, and novel features of the disclosure will become apparent from the following detailed description when considered in conjunction with the annexed drawings.
The claimed subject matter is now described with reference to the drawings, wherein like reference numerals are used to refer to like elements throughout. In the following description, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the claimed subject matter. It may be evident, however, that the claimed subject matter may be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, structures and devices are shown in block diagram form in order to facilitate describing the claimed subject matter.
Within the field of computing, many scenarios involve a social network comprising a representation of a set of individuals and relationships thereamong. Such relationships may represent, e.g., familial relations, friendships, shared membership in a group or activity, or academic or professional relationships. The social network may permit a user to establish a set of contacts with whom the individual shares a relationship. The users of the social may then exchange messages with one or more contacts, such as public status messages that may be viewed by all contacts of the user, public or private messages sent to one or more contacts, or chat messages exchanged in a realtime chat environment.
A social network also allows a user to share one or more content items with other users, such as documents, images, audio and video recordings, and executable applications. In some scenarios, the user may upload the content item to the social network, which may store the content item and may present a copy of the content item to contacts who request access to the content item. In other scenarios, the user may provide a reference to a content item hosted by a content source outside of the social network, such as a web page of a website, an image of an image repository, an audio or video recording hosted by an audio or video repository, or a file hosted by a file sharing service. In these cases, the user may provide a reference to the content item shared by the content source, such as a uniform resource identifier (URI) within the domain of the content source. The social network may allow the user to share the reference to one or more contacts, who may use the reference (such as clicking on a hyperlink associated with the URI of the content item) in order to view the content item in the context of the content source (e.g., by navigating to the web page of the content source where the content item is presented). The user and his or her contacts may also submit comments in response to the content item and/or in response to other comments to the content item. Such comments may either be posted at the content source (e.g., within the web page of a website of the content source) or within the social network (e.g., associated with the reference shared by the user).
In the manner illustrated in the exemplary scenario 10 of
These disadvantages may be exacerbated in more complex scenarios. For example, the user 14 may belong to several social networks 12, and may receive many messages 20 including references 22 to content items 26 stored by many content sources 24. The comments 28 to the content items 26 may therefore be distributed across several social networks 12 and several content sources 24, and the user 14 may have to visit many different locations in order to view all of the comments 28. This complexity may be further enhanced by differences in user interfaces among the social networks 12 and/or content sources 24. As a first example, comments 28 may be presented in a different visual manner in each location, leading to frequent transitions among different aesthetics. As a second example, the user interface for submitting a comment 28 in response to a content item 26 or another comment 28 may be different for each location, and the user 14 may have to remember different login credentials for each location and the proprietary details of the user interface for each location. Together, these complexities may impose a significant inefficiency in the user experience of a user 14 endeavoring to view messages 20, content items 26, and comments 28 distributed across and differently presented by widely disparate social networks 12 and content sources 24.
Presented herein are techniques for improving the consistency of the user experience of a user 14 while interacting with a content item 26 hosted by a content source 24 and shared with the user 14 within a social network 12. In accordance with these techniques, a device may track the sharing of content items 26 with the user 14 (e.g., references to content items 26 posted within personal status messages of contacts 16 of the user 14, in public and private messages 20 addressing the user 14, and in chat messages sent to the user 14), as well as the content source 24 hosting the respective content items 26. The device may also track comments 28 associated with the content item 26 (either directly in response to the content item 26 or in response to other comments 28) that are stored by the social network 12 and/or the content sources 24. However, the content items 26 shared with the user 14 (as well as comments 28 thereto) may be numerous and varied, so the presentation of an aggregated stream of content items 26 may be voluminous and/or haphazard (e.g., a jumbled collection of documents, images, audio and video recordings, and files), so it may be desirable to narrow the presentation of shared content items 26 to those that are similar to another content item 26 that the user 14 is currently viewing. In particular, it may be desirable to detect when the user 14 is requesting a presentation of a content source 24, and to integrate with the presentation of the content source 24 the shared content items 26 that are hosted by the content source 24, and that contacts 16 of the user 14 have shared with the user 14 within the social network 12. In addition to reducing the number of presented content items 26 and promoting a similarity of presented content items 26 to those that the user 14 may already be viewing (since, e.g., a particular content source 24 typically hosts a set of content items 26 having a similar type, topic, or cultural appeal), this technique also improves the smoothness of the user experience of the user 14 by avoiding a transition of domains between viewing a current content item 26 and viewing a shared content item 26 that is hosted by the same content source 24.
The information gathered in the exemplary scenario 40 of
The exemplary second scenario 60 of
Still another embodiment involves a computer-readable medium comprising processor-executable instructions configured to apply the techniques presented herein. Such computer-readable media may include, e.g., computer-readable storage media involving a tangible device, such as a memory semiconductor (e.g., a semiconductor utilizing static random access memory (SRAM), dynamic random access memory (DRAM), and/or synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM) technologies), a platter of a hard disk drive, a flash memory device, or a magnetic or optical disc (such as a CD-R, DVD-R, or floppy disc), encoding a set of computer-readable instructions that, when executed by a processor of a device, cause the device to implement the techniques presented herein. Such computer-readable media may also include (as a class of technologies that are distinct from computer-readable storage media) various types of communications media, such as a signal that may be propagated through various physical phenomena (e.g., an electromagnetic signal, a sound wave signal, or an optical signal) and in various wired scenarios (e.g., via an Ethernet or fiber optic cable) and/or wireless scenarios (e.g., a wireless local area network (WLAN) such as WiFi, a personal area network (PAN) such as Bluetooth, or a cellular or radio network), and which encodes a set of computer-readable instructions that, when executed by a processor of a device, cause the device to implement the techniques presented herein.
An exemplary computer-readable storage medium that may be devised in these ways is illustrated in
The techniques discussed herein may be devised with variations in many aspects, and some variations may present additional advantages and/or reduce disadvantages with respect to other variations of these and other techniques. Moreover, some variations may be implemented in combination, and some combinations may feature additional advantages and/or reduced disadvantages through synergistic cooperation. The variations may be incorporated in various embodiments (e.g., the exemplary method 70 of
A first aspect that may vary among embodiments of these techniques relates to the scenarios wherein such techniques may be utilized. As a first example, these techniques may be applied to many types of social networks 12, including social networks representing real-world relationships such as familial relations and friendships; academic social networks representing connections among students and teachers; professional social networks representing professional associations among colleagues; and themed social networks representing connections among users 14 sharing an interest, such as participants in an online game. Additionally, an embodiment of these techniques may monitor a plurality of social networks 12, since a user 14 may have established social profiles on several such social networks 12 (e.g., a first social network 12 comprising a genealogy network involving familial relationships 18; a second social network 12 comprising a friendship network involving friend relationships 18; a third social network 12 comprising a professional network involving academic and colleague relationships 18; and a fourth social network 12 comprising an activity-oriented network for members of a shared activity, such as participation in an online game). The embodiment may also monitor such social networks 12 on behalf of a plurality of users 14 represented therein, and possibly scaling up to a large number of users 14 or even an entire population of one or more social networks 12.
As a second example of this first aspect, these techniques may be utilized to present users 14 with many types of content items 26, such as web pages hosted by a website, images hosted by an image database, audio or video recordings hosted by an audio or video sharing service, and files hosted by a file server. The content item 26 may also include a comment 28 related thereto, and/or one or more metadata items describing the sharing of the content item 26 and/or one or more comments 28, such as a title of the shared content item 26 or a date of the sharing of the content item 26 or authoring of the comment 28.
As a third example of this first aspect, a user 14 of a social network 12 may share a content item 26 with a contact 16 of the user 14 within the social network 12 in many ways. For example, a user 14 may submit a public status message that is not directed to any contact 16, but that is viewable by some or all contacts 16 of the user 14; a public or private message to a user 14, such as a private or public dialogue between the user 14 and one or more contacts 16; or a chat message in a realtime chat environment. Those of ordinary skill in the art may devise many scenarios wherein the techniques presented herein may be utilized.
A second aspect that may vary among embodiments of these techniques relates to the receiving of content items 26 hosted by content sources 24 that have been shared with the user 14 within a social network 12. As a first example, and as illustrated in the exemplary scenario 50 of
As a second example of this second aspect, an embodiment of these techniques may communicate with one or more social networks 12 in various ways. As a first such example, the embodiment may communicate with the social network(s) 12 according to a push model, such as where the social networks 12 actively notify the embodiment when a contact 16 shares a content item 26 with the user 14. As a first such example, the embodiment may communicate with the social network(s) 12 according to a pull model, e.g., by configuring the embodiment to, on a periodic basis, retrieve the content items 26 shared by one or more contacts 16 with the user 14.
As a third example of this second aspect, an embodiment of these techniques may also receive from one or more social networks 12 comments 28 pertaining to various content items 26. A social network 12 may be configured to send the comments 28 along with content items 26 to which such comments 28 relate. Alternatively, the embodiment may query the social network 12 for content items 26, and may separately query the social network 12 for comments 28 to such content items 26. One such embodiment may query one or more social networks 12 for newly shared content items 26 at a different frequency than querying the same social networks 12 for comments 28 associated with previously shared content items 26. For example, it may be advantageous to configure the embodiment to poll a social network 12 to retrieve content items 26 at a first frequency, and to poll the social network 12 to retrieve comments 28 associated with the content items 26 at a second frequency that is higher than the first frequency (e.g., polling for newly shared content items 26 every ten minutes, but polling for comments 28 to content items 26 every two minutes). This configuration may be advantageous, e.g., for retrieving comments 28 to content items 26 more quickly, since such comments 28 may comprise a near-realtime conversation among the user 14 and his or her contacts 16 with a high value on promptly exchanged comments 28, while rapidly polling for the sharing of new content items 26 that may initiate a new conversation may be less valuable.
As a fourth example of this second aspect, shared content items 26 received from one social network 12 may be combined with shared content items 26 received from another social network 12. Alternatively or additionally, comments 28 to a content item 26 that have been posted on a first social network 12 may be combined with comments 28 to the same content item 26 posted by a second social network 12, and/or with comments 28 posted at the content source 14. For example, a content item 26 that is hosted by a content source 24 is shared with a user 14 within two social networks 14, the embodiment may receive and combine the comments 28 to the content item 26 posted within the first social network 12, the comments 28 to the content item 26 posted within the second social network 12, and the comments 30 to the content item 26 posted within the content source 24. These comments 28 may be combined by the embodiment (such as in the comment data set 46) to form a conversation unified among all of these disparate sources of comments 28.
As a fifth example of this second aspect, an embodiment of these techniques may retain the retrieved content items 26 and/or comments 28 thereto for a particular duration. For example, a content item server 62 may be configured to receive many content items 26 shared with many users 14 of one or more social networks 12. However, it may be advantageous to discard content items 26 and/or comments 28 that are older than a particular content item duration (such as one month after the date of sharing and/or commenting) in order to conserve the computing resources of the content item server 26. Those of ordinary skill in the art may devise many ways of configuring an embodiment to receive content items 26 while implementing the techniques presented herein.
A third aspect that may vary among embodiments of these techniques relates to the generation of a presentation 54 of a content source 24 and the content items 26 hosted by the content source 24 that have been shared with the user 14 within one or more social networks 12. As a first example, many presentations 54 of many types of content sources 24 may be generated. One such presentation 54 involves a request to render the content source 24 in a web browser, where an embodiment of these techniques may adjust the web page provided by the content source 24 in order to integrate into the content source 24 the content items 26 hosted by the content source 24 and shared with the user 14 within a social network 12. The web page may have been provided by the content source 24 in a state ready for such adjustment (e.g., if the content source 24 cooperatively structures the web page for the insertion of shared content items 26), or an embodiment of these techniques may adjust the web page even if the content source 24 does not provide the web page in such a form. In these embodiments, it may be convenient to implement the embodiment of these techniques as a web browser plug-in configured to adjust web pages according to this first example of this third aspect.
As a second example of this third aspect, the presentation 54 of a content source 24 may be adjusted in many ways to integrate shared content items 26. As a first such example, shared content items 26 that have been shared with the user 14 within a social network 12 may be included with other content items 26; e.g., if the user submits a search query for particular content items 26 within the content source 24, an embodiment may insert shared content items 26 into the search results (whether or not such shared content items 26 relate to the search query submitted by the user 14). Alternatively, the shared content items 26 may be presented separately from other content of the content source 24. For example, the shared content items 26 may be presented in a separate browser window; or, when the user 14 submits a search query to the content source 24, the shared content items 26 may be presented interstitially, after receiving the search query but before displaying the search results. In other such embodiments, the shared content items 26 may be presented peripherally with respect to the content of the content source 24 requested by the user 14. For example, if the user visits a web page within the domain of a content source 24, the resulting presentation 54 (such as the rendered web page) may comprise a primary presentation of the content source 24, and a secondary presentation comprising a content item list of shared content items 26, where the secondary presentation is positioned peripherally with respect to the primary presentation. The shared content items 26 may also be presented in full (e.g., as full-size images or embedded videos) and/or as preview versions (e.g., as thumbnail representations of full-size images, or as screen captures or segments of videos). In the latter scenario, respective preview versions of the content items 26 may be selectable to view a full version of the content item 26; e.g., a system embodiment of these claims may include a content item viewing component that, upon receiving from the user 14 a selection of a preview version of a content item 26, presents the full version of the content item 26.
As a third example of this third aspect, the presentation 54 of shared content items 26 may be adjusted in many ways. As a first such example, the shared content items 26 may be sorted, such as according to alphabetical or numerical order or popularity. The shared content items 26 may also be sorted according to relevance (e.g., with respect to details of the user 14 represented in a user profile; with respect to a content item 26 hosted by the content source 24 that is currently viewed by the user 14; or with respect to a search query submitted by the user 14 to the content source 24). As a second such example, the shared content items 26 included in the presentation 54 may be filtered in various ways; e.g., if the user 14 selects a particular social network 12 and/or a particular contact 16, the content items 26 included in the presentation 54 may be filtered to include only the content items 26 that have been shared with the user 14 within the selected social network 12 and/or by the selected contact 16. Filtering may also be implemented to improve the novelty of the presented content items 26 by recording the presentation of content items 26 to the user 14 and removing from the presentation 54 shared content items 26 that have been previously presented to the user 14. Filtering may also be implemented to reduce redundancy of presented content items 26; e.g., a particularly popular content item 26 may be redundantly hosted several times on one or more content sources 24, and may be shared with the user 14 multiple times (possibly including different references 18 and even different content sources 24), but an embodiment of these techniques may identify the redundancy and consolidate the presentation of the content item 26.
As a fourth example of this third aspect, one or more content items 26 may be associated with one or more comments 28 (either directly in response to the content item 26 or in response to other comments 28 associated therewith), and the presentation 54 of a content source 24 may include the comments 28 to content items 26 hosted by the content source 24. However, it may be undesirable to display all of the comments 28 to the content items 26 in the presentation 5; e.g., a popular content item 26 may be associated with many comments 28, and displaying all of the comments 28 may lead to an undesirably large presentation 54. Instead, for content items 26 associated with at least one comment 28, a comment indicator may be included in the presentation 54, and upon receiving a selection by the user of the comment indicator, one or more comments 28 associated with the content item 26 may be displayed.
As a fifth example of this third aspect, a presentation 54 of shared content items 26 hosted by a content source 24 as updates are received to the set of shared content items 26 or comments 28 thereto. Accordingly, an embodiment of these techniques may be extended (e.g., by adding a content item updating component to a system embodiment of these techniques) in order to update the presentation 54. As a first such example, upon receiving from a social network 12 an update to a content item 26 while presenting to the user 14 the content source hosting the content item, a content item server 62 may send the update to the user 14 (e.g., to a client 64 operated by the user 14) for inclusion in the presentation 54. As a second such example, upon receiving an update involving a content item 26 hosted by a content source 24 where the content item 26 has been newly shared with the user 14 within a social network 12 while the user 14 is viewing a presentation 54 of the content source 24, an embodiment may supplement the presentation 54 of the content source 24 with the content item 26. This supplementing may also include comments 28 to a content item 26; e.g., if a social network 12 receives a comment 28 to a content item 26 hosted by a content source 24 while a user 14 is viewing a presentation 54 of the content source 24, the presentation 54 may be supplemented by including the comment 28 to the content item 26. It may be particularly advantageous to configure an embodiment of these techniques to supplement the presentation 54 with newly received comments 28 promptly after such comments 28 are posted to the social network 12 in order to promote a sustained, near-realtime conversation about the content item 26, such as a chat session. Various technologies (such as push technologies) and/or protocols (such as Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX)) may be utilized to achieve the updating of a presentation 54 such as a web page.
As a sixth example of this third aspect, an embodiment may be configured to adjust a presentation 54 of a content source 24 in order to permit additional user actions relating to these techniques that the user 14 may be allowed to perform. For example, an embodiment of these techniques may permit a user 14 viewing a content item 26 hosted by a content source 24 to share the content item 26 with one or more contact 16 within a social network 12, so that the user 14 does not have to transition from the content source 24 to a social network 12 in order to share the content item 26. For example, a presentation 54 of a content item 26 may include options for allowing the user 14 to send to a social network 12 a reference to 22 the content item 26 as a personal status message, or as a public or private message directed to one or more contacts 16, and may also permit the user 14 to include a comment 28 relating thereto. If the user 14 belongs to several social networks 12, the embodiment may send the content item 26 to all of the social networks 12 or to a default social network 12 among the set of social networks 12, or may allow the user 14 to specify one or more social networks 12 within which the content item 26 is to be shared. Similar extensions may be provided for receiving from the user 14 a comment 28 to a content item 26 and automatically sending the comment 28 to one or more social networks 12, so that the user 14 does not have to transition from the content source 24 to a social network 12 in order to submit the comment 28. Moreover, it may be advantageous to identify a social network within which the content item 26 was shared with the user 14, and to send the comment 28 to the identified social network 12. The presentation 54 may also permit a user 14 to edit and/or remove from the social network 12 a shared content item 26 (e.g., by deleting a personal status message or a public message sent to the user 14 that includes a reference 22 to the content item 26) and/or a comment 28 to a content item 26. Alternatively or additionally, the presentation 54 may be extended to permit other types of user actions, such as viewing a user profile of a contact 16 who has shared a content item 26 with the user 14 or initiating a public or private message or a chat session with a contact 16 who has shared the content item 26. A presentation 54 may be adjusted to support these additional user actions in many ways (e.g., by inserting user controls into the presentation 54 or providing a context menu including the user actions), and/or may be extensible by the user 24. Those of ordinary skill in the art may devise many ways of generating a presentation 54 of a content source 24 to a user 14 while implementing the techniques presented herein.
Although the subject matter has been described in language specific to structural features and/or methodological acts, it is to be understood that the subject matter defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to the specific features or acts described above. Rather, the specific features and acts described above are disclosed as example forms of implementing the claims.
As used in this application, the terms “component,” “module,” “system”, “interface”, and the like are generally intended to refer to a computer-related entity, either hardware, a combination of hardware and software, software, or software in execution. For example, a component may be, but is not limited to being, a process running on a processor, a processor, an object, an executable, a thread of execution, a program, and/or a computer. By way of illustration, both an application running on a controller and the controller can be a component. One or more components may reside within a process and/or thread of execution and a component may be localized on one computer and/or distributed between two or more computers.
Furthermore, the claimed subject matter may be implemented as a method, apparatus, or article of manufacture using standard programming and/or engineering techniques to produce software, firmware, hardware, or any combination thereof to control a computer to implement the disclosed subject matter. The term “article of manufacture” as used herein is intended to encompass a computer program accessible from any computer-readable device, carrier, or media. Of course, those skilled in the art will recognize many modifications may be made to this configuration without departing from the scope or spirit of the claimed subject matter.
Although not required, embodiments are described in the general context of “computer readable instructions” being executed by one or more computing devices. Computer readable instructions may be distributed via computer readable media (discussed below). Computer readable instructions may be implemented as program modules, such as functions, objects, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), data structures, and the like, that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Typically, the functionality of the computer readable instructions may be combined or distributed as desired in various environments.
In other embodiments, device 192 may include additional features and/or functionality. For example, device 192 may also include additional storage (e.g., removable and/or non-removable) including, but not limited to, magnetic storage, optical storage, and the like. Such additional storage is illustrated in
The term “computer readable media” as used herein includes computer storage media. Computer storage media includes volatile and nonvolatile, removable and non-removable media implemented in any method or technology for storage of information such as computer readable instructions or other data. Memory 198 and storage 200 are examples of computer storage media. Computer storage media includes, but is not limited to, RAM, ROM, EEPROM, flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, Digital Versatile Disks (DVDs) or other optical storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium which can be used to store the desired information and which can be accessed by device 192. Any such computer storage media may be part of device 192.
Device 192 may also include communication connection(s) 206 that allows device 192 to communicate with other devices. Communication connection(s) 206 may include, but is not limited to, a modem, a Network Interface Card (NIC), an integrated network interface, a radio frequency transmitter/receiver, an infrared port, a USB connection, or other interfaces for connecting computing device 192 to other computing devices. Communication connection(s) 206 may include a wired connection or a wireless connection. Communication connection(s) 206 may transmit and/or receive communication media.
The term “computer readable media” may include communication media. Communication media typically embodies computer readable instructions or other data in a “modulated data signal” such as a carrier wave or other transport mechanism and includes any information delivery media. The term “modulated data signal” may include a signal that has one or more of its characteristics set or changed in such a manner as to encode information in the signal.
Device 192 may include input device(s) 204 such as keyboard, mouse, pen, voice input device, touch input device, infrared cameras, video input devices, and/or any other input device. Output device(s) 202 such as one or more displays, speakers, printers, and/or any other output device may also be included in device 192. Input device(s) 204 and output device(s) 202 may be connected to device 192 via a wired connection, wireless connection, or any combination thereof. In one embodiment, an input device or an output device from another computing device may be used as input device(s) 204 or output device(s) 202 for computing device 192.
Components of computing device 192 may be connected by various interconnects, such as a bus. Such interconnects may include a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), such as PCI Express, a Universal Serial Bus (USB), firewire (IEEE 1394), an optical bus structure, and the like. In another embodiment, components of computing device 192 may be interconnected by a network. For example, memory 198 may be comprised of multiple physical memory units located in different physical locations interconnected by a network.
Those skilled in the art will realize that storage devices utilized to store computer readable instructions may be distributed across a network. For example, a computing device 210 accessible via network 208 may store computer readable instructions to implement one or more embodiments provided herein. Computing device 192 may access computing device 210 and download a part or all of the computer readable instructions for execution. Alternatively, computing device 192 may download pieces of the computer readable instructions, as needed, or some instructions may be executed at computing device 192 and some at computing device 210.
Various operations of embodiments are provided herein. In one embodiment, one or more of the operations described may constitute computer readable instructions stored on one or more computer readable media, which if executed by a computing device, will cause the computing device to perform the operations described. The order in which some or all of the operations are described should not be construed as to imply that these operations are necessarily order dependent. Alternative ordering will be appreciated by one skilled in the art having the benefit of this description. Further, it will be understood that not all operations are necessarily present in each embodiment provided herein.
Moreover, the word “exemplary” is used herein to mean serving as an example, instance, or illustration. Any aspect or design described herein as “exemplary” is not necessarily to be construed as advantageous over other aspects or designs. Rather, use of the word exemplary is intended to present concepts in a concrete fashion. As used in this application, the term “or” is intended to mean an inclusive “or” rather than an exclusive “or”. That is, unless specified otherwise, or clear from context, “X employs A or B” is intended to mean any of the natural inclusive permutations. That is, if X employs A; X employs B; or X employs both A and B, then “X employs A or B” is satisfied under any of the foregoing instances. In addition, the articles “a” and “an” as used in this application and the appended claims may generally be construed to mean “one or more” unless specified otherwise or clear from context to be directed to a singular form.
Also, although the disclosure has been shown and described with respect to one or more implementations, equivalent alterations and modifications will occur to others skilled in the art based upon a reading and understanding of this specification and the annexed drawings. The disclosure includes all such modifications and alterations and is limited only by the scope of the following claims. In particular regard to the various functions performed by the above described components (e.g., elements, resources, etc.), the terms used to describe such components are intended to correspond, unless otherwise indicated, to any component which performs the specified function of the described component (e.g., that is functionally equivalent), even though not structurally equivalent to the disclosed structure which performs the function in the herein illustrated exemplary implementations of the disclosure. In addition, while a particular feature of the disclosure may have been disclosed with respect to only one of several implementations, such feature may be combined with one or more other features of the other implementations as may be desired and advantageous for any given or particular application. Furthermore, to the extent that the terms “includes”, “having”, “has”, “with”, or variants thereof are used in either the detailed description or the claims, such terms are intended to be inclusive in a manner similar to the term “comprising.”
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