Patent Application
20080043965
The detailed description is described with reference to the accompanying figures. In the figures, the left-most digit(s) of a reference number identifies the figure in which the reference number first appears. The use of the same reference numbers in different instances in the description and the figures may indicate similar or identical items.
Overview
Traditional techniques that were used to provide materials related to a conference were limited. For example, traditional conference-related materials were limited in their ability to be shared (e.g., by passing around a paper copy of the materials), limited by a medium used to distributed the materials (e.g., an amount of storage space on a computer-readable medium that was physically distributed to the conference attendees), and so on.
For example, software engineers attending a software-related conference may be given a computer-readable medium containing conference proceedings, supporting documentation, beta-code of software to be released, and so on. For primarily client-centric software such a technique was sufficient to provide a copy of the software that could be executed and tested locally by the attendee. However, as software is moved “into the cloud” to be provided by relatively large web services (e.g., an email service having millions of subscribers that is supported by thousands of servers) it may become difficult to provide beta versions of the software on computer-readable media that is to be physically distributed to attendees of the conference. For example, service-oriented software is often a building block of a larger distributed application, and therefore the education benefit of the installing, testing and/or modifying the software may be greater when hosted online with connectivity to other services.
Accordingly, techniques are described in which conference websites are provided and managed to provide access to conference-related materials. For example, each attendee of a conference may be given a respective website that is accessible via a unique domain. These websites may act as a “sandbox”, in which, the respective attendees may interact with materials related to the conference. The materials, for instance, may include isolated copies of beta code that is executable “over the cloud” and modifiable by respective users. Therefore, each attendee may be provided with a unique area that is modifiable as desired, such as to upload additional executable code, to modify the executable code that relates to the conference, and so on. Thus, the “sandbox” may provide an area that directly supporter iterative modification of software, such as for experimentation and so on.
The websites may be provided and managed in a variety of ways. For example, the websites may be created “on demand” as identifiers of conference attendees are received, thereby conserving resources used to provide the websites. In another example, the websites may be managed such that changes made to a source of the conference materials are automatically promulgated to copies of the materials maintained in each of the websites. In this example, the copies of the conference materials may also stay isolated with respect to each other such that a change made to a copy is not promulgated to other copies unless that change is also made to a source of the copies. A variety of other examples are also contemplated, further discussion of which may be found in relation to the following figures.
In the following discussion, an exemplary environment is first described that is operable to perform techniques to provision and manage conference websites. Exemplary procedures and user interfaces are also described that may be employed in the exemplary environment, as well as in other environments.
Exemplary Environment
The clients 104(1)-104(N) may be configured in a variety of ways for network 106 access. For example, one or more of the clients 104(1)-104(N) may be configured as a computing device, such as a desktop computer, a mobile station, an entertainment appliance, a set-top box communicatively coupled to a display device, a wireless phone, a game console, and so forth. Thus, the clients 104(1)-104(N) may range from full resource devices with substantial memory and processor resources (e.g., personal computers, game consoles) to low-resource devices with limited memory and/or processing resources (e.g., traditional set-top boxes, hand-held game consoles). The clients 104(1)-104(N), in portions of the following discussion, may also relate to a person and/or entity that operate the clients. In other words, one or more of the clients 104(n) may describe logical clients that include users (e.g., a conference attendee), software, and/or devices.
Although the network 106 is illustrated as the Internet, the network may assume a wide variety of configurations. For example, the network 106 may include a wide area network (WAN), a local area network (LAN), a wireless network, a public telephone network, an intranet, and so on. Further, although a single network 106 is shown, the network 106 may be configured to include multiple networks.
Each of the clients 104(1)-104(N) is illustrated as having a respective communication module 108(1)-108(N). The communication modules 108(1)-108(N) are representative of functionality to provide communication over the network 106, such as with the conference service 102. For example, the communication modules 108(1)-108(N) may be configured as a web browser that allows the clients 104(1)-104(N) to “surf” the Internet. In another example, the communication modules 108(1)-108(N) are configured as a “smart” module that is configured to provide other network functionality as a part of its operation, such as an instant messaging module, an email module, an online banking module, and so on. A wide variety of other examples are also contemplated.
The conference service 102 as illustrated in
The conference manager module 110, for instance, may interact with a domain name system (DNS) 118 over the network 106. The DNS 118 is employed in the environment 100 to maintain a relationship between Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and domain names 120(o), where “o” can be any integer from one to “O”. For example, the DNS 118 may be implemented by a plurality of servers distributed “across” the Internet that maintain lists that reference the correspondence of the domain names 120(o) with respective IP addresses. By interacting with the DNS 118, the conference manager module 110 may obtain domains (e.g., the conference domains 114(d)) for each contemplated attendee of a conference, such as “http://xxxxxx.conferencesandbox.com” where “xxxxxx” is replaced with a unique identifier, such as a numerical identifier, a “user friendly” name (e.g., “JohnSmith.conferencesandbox.com”), and so on. In this way, the domains may make the previously described sandboxes “first-class citizens” of the Internet and thus tools and functionality enabled through the Internet may be realized in the respective sandboxes, i.e., the conference domains 114(d).
The conference manager module 110 may also provision the conference domains 114(d) with conference-related materials 112, such as related promotional materials and so on and then expose these materials as websites 116(w) accessible via the respective conference domains 114(d). In an implementation, the conference-related materials 112 of the respective websites 116(w) are modifiable by a respective attendee of the conference. The websites 116(w) may also include additional storage for other data by a respective attendee, such as to upload additional executable code. In this way, the attendees may shape and mould the respective websites as desired. Further, the contents of the websites 116(w) may be exposed over the network 106 to users that are not attending the conference. For instance, conference attendees may share information contained in the webpage 116(w) with their coworkers, thereby efficiently disseminating the conference-related materials 112. Further, this information may be shared in real time which promotes increased interaction and collaboration.
Generally, any of the functions described herein can be implemented using software, firmware, hardware (e.g., fixed logic circuitry), manual processing, or a combination of these implementations. The terms “module,” “functionality,” and “logic” as used herein generally represent software, firmware, hardware, or a combination thereof. In the case of a software implementation, for instance, the module, functionality, or logic represents program code that performs specified tasks when executed on a processor (e.g., CPU or CPUs). The program code can be stored in one or more computer readable memory devices. The features of the techniques to provision and manage conference websites described below are platform-independent, meaning that the techniques may be implemented on a variety of commercial computing platforms having a variety of processors.
Processors are not limited by the materials from which they are formed or the processing mechanisms employed therein. For example, processors may be comprised of semiconductor(s) and/or transistors (e.g., electronic integrated circuits (ICs)). In such a context, processor-executable instructions may be electronically-executable instructions. Alternatively, the mechanisms of or for processors, and thus of or for a computing device, may include, but are not limited to, quantum computing, optical computing, mechanical computing (e.g., using nanotechnology), and so forth. Additionally, although a single memory 206, 208 is shown respectively, for the conference service 112 and the client 104(n), a wide variety of types and combinations of memory may be employed, such as random access memory (RAM), hard disk memory, removable medium memory, and other types of computer-readable media.
The conference service 102 is illustrated as executing the conference manager module 110 on the processor 202, which is also storable in memory 206. As previously described, the conference manager module 110 is representative of functionality to create, provision and manage websites 116(w). For example, the conference manager module 110 may be executed to obtain unique domain names 120(o) from the domain name system 118 for each expected attendee of a conference. These unique domain names may then be used to access websites 116(w) created by the conference service 102.
The conference manager module 110, for instance, may provision the websites 116(w) by copying a source of conference-related materials 112 to each of the websites 116(w), the respective copies being illustrated as conference-related materials 112(w) in
The client-modifiable code 212, for instance, may be a copy of a beta version of a web service that is to be tested by the client 104(n). The client 104(n), therefore, may interact with the client-modifiable code 212 in a variety of ways, such as to run tests, modify the code 212, upload additional code to the website 116(w), and so on. Additionally, by providing this code 212 via the website 116(w), the client 104(n) may readily share the code 212, such as with coworkers and so on. In an implementation, the website 116(w) is made available well after the conference has terminated to preserve access to the conference-related materials 112(w), such as to continue an opportunity of the client 104(n) to modify and interact with the code 212. In another implementation, the website 116(w) is set to “expire” after a predetermined amount of time.
The conference service 102, through execution of the conference manager module 110, may manage the websites 116(w) in a variety of ways. For example, the conference manager module 110 may maintain a source of the conference-related materials 112 and copy the materials 112 to the websites 116(w) when created. Additionally, when changes are made to the source, the changes may be promulgated to the copies, which may be performed automatically and without user intervention. For instance, the changes may be made to the copies (e.g., conference-related materials 112(w)) without notifying a respective attendee, may be made upon acceptance by the respective attendee, may be made by saving a new version of the conference-related materials, and so on. Further, the copies themselves may remain isolated from each other, such that changes made to one copy by a respective attendee are not made to another copy maintained in another website for another attendee of the conference. Additional discussion of website management may be found in relation to
The websites 116(w) may also be created in a variety of ways. For example, the conference manager module 110 may create a unique identifier for each expected attendee of the conference. The unique identifiers may then be distributed to the respective attendees, such as via email, printed materials distributed at the conference and so on. The client 104(n), through execution of communication module 108(n), may then enter the unique identifier via a user interface.
In an implementation, the websites 116(w) are created “on demand” upon receipt of the unique identifier. For instance, when the conference manager module 110 receive the unique identifier via the login screen of
Exemplary Procedures
The following discussion describes provisioning and management techniques that may be implemented utilizing the previously described systems and devices. Aspects of each of the procedures may be implemented in hardware, firmware, or software, or a combination thereof. The procedures are shown as a set of blocks that specify operations performed by one or more devices and are not necessarily limited to the orders shown for performing the operations by the respective blocks. In portions of the following discussion, reference will be made to the environment 100 of
One or more domains are obtained for the conference (block 404). For example, the conference service 102 may communicate with the domain name system 118 to obtain domains. A variety of different domains may be obtained, such as domain names having a title that corresponds to the conference, a domain that corresponds to attendees of the conference (e.g., based of their registered domain, if any, such as “attendee_name_conference.com”), and so on.
A login page is exposed that is accessible over a network (block 406). The user interface 302 of
One or more unique identifiers may be provided for one or more users (block 408), such as to attendees of the conference. The conference manager module 110 and/or a user of the conference service 102, for instance, may generate the unique identifiers based on the conference attendee's name, randomly generate the unique identifiers, incorporate a portion of a domain name obtained for the conference, and so on.
One or more of the unique identifiers are received via a login page (block 410). For example, a conference attendee may enter a provided unique identifier by using a browser to communicate with the conference service 102 via the network 106.
A web site is provisioned in response to reception of the unique identifier, (block 412). The conference manager module 110, for instance, may identify a particular conference that corresponds to the unique identifier, verify that the unique identifier is valid, and so on. Resources of the conference service 102 are then portioned to provide the web site (block 414), such as by configuring hardware, software and network resources to make the website 116(w) accessible via the network 106. The website is also populated with conference-related materials (block 416), such as copies of the conference-related materials previously created in block 402. In this way, the website 116(w) is created “on demand” in response to receipt of an input from an conference attendee and thereby efficiently utilizes resources. The conference service 102 may then manage use of the website (block 414), further discussion of which may be found in relation to the following figure.
The websites are managed (block 504) by the conference service 102 using a variety of techniques. For example, changes made by an attendee to a corresponding first website may be isolated from another website of another attendee (block 506). Thus, in this example each attendee is provided their own virtual “sandbox” in which to interact with conference-related materials and that interaction is kept from “spilling over” into other sandboxes, i.e., the other websites.
In another example, the conference service 102 manages the websites such that a change in source material is promulgated to copies of the material included in the websites (block 508). For instance, a presenter at the conference may provide the conference-related materials and have those included on each of the websites. Subsequently, a change may be made to the materials and that change may be automatically promulgated to each of the websites through execution of the conference manager module. A variety of other instances are also contemplated, such as through use of a “sharing” technique in which a virtual folder mechanism is employed.
In a further example, the domain name of the website may be customized based on inputs received from a respective attendee (block 510). The attendee, for instance, may change a previously assigned domain name, request the domain name before creation of the website, and so on.
In yet another example, the websites are consolidated (block 512), such as by combining a created website for a conference with another website for another conference, with a website offered by another service provider (e.g., a business website), and so on.
In still yet another example, access to one of the websites is restricted (block 514). The attendee, for instance, may specify a sub-domain, from which, access is permitted, such as a work sub-domain, may specify a particular collection of users (e.g., “friends” of the attendee), and so on. Although a variety of management examples have been discussion, it should be readily apparent that a wide variety of other management techniques may also be employed without departing from the spirit and scope thereof.
Although the invention has been described in language specific to structural features and/or methodological acts, it is to be understood that the invention defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to the specific features or acts described. Rather, the specific features and acts are disclosed as exemplary forms of implementing the claimed invention.
