Patent Grant
8601381
The ever-expanding bandwidth for internet services increases online users' continued desire to receive more and richer content from online or web providers. Video data and graphically oriented content can now stream or transmit faster to a user's client device. Furthermore, the users have also become savvier in customizing how they receive content over the internet or other networks. For example, online users, through their computer, game console, online television box or the like, typically may register to establish a portal-like online environment where their favorite news source, local weather, movie show times, electronic mail (e-mail) notifications, or the like are received. These data aggregation portals or web services typically offer a homepage summary view where the user can go to see his/her selected set of services. With this homepage, the user can get a “summary” of communications, news and other services in one place and within a predefined display configuration.
For example,
Currently, this homepage online environment is preferred over other rich user experience methods because of its quick loading performance. However, such model's shortcomings and problems include leaving the texts of modules becoming static when the dynamic connection of the network/services is lost. Furthermore, the homepage typically becomes a collection of information where management of the information is overwhelming. In addition, the modules and the homepage are text-based or text-oriented. Furthermore, user customization of the homepage is limited to the selection of the background color, the relative position of the modules, the amount of content (e.g., 5 or 7 headlines for a given news source), and the number of modules a user may select. Hence, the homepage presents a flat, two dimensional and unanimated interfaces.
Embodiments of the invention provide technical solutions with a rich and customizable user online environment in which users can experience information with fuller and livelier presentation. Embodiments of the invention enable the users to receive information more intuitive and graphically without being overwhelmed. Aspects of the invention enable a user to assign a customized image as a background image for the online environment and enable the user to see graphical representations of desirable content as part of the background image. For example, instead of showing a raining icon in a user's weather module in
Further aspects of the invention provide technical effects that also identify graphical elements of the background image such that the user may assign a particular graphical element to be an anchor for reflecting or for pinning other customizable content. For example, suppose a user may assign a background image with Seattle skyline. The user may identify The Space Needle to be an anchor or point for popping a small window showing available sales event from the user's favorite coffee shop. Alternative embodiments of the invention enable third party services to provide advertisement through the identified graphical elements of the background image. As such, the users can now experience fuller and graphically richer presentations of the user's online environment (such as people, events, or places) condensed onto the background of the online environment. Further embodiments of the invention render this online environment on the user's personal computer, portable devices, home television, or even an application or software.
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 as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.
Other features will be in part apparent and in part pointed out hereinafter.
Corresponding reference characters indicate corresponding parts throughout the drawings.
Aspects of the invention attempt to mirror a user's reality in a rich virtual or online environment. For example, suppose a user has indicated to a server system that the user resides in San Francisco, Calif., and the user desires to receive local weather information to the user's online environment. Aspects of the invention enable the server system to integrate the weather information or condition to the background image of the online environment. At the same time, any contacts in the user's contact list who also share that location may appear, represented by graphical icons, on the background. As such, embodiments of the invention provide the user with a passive viewing experience that is wrapped in emotional and relevant intent through the rich visualization of the online environment. Embodiments of the invention solve at least some of the problems by enabling the user to identify information in a way that closely mimics the way humans think, rather than asking the user to seek out various information across the homepage or homepages.
In one embodiment, the online environment describes a user experience in which the user visits a centralized web location hosted by a remote server or device from the user's local device or application through a wired or wireless connection. The centralized web location provides or pushes the information displayed or rendered on the web location. As such, as soon as the user leaves the centralized web location, the information in the online environment is no longer accessible until the user visits the web location in a next session or occasion. In another embodiment, the online environment with information included therewith may be persisted on the local device or application even though the connection is no longer active or connected.
Aspects of the invention further enable the online environment with ability to integrate and display related information such as, place, time, communications, and environment in a clear way: all are addressed in a single logical application in the online environment. This online environment takes static 2-dimentional information sets and displays them in a more humanly intuitive way.
Referring now to
The server 210 also includes a processor 212 and a memory area 214 accessible by the server 210 and/or the processor 22. In one example, the processor 212 may be a processing unit or a collection of processing units. The memory area 214 may be a data store, a database, a collection of data stores or databases, or the like. The server 210, the processor 212, the memory area 214, and the online environment 202 are accessible among each other via a communication data network 218. The communication data network 218 may be any wireless or wired data network. For example, the communication data network 218 may be an intranet or an internet.
The online environment 202 provided or serviced by the server 210 includes a particular online source for the user 206 to receive information. It is known that the user 206 may receive information from various sources, such as through e-mail messages, instant message chat sessions, web logs (blogs), news services, or the like. The online environment 202 according to embodiments of the invention provides a centralized or an aggregated source of information for the user 206. Unlike the existing homepage model shown in
The system 200 also includes an interface 220 which may be a hardware interface device or an online interface, such as a web site or a web portal within a web site. In one embodiment, the online environment 202 is provided to the client 208 accessible by the user 206 via the interface 220. The client 208 may be a hardware client device, such as a personal computer, a television, a portable device (e.g., a mobile phone, a portable media device, or a personal digital assistance (PDA)), a game console, or other types of client device. The client 208 may also be a client application or software, such as an instant messaging application, a communication application or the like.
The online environment 302 is a source of user-customizable data or information. As such, the online environment 302 aggregates the user-customizable data or information and represents the data or information via integrated, rich, and customizable visual graphical representations on the online environment 302 within one window.
Initially, the online environment 302 receives a selection of a background image 310 from the user (e.g., user 206) to start customizing the online environment 302. For example, the user in this instance may select a personal photography of the Golden Gate Bridge. In one aspect of the invention, the background image 310 is also a graphical representation of the user-customizable data. For example, in this instance, the background image 310 may be a graphical representation of the user's current location.
The online environment 302 also collects the user-customizable data in a profile such as a user profile. Each of the user-customizable data also defines properties associated therewith. For example, one of the user-customizable data may be the user current location and the properties of the user's current location may the postal zip code of the location. Similarly, one of the user-customizable data may be the user's local weather forecast and properties associated with the user's local weather forecast may also be the postal zip code.
In one embodiment, the profile may receive additional information from a third party service. For example, subject to the authorization from either the user, the server 210, or a combination thereof, one or more business entities may supplement the user-customizable data in the profile such that the online environment 302 may integrate or incorporate a graphical representation for display to the user.
In an alternative embodiment, instead of providing a personal or user-specified background image 310, the user may select one or more themes from the service providers (e.g., the server 210) or a third party vendor. For example, the server 210 may provide a professional photograph of the skyline of London as the background image as a graphical representation of the user's location. While such “theme” fails to provide full user-customization, the provided theme may include additional features to be discussed below. In an alternative embodiment, the user may purchase themes from a third party vendor as the background image that not only provide the properties for the user-customizable data but also include commercial or business incentives, such as coupons or the like. While discussions above describing the background image 310 as mostly a still photograph or image, other animated or motion pictures (e.g., videos) may be used as the background image 310 without departing from the scope or spirit of embodiments of the invention, as illustrated in
Still referring to
The online environment 302 also provides one or more graphical representations for the user. For example, the online environment 302 may provide graphical icons to represent or reflect the user-customizable data. Using
Based on the above properties, the online environment 302 renders the appropriate graphical representations onto locations on the background image 310 and the positions of the rendered graphical representation depend on the properties of the user-customizable data corresponding to the graphical representation and the identified graphical elements of the background image. As an illustration,
Also,
In another embodiment, each of the graphical representations may also be connected with other services for providing alert events. For example, by hovering one of the graphical representations 318 may activate the display of e-mail message alerts or instant messages from that particular contact.
As such, the online environment 302 drastically improves the current implementation of text-based or modular listing of content for the user. Aspects of the invention provide a rich, customizable, and lively experience for the user by incorporating or integrating graphical representations into the background image 310. Instead of always seeing a standard or generic raining icon in a module, as shown in
Referring now to
Referring now to
As the online environment 302 is flexible to fit to the display of the client, embodiments of the invention can be incorporated and displayed readily and easily to provide the user with rich and customizable information.
Still referring to
Alternatively, the profile is updated in real time, and the graphical representations are updated as well in response to the updated profile. In such an embodiment, the online environment is re-rendered the online environment with the updated graphical representations. Furthermore, another aspect of the invention may include generating a modified background image incorporating the provided graphical representations as one of the graphical elements of the modified background image. In such an embodiment, the modified background image is rendered on the online environment to the user. A further alternative embodiment includes providing one or more themed images stored in a memory storage area to the user as a background image of the online environment. Instructions may further be received corresponding to a selected themed image from the user for the online environment.
In yet another embodiment,
A third data field 506 stores profile data of the user. The profile data includes user-customizable information which includes at least one of the following: weather forecast information of a location, time, and a location. A fourth data field 508 store graphical representations each corresponding to user-customizable information. Each of the graphical representations depends on and visually indicates the user-customizable information stored in the third data field 506. With these data fields in the computer-readable medium 500, the graphical representations stored in the one or more fourth data fields are rendered onto predetermined positions of the background image stored in the first data field 502 upon displaying by the client, and the predetermined positions of the rendered graphical representations depend on the user-customizable information in the profile data of the user in the third data field 506 and the stored data associated with the one or more graphical elements of the background image.
Embodiments of the invention may be described in the general context of computer-executable instructions, such as program modules, executed by one or more computers or other devices. Generally, program modules include, but are not limited to, routines, programs, objects, components, and data structures that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Aspects of the invention may also be practiced in distributed computing environments where tasks are performed by remote processing devices that are linked through a communications network. In a distributed computing environment, program modules may be located in both local and remote computer storage media including memory storage devices.
An interface in the context of a software architecture includes a software module, component, code portion, or other sequence of computer-executable instructions. The interface includes, for example, a first module accessing a second module to perform computing tasks on behalf of the first module. The first and second modules include, in one example, application programming interfaces (APIs) such as provided by operating systems, component object model (COM) interfaces (e.g., for peer-to-peer application communication), and extensible markup language metadata interchange format (XML) interfaces (e.g., for communication between web services).
The interface may be a tightly coupled, synchronous implementation such as in Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE), COM, or distributed COM (DCOM) examples. Alternatively or in addition, the interface may be a loosely coupled, asynchronous implementation such as in a web service (e.g., using the simple object access protocol). In general, the interface includes any combination of the following characteristics: tightly coupled, loosely coupled, synchronous, and asynchronous. Further, the interface may conform to a standard protocol, a proprietary protocol, or any combination of standard and proprietary protocols.
The interfaces described herein may all be part of a single interface or may be implemented as separate interfaces or any combination therein. The interfaces may execute locally or remotely to provide functionality. Further, the interfaces may include additional or less functionality than illustrated or described herein.
The order of execution or performance of the operations in embodiments of the invention illustrated and described herein is not essential, unless otherwise specified. That is, the operations may be performed in any order, unless otherwise specified, and embodiments of the invention may include additional or fewer operations than those disclosed herein. For example, it is contemplated that executing or performing a particular operation before, contemporaneously with, or after another operation is within the scope of aspects of the invention.
Embodiments of the invention may be implemented with computer-executable instructions. The computer-executable instructions may be organized into one or more computer-executable components or modules. Aspects of the invention may be implemented with any number and organization of such components or modules. For example, aspects of the invention are not limited to the specific computer-executable instructions or the specific components or modules illustrated in the figures and described herein. Other embodiments of the invention may include different computer-executable instructions or components having more or less functionality than illustrated and described herein.
When introducing elements of aspects of the invention or the embodiments thereof, the articles “a,” “an,” “the,” and “said” are intended to mean that there are one or more of the elements. The terms “comprising,” “including,” and “having” are intended to be inclusive and mean that there may be additional elements other than the listed elements.
Having described aspects of the invention in detail, it will be apparent that modifications and variations are possible without departing from the scope of aspects of the invention as defined in the appended claims. As various changes could be made in the above constructions, products, and methods without departing from the scope of aspects of the invention, it is intended that all matter contained in the above description and shown in the accompanying drawings shall be interpreted as illustrative and not in a limiting sense.
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