Abstract:
A method for improving downloading performance of digital magazine in OFIP (Open Format Interactive Publishing) format or Folio format based on reading intent is disclosed. In one embodiment, the method is realized by packaging the whole issue of digital magazine into per article based or per page based record based on meta-data analyzing the reading intent, e.g. which article and which page a user is currently reading, which article and which page the user intents to read next, downloading only resources related to those articles and pages, and displaying the article or the page as soon as the related resources are downloaded.

Description:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
       [0001]    This patent application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/786,607, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Improving Downloading Performance of Digital Magazine in Folio Format Based on Reading Intent”, filed on Mar. 15, 2013 and naming Haixiang He as inventor, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated herein, in its entirety, by reference. 
         [0002]    This patent application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/786,613, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Improving Downloading Performance of Digital Magazine in OFIP (Open Format Interactive Publishing) Format Based on Reading Intent”, filed on Mar. 15, 2013 and naming Haixiang He as inventor, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated herein, in its entirety, by reference. 
     
    
     STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT 
       [0003]    Not Applicable 
         [0004]    REFERENCE TO SEQUENCE LISTING, A TABLE, OR A COMPUTER PROGRAM LISTING COMPACT DISK APPENDIX 
         [0005]    Not Applicable 
       FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
       [0006]    The present invention is in the technical field of digital magazine. More particularly, the present invention is in the technical field of improving content downloading performance for digital magazine. Furthermore, the present invention is in the technical field of using reading intent to improve content downloading performance. 
       BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0007]    Print magazine has been digitalized for years to make it possible for people to access it using digital devices including computers, phones, tablets, etc. Recently, with the advance of technologies from both digital magazine creation tools and digital magazine consumption devices, multimedia and interaction content is added into digitalized print magazine. And enhanced digital magazine delivers a super consumer experience that print magazine just cannot achieve. 
         [0008]    With all these additional multimedia and interactive content, digital magazine is huge in size. A typical issue of digital magazine in OFIP (Open Format Interactive Publishing) format or Folio format has about 100 M to 600 M in size. For a user to read an issue of digital magazine, the issue needs to be downloaded from content hosting server to the user&#39;s content consumption device over the Internet especially over the mobile Internet. 
         [0009]    Due to the huge size of an issue of digital magazine, it will take a long time for the digital magazine to be downloaded from content server to content consumption device especially through slow Internet connection. Hence the user has to wait for a long time and user experience is not good. 
         [0010]    Users definitely don&#39;t like to wait. How to make the downloading faster without changing reading experience is becoming important. And hence, such a method and apparatus is desired. 
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
       [0011]    The present invention is a method and apparatus to improve content downloading performance of digital magazine. 
         [0012]    Many publishers use OFIP (Open Format Interactive Publishing) format or Folio format to publish their latest multimedia and interactive digital magazines for iPad and other tablet and mobile devices. The format enables publishers to add multimedia content including video, audio, and slide show, into the typical print magazine content. It also enables publishers to add interaction into the typical print magazine content. The format enables publishers to deliver super reader experience than other digital formats such as PDF. 
         [0013]    The latest multimedia and interactive digital magazine in OFIP format or Folio format divides a whole magazine issue into articles and divides each article into pages. Each article or each page has its own content resources including video, audio, image, etc. for rendering. Each article or each page also has its own meta-data to specify the resources as well as interactions for rendering. 
         [0014]    Currently, all resources of an article or a page need to be downloaded from content hosting server to the user&#39;s content consumption device before the article or the page can be rendered by the user&#39;s content consumption device. Since the size of each article or each page can be huge, it can take a long time for the article or page to be completely downloaded from content server to content consumption device especially through slow Internet connection. Hence the user has to wait for a long time and user experience is not good. 
         [0015]    This invention analyzes the reading intent, e.g. which article and which page a user is currently reading, which article and which page the user intents to read next. Then based on a user&#39;s reading intent, it identifies the content resources required for rendering those articles and pages, and only downloads those resources from the server first instead of all resources of those articles and pages that may not needed for rendering the articles or pages the user is reading or intents to read. Hence it reduces the size of the content can improve downloading performance but without impacting reading experience. 
         [0016]    The digital magazine server must have the capability to process the digital magazine in OFIP format and based on the meta-data to identify content resources related to each article or each page. In addition, the server must have the capability to package per article or per page based content resources into a format that can be rendered by the same reader that can render the digital magazine as a whole. 
         [0017]    The digital magazine reader must have the capability to render an article or a page of the digital magazine once the content resources for that article or that page have been downloaded from server. In another word, the reader will not need to download unnecessary resources before it starts rendering the content. Hence, it will improve the downloading performance. The reader must have the capability to communicate with the digital magazine server about the reading intent, e.g. which article or which page to render, accordingly on top of other normal communication between reader and server. 
         [0018]    Those skilled in the art will appreciate the scope of the present invention and realize additional aspects thereof after reading the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments in association with the accompanying figures. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0019]    The present invention is illustrated by way of example in the following drawings in which like references indicated similar elements. The following drawings disclose various embodiments of the present invention for purposes of illustration only and are not intended to limit the scope of the invention. For purposes of clarity, not every component may be labeled in very figure. In the figures: 
           [0020]      FIG. 1  is a functional block diagram of a digital magazine processing and hosting server according to an embodiment of the present invention; 
           [0021]      FIG. 2  is a functional block diagram of a digital content storage according to an embodiment of the present invention; 
           [0022]      FIG. 3  is a flow diagram of a process of improving downloading performance of digital magazine based on reading intent according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 
       [0023]    The following detailed description sets forth numerous specific details to provide a thorough understanding of the invention. However, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the invention may be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, well-known methods, procedures, components, protocols, algorithms, and circuits have not been described in detail so as not to obscure the invention. 
         [0024]      FIG. 1  is a functional block diagram showing the relevant components of an example digital magazine processing and hosting server  100  that may be used to process and host digital magazines. Digital magazine processing and hosting Server has hardware platform and software applications. In the embodiment shown in  FIG. 1 , the digital magazine processing and hosting server  100  includes an input logic  110  configured to enable the uploading of digital magazines. It also includes processing logic  120  configured to process digital magazines based on the meta-data associated with digital magazines. After processing the digital magazine, the processing logic  120  will store digital magazines in digital magazine storage  130 . 
         [0025]    In the embodiment shown in  FIG. 1 , digital magazines are stored in digital magazine storage  130 . The digital magazine processing and hosting server  100  contains an Internet logic  140  configured to receive digital magazine downloading request from and to transmit digital magazine resources to external entities. Upon receipt of digital magazine downloading request, the serving logic  150  will decide which digital magazine resources it needs to retrieve from the digital magazine storage  130  and transmit those resources to external entities through the Internet logic  140 . In another embodiment of the present invention, the digital magazine storage  130  may reside outside the device and connect over Internet especially mobile Internet with digital magazine processing and hosting server  100  through Internet logic  140 . 
         [0026]    Input logic  110  and processing logic  120  may reside outside the digital magazine processing and hosting server  100  in another embodiment of the present invention. The digital magazine processing and hosting functions can be separated into two devices and connected though digital magazine storage  130 . 
         [0027]    Digital magazine processing and hosting server  100  may also contain other components. 
         [0028]      FIG. 2  is a functional block diagram showing the relevant components of an example digital content storage  200  that can be used to as digital magazine storage  130  in  FIG. 1 . Digital content database can be any hardware or software that is capable of storing digital content. In the embodiment shown in  FIG. 2 , the digital content storage  200  includes a number of digital content records  210  configured to store each piece of digital content. Digital content record  210  includes record identifier  212  configured to uniquely identify each piece of digital content, content  214  configured to store the real content part of the digital content record  210 , and metadata  216  configured to store information related to the digital content. Digital content record  210  may also contain other fields. Metadata  216  includes a number of data fields  2162  configured to store metadata information related to the corresponding digital content. One data field  2162  is geographic area(s)  2164  configured to store defined real-world geographic area(s). Digital content can be any type of digital content including digital music, digital video, eBook, etc., according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
         [0029]    The digital magazine reader is used to render the digital magazine including multimedia and interactive content. Digital magazine reader can be any hardware or software that is capable of rendering digital content. In one embodiment, the digital magazine reader includes an Internet logic configured to enable the digital magazine reader to communicate with digital magazine server through Internet especially mobile Internet. Digital magazine reader may also contain digital content storage configured to store digital content. Digital content reader may also contain other components. 
         [0030]      FIG. 3  is a flow diagram of a process for improving downloading performance based on reading intent according to an embodiment of the invention. While particular messages may be described in connection with  FIG. 3 , the invention is not limited to this particular sequence of message as other sequences may be used as well. Also, the messages in the following description have been given particular names for ease of reference. The names of the messages may change without departing from the scope of the invention. 
         [0031]    As shown in  FIG. 3 , the digital magazine reader detects that user is currently reading page #1 and intent to read page #2 that has video and slideshow which size is 70% of all resource side ( 310 ). Based on the meta-data of page #2, the digital magazine reader can decide whether video resource is required to render the page #2 immediately or not ( 320 ). If the video resource is required to render the page #2 immediately, then add the video resource request to the resource request list ( 330 ). If the video is not required, then the reader will not add video resource request and move to next step. Based on the meta-data of page #2, the digital magazine reader can decide whether slideshow resource is required to render the page #2 immediately or not ( 340 ). If the slideshow resource is required to render the page #2 immediately, then add the video resource request to the resource request list ( 350 ). If the slideshow is not required, then the reader will not add slideshow resource request and move to next step. 
         [0032]    Based on the resource request list, the digital magazine reader will send downloading request for only resources in the resource request list to digital magazine processing and hosting server ( 100 ). Once receiving the downloading request from digital magazine reader, the digital magazine processing and hosting server will retrieve requested resource from digital magazine storage ( 130 ) and transmit the resources to digital magazine reader. Once receiving the resources from the digital magazine processing and hosting server ( 100 ), the digital magazine reader will render the page #2 immediately ( 360 ). After rendering the page #2, the digital magazine reader can download video and slideshow resources since a user might want to read them next. 
         [0033]    It should be understood that all functional statements made herein describing the functions to be performed by the methods of the invention may be performed by software programs implemented utilizing subroutines and other programming techniques known to those of ordinary skill in the art. Alternatively, these functions may be implemented in hardware, firmware, or a combination of hardware, software, and firmware. The invention is thus not limited to a particular implementation. 
         [0034]    The control logic in this embodiment may be implemented as a set of program instructions that are stored in a computer readable memory within the network element and executed on a microprocessor on the network element. However, in this embodiment as with the previous embodiments, it will be apparent to a skilled artisan that all logic described herein can be embodied using discrete components, integrated circuitry such as an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), programmable logic used in conjunction with a programmable logic device such as a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) or microprocessor, or any other device including any combination thereof. Programmable logic can be fixed temporarily or permanently in a tangible medium such as a read-only memory chip, a computer memory, a disk, or other storage medium. All such embodiments are intended to fall within the scope of the present invention. 
         [0035]    While the foregoing written description of the invention enables one of ordinary skill to make and use what is considered presently to be the best mode thereof, those of ordinary skill will understand and appreciate the existence of variations, combinations, and equivalents of the specific embodiment, method, and examples herein. The invention should therefore not be limited by the above described embodiment, method, and examples, but by all embodiments and methods within the scope and spirit of the invention.