System for prioritizing of document presented on constrained receiving station interfaces to users of the internet personalized to each user's needs and interests

A process in a computer managed communication network such as the World Wide Web with user access via a plurality of data processor controlled interactive display stations and with a system for displaying documents, e.g. Web pages, transmitted to said display stations from locations remote from said stations which provides the user with a system for the prioritizing of documents presented on constrained receiving stations to users of the Internet in an order personalized to each user's needs and interests which have been heuristically determined based upon the user's past access to such documents through standard desktop interfaces. The user is enabled to interface with the received documents at receiving stations through devices which have greater interface functional constraints than a standard desktop display interface through a process comprising first presenting a plurality of types of received documents to a selected user through a device having a standard desktop display interface, then tracking the interactive activity of said selected user to said plurality of types of received documents and determining the priority of said types of received documents based upon said tracking, and presenting received documents of said plurality of types to said selected user through said devices having greater interface functional constraints in an order based upon said priority. The receiving devices with interfaces having functional constraints may be audible only interface devices, and displays of lesser dimensions or lower resolution than standard desktop displays. The network may be the Internet or World Wide Web. The documents involved may be electronic mail.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present invention relates to computer managed communication networks, such as the World Wide Web or Internet, and particularly to ease of use of interactive computer controlled display interfaces to networks for users using a variety equipment of differing functionality to access the network.

BACKGROUND OF RELATED ART

The 1990's decade has been marked by a technological revolution driven by the convergence of the data processing industry with the consumer electronics industry. The effect has in turn driven technologies which have been known and available but relatively quiescent over the years. A major one of these technologies is the internet related distribution of documents, media and programs. The convergence of the electronic entertainment and consumer industries with data processing exponentially accelerated the demand for wide ranging communications distribution channels and the World Wide Web (Web) or Internet, which had quietly existed for over a generation as a loose academic and government data distribution facility, reached “critical mass” and commenced a period of phenomenal expansion. With this expansion, businesses and consumers have direct access to all matter of documents, media and computer programs. It is now possible for the Web browser or wanderer in reviewing Internet or Web search results to spend literally hours going through document after document often less than productive excursions through the Web. These excursions often strained the user's time and resources. In order for the Internet to mature to its great expectations to solid commercial fruition, it will be necessary for the Internet to greatly reduce its drain on time and related resources.

In this connection, regular users of the Internet encounter an additional significant problem, i.e., receiving information on a wide variety of equipment or receiving devices. In our highly mobile business pervasive computing paradigm where user “office” out of little more than their briefcase, it is more and more likely that a user will need to access his information from the Internet at many different receiving stations with associated computer devices having user interfaces of significantly differing functionality, i.e., differing device constraints. Most typical network transmitted documents including electronic mail have been created with the assumption that the user has a moderate to high resolution GUI, keyboard and mouse. Because of these assumptions, most network documents and applications have a look and feel presenting pull down menus and the use of differing fonts and a variety of colors to demark different areas of the interface; the available graphical interface real estate is completely utilized. This is implemented as most standard windows desktop interfaces as the standard for Internet documents, E-Mail and applications. However in our highly mobile business computing environment, many different form factors and device interfaces will be used to access documents and application off the Internet: some will have ¼ VGA displays; others, e.g., personal digital assistant will have small alphameric displays with a single font and pitch. Still others may have no visual interface at all but interface through audible output and speech recognition input. These and other non-conventional user interfaces provide less and less interface resource to the user, i.e., these device interfaces have a great many constraints. To access and sort received documents has been tedious enough with the comfort of high resolution standard desktop interfaces; constrained interfaces such as low resolution, two color or small dimension displays or audible only interfaces tends to make adequate user access almost impossible.

SUMMARY OF THE PRESENT INVENTION

The present invention overcomes these prior art problems by providing a system, method and program wherein the documents presented on constrained interfaces at receiving stations on network are prioritized so as to be presented to the user in an order personalized to each user's needs and interests which have been heuristically determined based upon the user's past access to such documents through standard desktop interfaces. The user is enabled to interface with the received documents at receiving stations through devices which have greater interface functional constraints than a standard desktop display interface through a process comprising first presenting a plurality of types of received documents to a selected user through a device having a standard desktop display interface, then tracking the interactive activity of said selected user to said plurality of types of received documents and determining the priority of said types of received documents based upon said tracking, and presenting received documents of said plurality of types to said selected user through said devices having greater interface functional constraints in an order based upon said priority. The receiving devices with interfaces having functional constraints may be audible only interface devices, and displays of lesser dimensions or lower resolution than standard desktop displays. The network may be the Internet or World Wide Web which are used interchangeably in the present description. The documents involved may be electronic mail.

In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, means are provided for varying said prioritized order of received document presentation based upon the interface functional constraints of the receiving station device.

While the desktop environment provides the primary source for the heuristic monitoring of user activities as previously discussed, it should be understood that data involved in the use of even interfaces with constraints may still be monitored and thus contribute to the overall priority determination.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

Referring toFIG. 1, a typical data processing terminal is shown which may function as a computer controlled network receiving terminal used in implementing the present invention. The general functional elements of Fig. would be present in any receiving display terminal whether it be a high function computer on which full desktop interfaces may be implemented or a limited function terminal with user interface constraints. A central processing unit (CPU)10, such as one of the PC microprocessors or workstations, e.g. RISC System/6000™ (RS/6000)—a high function display—(RISC System/6000 is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation) series available from International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), is provided and interconnected to various other components by system bus12. An operating system41runs on CPU10, provides control and is used to coordinate the function of the various components ofFIG. 1. Operating system41may be one of the commercially available operating systems such as the AIX 6000™ operating system or OS/2™ operating system available from IBM (AIX 6000 and OS/2 are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation); Microsoft's Windows 95™ or Windows NT™, as well as UNIX and AIX operating systems. Application programs40controlled by the system are moved into and out of the main memory RAM14. These programs include the program of the present invention to be subsequently described in combination with any conventional Web browser, such as the Netscape 3.0™ or Microsoft's Explorer™. However, as will be subsequently described, it is preferable that the program of the present invention be resident on the Web or Internet server through which the receiving station is connected to the Web. Read only memory (ROM)16is connected to CPU10via bus12and includes the basic input/output system (BIOS) that controls the basic computer functions. Random access memory (RAM)14, I/O adapter18and communications adapter34are also interconnected to system bus12. I/O adapter18may be a small computer system interface (SCSI) adapter that communicates with the disk storage device20. Communications adapter34interconnects bus12with an outside network enabling the data processing system to communicate with other such systems over a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN), which includes, of course, the World Wide Web or Internet. The latter two terms are meant to be generally interchangeable, and will be so used in the present description of the distribution network. I/O devices are also connected to system bus12via user interface adapter22and display adapter36. Keyboard24and mouse26are all interconnected to bus12through user interface adapter22. Display adapter36includes a frame buffer39, which is a storage device that holds a representation of each pixel on the display screen38. Images may be stored in frame buffer39for display on monitor38through various components such as a digital to analog converter (not shown) and the like. By using the aforementioned I/O devices, a user is capable of inputting information to the system through the keyboard24or mouse26and receiving output information from the system via display38.

Before going further into the details of specific embodiments, it will be helpful to understand from a more general perspective the various elements and methods which may be related to the present invention. Since a major aspect of the present invention is directed to documents, such as Web pages, transmitted over networks, an understanding of networks and their operating principles would be helpful. We will not go into great detail in describing the networks to which the present invention is applicable. Reference has also been made to the applicability of the present invention to a global network such as the Internet. For details on Internet nodes, objects and links, reference is made to the text,Mastering the Internet, G. H. Cady et al., published by Sybex Inc., Alameda, Calif., 1996.

Any data communication system which interconnects or links computer controlled systems with various sites defines a communications network. A network may be as simple as two linked computers or it may be any combination of LANs or WANs. Of course, the Internet or Web is a global network of a heterogeneous mix of computer technologies and operating systems. Higher level objects are linked to the lower level objects in the hierarchy through a variety of network server computers. These network servers are the key to network distribution such as the distribution of Web pages and related documentation. In this connection, the term documents as used to describe data transmitted over the World Wide Web or other networks is intended to include Web pages including displayable text, graphics and other images as well as programs and transmitted data files with moving images.

A generalized diagram of a portion of an Internet, which the computer56controlled display terminal57used for Web page or other document display of the present invention, is connected as shown inFIG. 2. Computer56and display terminal57are the computer system shown inFIG. 1and connection58(FIG. 2) is the network connection shown inFIG. 1. Reference may be made to the above-mentionedMastering the Internet, pp. 136–147, for typical connections between local display workstations to the Internet via network servers, any of which may be used to implement the system on which this invention is used. The system embodiment ofFIG. 2is one of these known as a host-dial connection. Such host-dial connections have been in use for over 30 years through network access servers53which are linked51to the Internet50. The servers53are maintained by a service provider to the client's display terminal57. The host's server53is accessed by the client terminal57through a normal dial-up telephone linkage58via modem54, telephone line55and modem52. The HTML files representative of the Web pages are downloaded to display terminal57through controlling server53and computer56via the telephone line linkages from server53which may have accessed them from the internet50via linkage51. Computer56and display appear to formidable enough to provide a high resolution desktop display on which the desktop monitoring aspects of the present invention may be implemented. Likewise, a lower resolution and/or lesser dimensional display terminal such that in a laptop, palm-held or personal digital assistant may be substituted for computer/display56/57when the user personalized prioritized document presentation aspects of the present invention are carried out. For this reason, it is preferable to have the novel program of the present invention resident on the network access server53so that irrespective of the interface constraint functionality of the accessing receiving computer or its location, the same program and the attendant stored data relative to priority will be accessed in server53.

Now, with reference toFIGS. 3 and 4we will describe a process implemented by the present invention in conjunction with the flowcharts of these figures.FIG. 3is a flowchart showing the development of a process according to the present invention for the prioritizing of document presented on constrained receiving station interfaces to users of the Internet personalized to each user's needs and interests. With reference toFIG. 3, first, process step81, there is set up a process for monitoring some predetermined attributes with respect to the user's handling of documents received on a standard desktop interface. This data is stored, step82. Then, step83, a process is set up for weighing the stored data according to a set of parameters and rules determined by the type of document being monitored. For example, data collected or monitored on the desktop interaction of a user with his E-Mail might determine elapsed time to respond:E-mail message that have fewer addresses;E-mail sourced by a certain set of addresses;E-mail of greater or lesser length;E-mail having certain keywords in their subject field.

In any event, step84, a routine is set up for prioritizing the documents received at a web station based upon the weights determined in step83. Then step85, a process is set up for applying the priorities developed in step84when documents are accessed at a Web station with a device interface having greater constraints than said standard desktop interface. Finally, a process is set up, step86, for providing optionally applied additional rules based upon the nature of the constraints of the device interface of step85to the priority determination of step84. The running of the process will now be described with respect toFIG. 4. First, step90, a determination is made, step90as to whether a Web session is opened, step90. If No, the process loops back to step90where the opening of a Web session is awaited. If Yes, then step91, a determination is made as to whether we have a standard desktop interface. If Yes, this gives us the opportunity to monitor the user's preferable use with respect to document attributes being monitored, step92and to store the attribute values, step93, to use these values to determine document priority rules for the particular user, step94, and to store such rules,95. At this point, the process is returned to step91where a determination is made as to whether the desktop environment has continued. If the decision from step91is No, then a determination made as to whether we have one of the constrained user interfaces, step96; if Yes, then the received documents are prioritized, step98, according to the prioritized rules personalized to the user's needs and interests, and stored in step95, and the documents are displayed or otherwise output in the prioritized order, step99. It was previously mentioned that the priority rules (of step95) may be optionally modified to particularly suit or conform to the interface constraints of particular devices. In step,100, a determination is made as to whether such a modification is provided for. If Yes, then such a modification is provided for, step101. At this point or if the decision from step100is No, then the process returns to decision step97via branch “A”. In this connection, if the decision from step96had been No, the process would also have proceeded to decision step97where a determination is made as to whether the session is over. If Yes, then the session is exited. If No, then the process returns to decision step96, and the process is continued from there as previously described.

One of the preferred implementations of the present invention is as a routine in an operating system made up of programming steps or instructions resident in RAM14,FIG. 1, during computer operations or in the RAM of network server53,FIG. 2. Until required by the computer system, the program instructions may be stored in another readable medium, e.g. a disk drive, or in a removable memory such as an optical disk for use in a CD-ROM computer input or in a floppy disk for use in a floppy disk drive computer input. Further, the program instructions may be stored in the memory of another computer prior to use in the system of the present invention and transmitted over a LAN or a WAN, such as the Internet, when required by the user of the present invention. One skilled in the art should appreciate that the processes controlling the present invention are capable of being distributed in the form of computer readable media of a variety of forms.

Although certain preferred embodiments have been shown and described, it will be understood that many changes and modifications may be made therein without departing from the scope and intent of the appended claims.