Patent Publication Number: US-2002002596-A1

Title: Apparatus and method for retrieving information over a computer network

Description:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION  
       [0001] This invention relates to computer networks, and more particularly to customizing the retrieval of information over a computer network.  
       BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
       [0002] The advent of computer networks and the increasing amount of information that is available over those networks has given rise to a growing number of network users. Traditionally, users gained access to computer networks through mainframe or desktop computers. However, in order to meet the varying needs of individual users, many alternative systems for accessing computer networks have been developed. For example, devices commonly known as “palm-top computers”, which are not much bigger than cellular telephones, often come equipped with internet access capability.  
       [0003] Accordingly, designers of network access systems must consider how their systems will accommodate the varying users and user access devices. That is, designers must consider how to gather and present network information given a user&#39;s needs and the capabilities of the user&#39;s access device. For example, designers must consider how internet information—which is most commonly provided in the form of “web pages”—can be efficiently retrieved and displayed to meet a particular user&#39;s needs.  
       OBJECTS AND SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
       [0004] It has been recognized that the efficient retrieval and display of computer network information is facilitated by allowing a network user to customize the retrieval and display according to the user&#39;s needs.  
       [0005] Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a network access system that allows users to customize the retrieval and display of network information. It is a more particular object of the invention to allow users of highly portable internet access devices (hereinafter referred to as “handsets”) to specify what information is retrieved from the internet and how that information is displayed.  
       [0006] In accordance with the invention, personalized information retrieval from a network is enabled through a user configuration file. The configuration file is created by the user and is stored in a database server. It specifies what information the user would like to retrieve from the network and how that information is to be displayed. When a user attempts to retrieve information from the network, a system server responds to the request by uploading one or more request-servicing software modules, identifying the requesting user, and retrieving the user&#39;s configuration file from the database server. The requested information is formatted in accordance with the user&#39;s configuration file and forwarded to the user&#39;s access device for display.  
       [0007] By providing network users with a personalized information retrieval scheme, the invention allows each user to tailor the retrieval of information to the user&#39;s personal needs and to the capabilities of the user&#39;s network access device.  
     
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
     [0008] The following detailed description, given by way of example and not intended to limit the present invention solely thereto, will best be appreciated in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:  
     [0009]FIG. 1 shows an information retrieval system in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the invention.  
     [0010]FIG. 2 shows an example of a display screen that may be used during configuration file editing according to the present invention.  
     [0011]FIG. 3 shows an example of a “personalized page” in accordance with the present invention.  
     [0012] FIGS.  4 - 6  show examples of web pages from which information is culled to form the exemplary personalized page of FIG. 3. 
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF CERTAIN PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS  
     [0013]FIG. 1 shows an information retrieval system in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the invention. As can be seen from the figure, the system includes a system server  2  that is coupled to a computer network  4 . The coupling of the system server and network may take many forms, for example, a telephone wire, a coaxial cable, a twisted-pair wire, a fiber optic link, and/or a wireless link. Also coupled to the system server are a user access device  6  and a database server  8 . Like the network coupling, the user access device coupling and database coupling may take various forms.  
     [0014] The user access device may be a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a cellular telephone, a personal organizer, a palm-top computer, or any other device that is equipped for communication with the system server. Although there are many possible embodiments for the user access device, for purposes of the following description the user access device will be considered to be a hand-held portable access device (e.g., a palmtop computer) and will be referred to as a “handset”.  
     [0015] The handset depicted in FIG. 1 includes a display screen  10  and an antenna  12 . The display screen may be used to display information retrieved from the network through the system server, as well as information pertaining to the use of the handset itself, such as the handset&#39;s battery level. The antenna allows the handset to communicate with the system server when the two are coupled by a wireless link.  
     [0016] The database server of FIG. 1 may be any system capable of electronically storing data including, but not limited to systems that store data on optical disks, magnetic disks, and magnetic tape.  
     [0017] The network in FIG. 1 may be the internet, a local area network (LAN), or any other network that enables the transfer of data. For purposes of describing a preferred embodiment of the invention, the network will be presumed to be the internet. Furthermore, the description will be focused on the world-wide-web aspect of the internet. Accordingly, to facilitate understanding of the invention it should be noted that current world-wide-web operation groups information into “web-pages”; and that the standard format for such pages is the “HTML” format, which enables a web user to create “hypertext links” through the “HTTP” protocol.  
     [0018] The system server is central to the invention&#39;s operation. It is depicted in FIG. 1 as being a collection of software modules  14 - 20 . These modules may be software modules that reside within a single computer, or alternatively, may be distributed among multiple computers. Module  20  is an “HTTP daemon” which runs in the background of the system control software and which is capable of enabling access to HTTP facilities. Modules  14 ,  16  and  18  are request-servicing modules. When the daemon receives an information request it uploads into module  20  one of the request-servicing modules  14  and the uploaded module then carries out the processing necessary to honor the request.  
     [0019] Having described an information retrieval system configuration in accordance with the invention, the operation of the system will now be described in detail.  
     [0020] Personalized information retrieval according to the invention is enabled through configuration files. Each system user has an associated configuration file which is stored in the database server  8 . The configuration file specifies what information the user would like to retrieve and how that information is to be formatted. Thus, for example, a user may want to retrieve information from three different internet web pages, the CNN web page, the ESPN web page, and the NASDAQ web page. Further, the user may want to retrieve specific information from each page, and may want all the information retrieved from the pages to be formatted such that it can be displayed within one display screen of the handset. That is, the user may want “Headline News” from the CNN page, particular stock quotes from the NASDAQ page, and the latest score for a particular sports team from the ESPN page, and may want these items displayed simultaneously on the handset screen. Accordingly, the configuration file is created/edited to retrieve and format the specified CNN, NASDAQ and ESPN information, and then is stored in the database server.  
     [0021] The configuration file may be created and/or edited by the user, or by a service provider. In either case, the file may be created through the same device that will be used to view the retrieved information, or through some other device. In a typical scenario, the user edits the configuration file using a desktop computer and transfers the edited file to the database server for use with the handset.  
     [0022] There are several programming technologies that may be used to perform configuration file editing. Among them are: Netscape Navigator Plug-Ins, which provide a plug-in module that is embedded within the Navigator browser; Netscape Composer Plug-Ins, which provide a plug-in module embedded within Netscape Composer; and Microsoft ActiveX, which provides complete programming control for windows applications. Any of these technologies may be used to design a configuration file editor that will allow users to modify the “look and feel” of their personalized information retrieval. Preferably, the configuration file editor has a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) feature, an example of which is illustrated in FIG. 2. Alternative systems and techniques for performing configuration file editing are discussed in co-pending, commonly assigned, U.S. patent application Ser. No.: ______ (Attorney Docket No. 450103-4450)—entitled Apparatus and Method for Designating Information to be Retrieved Over a Computer Network—which application is incorporated herein by reference.  
     [0023]FIG. 2 shows a display screen  22  of a configuration file editing platform during WYSIWYG type editing. The screen is divided into five portions  24 ,  26 ,  28 ,  30  and  32 . Portion  32  is a screen header which includes general information, such as an indication that the screen pertains to a configuration editor. Portions  24 - 30  are used to provide “drag and drop” style WYSIWYG editing by letting the user drag and drop images, HTML tables, hypertext links, applets, etc. from one portion to another. More specifically, the user selects items from portions  26 ,  28  and  30 , which represent the contents of various web pages, and drags and drops the items in portion  24 , which represents the contents of the user&#39;s configuration file. In the illustrated embodiment, the user edits the configuration file by: selecting item  34  (Headline News) from the CNN portion and dragging and dropping it in the configuration file portion; selecting item  36  (Chicago Team Score) from the ESPN portion and dragging and dropping it in the configuration file; and selecting item  38  (Stock Quote) from the NASDAQ portion and dragging and dropping it in the configuration file. As an added feature, configuration file portion  24  of screen  22  may be set to the size of the access device display, so that the user can see how the display will look following an actual information retrieval.  
     [0024] Upon completion of configuration file editing, the file is sent to the system server to verify any hypertext links that are embedded in the file. If all hypertext links are verified, the system server stores the configuration file in the database server, otherwise the system server notifies the editing platform that one or more hypertext links could not be reached (e.g., an intranet web server behind a corporate firewall). Once the configuration file is stored in the database server, the system is prepared to honor information requests.  
     [0025] The user initiates a request through handset  6  of FIG. 1. One way the handset can provide this function is via a “pull-down” menu that opens up a hypertext link connection to the system server through HTTP protocol. For instance, the handset may open up the connection by using a special flag, such as “http://access.domain/pir” (the “pir” standing for “personal information request”). Alternatively, the handset may open the connection by using a unique IP address. In any event, the user is responsible only for opening a personalized information request connection and for receiving the information as specified in the user&#39;s configuration file. The remainder of the necessary processing is performed by the system server.  
     [0026] As mentioned above, the system server includes an HTTP daemon which runs in the background of the system control software and functions to recognize and service user information requests. When the system server recognizes a request through the daemon it uploads the appropriate request-servicing software module (elements  14 ,  16  and  18  of FIG. 1), identifies the requesting user, and retrieves the user&#39;s configuration file from the database server. Depending on the information contained in the user&#39;s configuration file, the uploaded module opens up the appropriate HTTP connections, fetches the appropriate web pages from the internet, and formats them into a single page that is viewable on the handset. Finally, the formatted page is transmitted to the handset for viewing by the user and the uploaded module notifies the HTTP daemon that the request has been honored.  
     [0027] There are several Web Proxy server technologies suitable for implementing the daemon-module scheme of the system server. These include the Netscape Web Proxy Server, Spyglass Prism, and Apache.  
     [0028] By implementing the invention through a daemon-module scheme as opposed to a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scheme, several benefits are realized. For one, the modules of the present invention may be made substantially smaller than comparable CGI software, thereby conserving system memory. Also, since the modules are smaller than comparable CGI software and are integrated within the HTTP daemon, they can be uploaded from their storage location to the computer on which they run in less time than it would take to upload the comparable CGI software. Moreover, the modules can be uploaded at any time, even if there are no requests, and they do not have to be shutdown following a request. Thus, the modules can be kept at the ready in memory and the process throughput can be increased. Still another benefit is that various types of modules can be inserted into the HTTP daemon, such as modules that perform web statistic analysis, web censorship, image conversion and encryption.  
     [0029] At this point, it should be noted that the user is not limited to viewing only the formatted page (e.g. the formatted page depicted in FIG. 2 as element  24 ). For instance, once a formatted page is received, the user may select (or “click on”) one of the items in the page (e.g. FIG. 2, item  34 —“Headline News”) to request additional information concerning that item. An example of how to provide such a service is to include hypertext links in the information of the formatted page. The user can then use the hypertext links to request display of web pages containing information supplementary to the information of the formatted page. An alternative approach to providing the service is to respectively link one or more items in the formatted page to one or more second formatted pages. Thus, for example, a user may create a second formatted page including items such as “Headline Financial News”, “Headline Sports News”, and “Headline Science News”, and thereafter this second formatted page is retrieved in response to a selection of “Headline News” in the first formatted page. Of course, it is possible to link any second formatted page to one or more third formatted pages, and so on.  
     [0030] An example of a formatted (or “personalized”) page in accordance with the invention is shown in FIG. 3. The formatted page of FIG. 3 incorporates information from three different web pages, a CNN web page (illustrated in FIG. 4), an ESPN web page (illustrated in FIG. 5) and a NASDAQ web page (illustrated in FIG. 6). As can be seen from the figures, the formatted page  40  is made up of three portions, a CNN portion  42 , an ESPN portion  44  and a NASDAQ portion  46 . These portions are culled from their respective web pages. That is, the CNN portion  42 , ESPN portion  44  and NASDAQ portion  46  of the formatted page correspond respectively to portion  48  of CNN web page  50 , portion  52  of ESPN web page  54  and portion  56  of NASDAQ web page  58 —the layout and content of the formatted page having been determined according to the abovedescribed configuration file creation/editing operation.  
     [0031] While the present invention has been particularly shown and described in conjunction with preferred embodiments thereof, it will be readily appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art that various changes may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. For example, although the invention has been described in the context of a user having a single configuration file, it is possible for any one user to have more than one configuration file, the individual configuration files being invoked by distinct user commands so as to specify distinct retrieval parameters. Furthermore, although the display screen  22  of FIG. 2 is described as occupying the entire editor platform display, this is not a requirement (e.g., the editor screen may be positioned within a window that is part of the overall display).  
     [0032] Therefore, it is intended that the appended claims be interpreted as including the embodiments described herein, the alternatives mentioned above, and all equivalents thereto.