Source: http://www.google.com/patents/US7676505?ie=ISO-8859-1&dq=PCT/US01/05609
Timestamp: 2015-04-19 13:21:45
Document Index: 62883799

Matched Legal Cases: ['Application No. 2004', 'Application No. 2002', 'Application No. 2004', 'Application No. 2002', 'Application No. 2002', 'Application No. 2002', 'Application No. 2003', 'Application No. 2004']

Patent US7676505 - System, method and computer program product for shared user tailoring of ... - Google PatentsSearch Images Maps Play YouTube News Gmail Drive More »Sign inAdvanced Patent SearchPatentsUsers create, share, and build collaboration communities around tailored versions of the functional pages of a web site, such as the pages used to select and purchase products, or the pages used to present course materials in an online-learning site. The tailored versions of the web site are stored at...http://www.google.com/patents/US7676505?utm_source=gb-gplus-sharePatent US7676505 - System, method and computer program product for shared user tailoring of websitesAdvanced Patent SearchPublication numberUS7676505 B2Publication typeGrantApplication numberUS 11/340,968Publication dateMar 9, 2010Filing dateJan 27, 2006Priority dateJan 27, 2006Fee statusPaidAlso published asCN101008958A, US20070185927Publication number11340968, 340968, US 7676505 B2, US 7676505B2, US-B2-7676505, US7676505 B2, US7676505B2InventorsDavid M Chess, Alla Segal, Ian Nicholas Whalley, Jian YinOriginal AssigneeInternational Business Machines CorporationExport CitationBiBTeX, EndNote, RefManPatent Citations (22), Non-Patent Citations (15), Referenced by (12), Classifications (9), Legal Events (5) External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, EspacenetSystem, method and computer program product for shared user tailoring of websites
Low-cost solutions to other Net related and Web related information design problems have been achieved by leveraging user-created design or organizational information. The Google� search engine, for instance, rather than using a specifically-organized hierarchy of web pages by subject (as attempted by the Yahoo!� and dmoz systems), allows the logical structure of the Web to emerge from the links that page authors create between pages (S. Brin and L. Page, �The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual Web search engine,� In Proceedings of the 7th World Wide Web Conference, pages 107-117, 1998). The flickr online photo-sharing community uses user-entered �tags� rather than a pre-designed set of categories to allow users to structure the photographs on the site. Various portal sites, such as �Yahoo!�� and �My AOL��, allow each user to create a personalized �portal� page for which the user selects the set of information items that the page may contain (from a list of preset available items), and selects some aspects of the page's appearance (such as the ordering or placement of the information items, the background color used, and the like); this portal page is presented to the user each time he enters the site. Several existing publications describe mechanisms for site owners to change the content or appearance of their web site, or to allow site users to customize the visual appearance of a page for their own use (see, for instance, Percival�US Published Patent Application No. 2004/0039795, Hewett�US Published Patent Application No. 2002/0103856, Croney�US Published Patent Application No. 2004/0268228, Kowtko�US Published Patent Application No. 2002/0065877, Bier�US Published Patent Application No. 2002/0073125, Hillar�US Published Patent Application No. 2002/0046245, and Robert�US Published Patent Application No. 2003/0065638), or to allow site users to add content to the site (as in �Wiki� style systems; see for instance �Corporate Collaboration with TWiki�, WEB Techniques, v. 5, n. 12, pp. 51-55, December 2000). Some of these known methods include allowing the export in other formats of site content (as in many Wiki-style systems) or of user customization properties (as in Croney�US Published Patent Application No. 2004/0268228). But none of these solutions allow users to create, share, and build collaboration communities around tailored versions of the functional pages of a web site (such as the pages used to select and purchase products, or the pages used to present course materials in an online-learning site).
Other solutions have been of limited scope. Various computer programs such as the WinAmp� media player and the Mozilla� web browser allow the user to create and apply �skins� and �plugins� to change the appearance and function of the program, thus effectively offloading some aspects of the program's design onto the user community. This type of �skinning�, however, applies to individual computer programs rather than to web sites. Web browser accessories such as the �Greasemonkey� program for the Mozilla� web browser allow the user to alter the data that is received from a web site, in order to change the user's experience of the site as viewed through the browser. But because Greasemonkey scripts are stored and applied at the client side, they are negatively impacted by changes to the server-side design of the site (and are therefore much less reliable than tailoring done at the server side), and they are not under the control of the owners of the site.
The exemplary embodiments of this invention allow a user to create, share, and build collaboration communities by sharing tailored versions of the visual and functional pages of a web site (such as the pages used to select and purchase products, or the pages used to present course materials in an online-learning site). The exemplary embodiments of this invention may be used with an open source community as an example of leveraging a large community of users and volunteer developers to economically develop a web site. Users may create their own tailored versions of the entire site, encompassing both visual experience (such as graphical user interfaces�GUIs) and functional organization, and share those tailored versions with each other and with users who are not themselves interested in doing their own customization. This effectively offloads some of the work of web site design onto the user community, leading to a number of advantages. Since the tailored versions of the web site are designed by users, they reflect the actual needs of at least some real users, rather than reflecting the often inaccurate assumptions about user needs made by the site owners or professional designers. Because new tailored versions may be created at any time, the available versions of the site may also track changes in user needs or preferences. As users create the tailored versions for themselves and for each other, and then share them with potentially many other users, a large number of designs may be made available at little or no additional cost per design. And, the activity of creating and sharing versions of the web site design, and the social interaction that the activity affords, may increase the users temporal and/or financial investment in the web site. The present invention allows web site owners to leverage the user community to improve the design of their web sites. Another advantage of the present invention is that it allows web site designers to share their designs with others, and to use their design skills on web sites that they do not themselves own or control.
The term �mechanism,� as used throughout this specification, refers to software code, firmware code, a process, a hardware element, a software element, a firmware element, an apparatus, a device, a software program, a software subroutine, a special purpose circuit, a general purpose circuit, or any combination of these. For example, a mechanism may be a set of software modules under the control of a main software program resident on the server.
The term �web site,� as used throughout this specification, refers to a group of web pages in which one or more web pages of the group may have hyperlinks to other web pages of the group in which the group of web pages is maintained and made accessible by an individual or an entity such as a company, educational institution, government, etc.
FIG. 9 illustrates an embodiment of a method for modifying a web site by a user. A plurality of information streams and request and command mechanisms used in the operation of the web site may be made available over the Web 102 in machine-readable or computer readable form, as shown in step 901 of FIG. 9. These mechanisms may include programmatic access 902, 903 to those information streams and request and command mechanisms in the object being modified or created for a site user creating or modifying an appearance of a tailored version of the website or a portlet or other design element. In order to facilitate the creation of a modified version of a web site, and of portlets and other design elements for use in modified versions, some embodiments of this invention include mechanisms to provide programmatic access, 904, 905 to various information streams and command and request channels involved in the function that the web site performs. These information streams and request and command mechanisms may be in a variety of formats, including, for example, eXtensible Markup Language (XML) syndication formats such as Rich Site Summary (RSS), Outline Processor Markup Language (OPML), Web Distributed Data eXchange (WDDX), Resource Description Framework (RDF), and Atom. Programmatic access to the information streams, such as, for example, search results, site news, weather reports, and the like, may be provided through mechanisms such as simple http transport (e.g., as used by the JavaScript� XmlHttpConnection object), and other mechanisms. These mechanisms allow users to create tailored versions of the web site by modifying the appearance and/or function of the entire web site or some functional subset of it (FIG. 5). For example, these modifications may range from relatively simple ones made available to inexperienced users, such as changing colors or type-faces, re-positioning design elements or windows on the page, scaling design elements and/or design content (e.g., for visually impaired users), or moving elements from page to page. More sophisticated users may be offered the ability to write their own style sheets (in, for example, the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) language or JavaScrip�), their own HyperText Markup Language (HTML) templates, their own JavaScrip�) programs to be included on the modified pages, and the like. Users may be able to create their own design elements that may be put onto and moved between pages of the modified web site, including designing new portlets (Web-based design and functional elements that may request, receive, and display specialized information on a web site) with technologies such as the WebSphere� Portal Server available from the assignee of this patent application. These modified versions of the web site may be created by various means, including interaction with the web site's customization mechanisms via a web-based front end through the browser, interaction with standard Web design tools and uploading the result to the web site, interaction with a special client program provided by the web site, and the like. At least some of the users who are offered the ability to modify the appearance and/or function of the web site 906 are also offered the ability to save their modifications 907, 908, typically, by giving the modified version of the web site a name by which it may later be accessed. If there is to be no save, processing of the method ceases to be performed 909.
FIG. 7 illustrates an embodiment of a method of the present invention in which a user may access the tailored versions through a thumbnail presentation 702, a list of available tailored versions 703, or, through a narrowing down of candidates by the use of one or more filters 704. The present invention is well suited for providing a user with individually accessible tailored versions of a web site. In alternate embodiments, the modified versions of the web site may be made available by a variety of means, including merely allowing the user to see a list of the currently available modified versions, with their names and short descriptions, on a web page and selecting one to use, by ordering the available modified versions by popularity, by submitting natural language or key word queries, through behavioral heuristics of the user, by cookies, by manually input criteria (e.g., wish lists), by organizing the available modified versions into hierarchies by theme and style, by allowing the creator of the modified version and potentially other users to �tag� each modified version with ad-hoc textual tags and allowing users to search and browse the available modified versions according to the assigned tags, and the like. In FIG. 7, the web sites may be displayed as thumbnails such that a user may select a given web site by selecting the corresponding thumbnail by pressing a corresponding selection icon, such as a graphic button 702 from display option 701. In FIG. 7, the web sites may be displayed as a list, such as shown in FIG. 3. This list option may be selected by pressing a corresponding selection icon, such as graphic button 703. A filter system is also provided, such as through graphic button 704. Other graphic buttons, such as exit button 705, may be included. A filter sub-menu 706 may be displayed for a user to select one or more filters to narrow down a pool of tailored versions from tens, hundreds, or more, to a reasonable few. Possible filters include tailored version popularity 707, most recently used tailored versions 708, user behavioral heuristics 709, user entered keywords 710, user skill level 711, 712, and 713, and the like. Popularity may be determined through a rating scheme. If a rating scheme is used for ranking, the rating may be determined as a user average rating, a user median rating, an average of the middle percentage (e.g., 80%) of user ratings, a user average rating of what is determined to be a pool of similar users, an average of professional reviewers, or the like. Alternate embodiments of this invention may include online mechanisms to allow users to announce and discuss the modified versions of the web site and/or web site elements (the portlets or other design elements) that they have created and made available. Selection of filters may be accomplished in various alternate manners, including, as a non-limiting example, by checking and/or unchecking filter selection boxes in which case all selected filters are applied at once. Once a user has selected the desired filters, he or she may then apply the filter(s) 715, through an optionally demarcated window 714. These online mechanisms for announcement and/or discussion may include the abovementioned textual �tags�, as well as discussion forums and comment threads and other discussion mechanisms known to the art, quality ratings of the available modified versions, and the like. In an embodiment, announcements may also be made through the transmission of email alerts to collaborative community members.
The present invention lends itself to remuneration of the web site owner(s). Making some aspects of, or utilities for, web site modification available for a fee (or as part of a premium site membership) to especially motivated or enthusiastic users may also serve as a revenue stream for the site. A mechanism may be provided for making some aspects of web site modification, and/or some utilities and/or sample programs for use in creating modified versions of the web site, available for a fee (e.g., through PayPal�), or available only to �premium� site members as an incentive to become a member. Embodiments of this invention may offer rewards, in the form of payment, increased site access, or other forms, to those users who create the most popular, or otherwise most beneficial, modified versions of the site or design elements for other users to use.
Alternate embodiments of this invention may include mechanisms to direct aid some users toward those modified versions of the web site that are most likely to appeal to them. For example, a web site may be programmed to determine usage patterns of each user (stored in usage DB 105) and recommend those modified versions that have proven most popular with other users whose usage patterns are similar. The authors of modified versions of the web site, and other users, may be permitted to mark each modified version of the web site according to the user type that the modified version is intended for. User type may be categorized in a variety of manners including skill level, personal style, cognitive style, sensory capabilities, and the like. Skill level may include �newcomer� (or beginner), �intermediate,� and �power user� (or advanced). Cognitive style may include �visual learner� and �narrative.� A user may be characterized through multiple user types. The version marks may be combined with user entered information, processor determined usage patterns by a user, self-descriptions entered into user profiles, and other information about each individual user to determine which modified versions of the website to recommend to that user.
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webUS20140195305 *Jan 10, 2013Jul 10, 2014Yehoshua LehaviMethod for creating a digital solution for a business* Cited by examinerClassifications U.S. Classification1/1, 707/999.203International ClassificationG06F17/30, G06F12/00Cooperative ClassificationG06F17/3089, Y10S707/99954, G06F17/30873European ClassificationG06F17/30W7, G06F17/30W3Legal EventsDateCodeEventDescriptionFeb 27, 2014FPAYFee paymentYear of fee payment: 4Feb 27, 2014SULPSurcharge for late paymentJan 16, 2014ASAssignmentEffective date: 20131230Owner name: TWITTER, INC., CALIFORNIAFree format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION;REEL/FRAME:032075/0404Oct 18, 2013REMIMaintenance fee reminder mailedFeb 15, 2006ASAssignmentOwner name: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION, NEW YFree format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:CHESS, DAVID M.;SEGAL, ALLA;WHALLEY, IAN NICHOLAS;AND OTHERS;REEL/FRAME:017261/0081;SIGNING DATES FROM 20060113 TO 20060116Owner name: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION,NEW YOFree format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:CHESS, DAVID M.;SEGAL, ALLA;WHALLEY, IAN NICHOLAS AND OTHERS;SIGNED BETWEEN 20060113 AND 20060116;US-ASSIGNMENT DATABASE UPDATED:20100309;REEL/FRAME:17261/81Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:CHESS, DAVID M.;SEGAL, ALLA;WHALLEY, IAN NICHOLAS;AND OTHERS;SIGNING DATES FROM 20060113 TO 20060116;REEL/FRAME:017261/0081RotateOriginal ImageGoogle Home - Sitemap - USPTO Bulk Downloads - Privacy Policy - Terms of Service - About Google Patents - Send FeedbackData provided by IFI CLAIMS Patent Services