Patent ID: 8135700

Claim:
A content providing apparatus comprising: an operation input unit configured for use by a user to perform an input operation for specifying a plurality of points on a line, the input operation comprising causing a cursor to scroll along a portion of the line at a speed lower than a predetermined speed while the tracing plurality of points; a time information output unit configured to output the point specified by the operation input unit as output time information, wherein the content providing apparatus is configured to determine whether the user is scrolling the cursor over the plurality of points at a speed lower than the predetermined speed, and wherein the content providing apparatus determines that the user intends to select the plurality of points as the output time information based only on the user scrolling the cursor over the plurality of points at a speed lower than the predetermined speed; a content storage unit in which a plurality of content items are stored in association with at least time information concerning each of the plurality of content items; a search unit configured to search the content storage unit for at least one content item according to a search condition based on the time information output by the time information output unit, wherein the search unit conducts a search by using time information concerning each of the plurality of points traced by the input operation which is sequentially performed through the operation input unit, wherein the at least one content item comprises at least one of: music, video, electronic book, guidance information, web page and program, and wherein the output time information represents a search condition for at least one of release time, ranking time, performance time, broadcast time, and printing time; a provider configured to provide said at least one content item searched by the search unit to the user; and a unit configured to detect at least one content item per predetermined time corresponding to each of the plurality of points traced by the input operation, and to send information for allowing the user to identify said at least one content item as a detection result to the content receiving terminal.