Title: System for prioritizing of document presented on constrained receiving station interfaces to users of the internet personalized to each user's needs and interests
Abstract: 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.
Patent Number: 6,961,901 Issued on 11/01/2005 to Colson
| Inventors:
|
Colson; James Campbell (Austin, TX)
|
| Assignee:
|
International Business Machines Corporation (Armonk, NY)
|
| Appl. No.:
|
240496 |
| Filed:
|
January 29, 1999 |
| Current U.S. Class: |
715/526; 715/527; 715/517 |
| Intern'l Class: |
G06F 015/00 |
| Field of Search: |
707/527,526,500,501.1,517
715/526,527,500,501.1,517
|
References Cited [Referenced By]
U.S. Patent Documents
Primary Examiner: Feild; Joseph
Assistant Examiner: Singh; R.
Attorney, Agent or Firm: Kraft; Jerry, Walker; Mark S., Van Leuwen; Leslie
Claims
1. In a computer managed communication network with user access via a plurality
of data processor controlled interactive receiving stations and with a system for
presenting documents transmitted to said receiving stations from locations remote
from said stations, a method for enabling a user to interface with said documents
at said receiving stations through display devices having greater interface functional
constraints than a standard desktop personal computer display interface including
lesser dimensions than said standard desktop personal computer interface comprising:
presenting a plurality of types of received documents to a selected user through
a device having a standard desktop personal computer display interface,
tracking the interactive activity of said selected user to said plurality of
types of received documents,
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 each having lesser dimensions than said standard desktop personal
computer interface in an order based upon said priority.
2. The method of claim 1 wherein said device having greater interface functional
constraints through which received documents are presented to said user has an
audible interface.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein said device having greater interface functional
constraints though which received documents are presented to said user has a display
interface of lower resolution than said standard desktop display interface.
4. The method of claim 1 including the step of further varying said prioritized
order of received document presentation based upon the interface functional constraints
of the receiving station device.
5. The method of claim 1 wherein said communication network is the Internet.
6. The method of claim 5 wherein said received documents are types of electronic
mail, said types being determined by attributes of said mail.
7. In a computer managed communication network with user access via a plurality
of data processor controlled interactive receiving stations and with a system for
presenting documents transmitted to said receiving stations from locations remote
from said stations, apparatus for enabling a user to interface with said documents
at said receiving stations through display devices having greater interface functional
constraints than a standard desktop personal computer display interface including
lesser dimensions than said standard desktop personal computer interface comprising:
means for presenting a plurality of types of received documents to a selected
user through a device having a standard desktop personal computer display interface,
means for tracking the interactive activity of said selected user to said plurality
of types of received documents,
means for determining the priority of said types of received documents based
upon said tracking, and
means for presenting received documents of said plurality of types to said selected
user through said devices each having lesser dimensions than said standard desktop
personal computer interface in an order based upon said priority.
8. The communication network of claim 7 wherein said device having greater interface
functional constraints through which received documents are presented to said user
has an audible interface.
9. The communication network of claim 7 wherein said device having greater interface
functional constraints though which received documents are presented to said user
has a display interface of lower resolution than said standard desktop display interface.
10. The communication network of claim 7 further including means for varying
said prioritized order of received document presentation based upon the interface
functional constraints of the receiving station device.
11. The communication network of claim 7 wherein said network is the Internet.
12. The communication network of claim 11 wherein said received documents are
types of electronic mail, said types being determined by attributes of said mail.
13. A computer program for a computer managed communication network with user
access via a plurality of data processor controlled interactive receiving stations
and with a system for presenting documents transmitted to said receiving stations
from locations remote from said stations, said program having code recorded on
a computer readable medium for enabling a user to interface with said documents
at said receiving stations through display devices having greater interface functional
constraints than a standard desktop personal computer display interface including
lesser dimensions than said standard desktop personal computer interface comprising:
means for presenting a plurality of types of received documents to a selected
user through a device having a standard desktop personal computer display interface,
means for tracking the interactive activity of said selected user to said plurality
of types of received documents,
means for determining the priority of said types of received documents based
upon said tracking, and
means for presenting received documents of said plurality of types to said selected
user through said devices each having lesser dimensions than said standard desktop
personal computer interface in an order based upon said priority.
14. The computer program of claim 13 wherein said device having greater interface
functional constraints through which received documents are presented to said user
has an audible interface.
15. The computer program of claim 13 wherein said device having greater interface
functional constraints though which received documents are presented to said user
has a display interface of lower resolution than said standard desktop display interface.
16. The computer program of claim 13 further including means for varying said
prioritized order of received document presentation based upon the interface functional
constraints of the receiving station device.
17. The computer program of claim 13 wherein said network is the Internet.
18. The computer program of claim 17 wherein said received documents are types
of electronic mail, said types being determined by attributes of said mail.
Description
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.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
The present invention will be better understood and its numerous objects and
advantages will become more apparent to those skilled in the art by reference to
the following drawings, in conjunction with the accompanying specification, in which:
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a data processing system including a central processing
unit and network connections via a communications adapter which is capable of implementing
the receiving display station on which the received Web page or Web document may
be processed in accordance with the present invention;
FIG. 2 is a generalized diagrammatic view of an Internet portion upon which
the present invention may be implemented;
FIG. 3 is a general flowchart of a programming set up to implement the present
invention for prioritizing of documents presented on constrained receiving station interfaces;
FIG. 4 is a flowchart of an illustrative run of the program set up in FIG. 3;
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT
Referring to FIG. 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 bus
12. An operating system
41 runs on CPU
10, provides control
and is used to coordinate the function of the various components of FIG. 1. Operating
system
41 may 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 programs
40 controlled by the system are moved into
and out of the main memory RAM
14. 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)
16 is
connected to CPU
10 via bus
12 and includes the basic input/output
system (BIOS) that controls the basic computer functions. Random access memory
(RAM)
14, I/O adapter
18 and communications adapter
34 are
also interconnected to system bus
12. I/O adapter
18 may be a small
computer system interface (SCSI) adapter that communicates with the disk storage
device
20. Communications adapter
34 interconnects bus
12
with 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 bus
12
via user interface adapter
22 and display adapter
36. Keyboard
24
and mouse
26 are all interconnected to bus
12 through user interface
adapter
22. Display adapter
36 includes a frame buffer
39,
which is a storage device that holds a representation of each pixel on the display
screen
38. Images may be stored in frame buffer
39 for display on
monitor
38 through 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 keyboard
24 or mouse
26 and receiving output information from the system via display
38.
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 computer
56
controlled display terminal
57 used for Web page or other document display
of the present invention, is connected as shown in FIG. 2. Computer
56 and
display terminal
57 are the computer system shown in FIG. 1 and connection
58 (FIG. 2) is the network connection shown in FIG. 1. Reference may be
made to the above-mentioned
Mastering 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 of FIG. 2 is one of these known as a host-dial connection.
Such host-dial connections have been in use for over 30 years through network access
servers
53 which are linked
51 to the Internet
50. The servers
53 are maintained by a service provider to the client's display terminal
57. The host's server
53 is accessed by the client terminal
57
through a normal dial-up telephone linkage
58 via modem
54, telephone
line
55 and modem
52. The HTML files representative of the Web pages
are downloaded to display terminal
57 through controlling server
53
and computer
56 via the telephone line linkages from server
53 which
may have accessed them from the internet
50 via linkage
51. Computer
56 and 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/display
56/
57 when 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 server
53 so 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 server
53.
Now, with reference to FIGS. 3 and 4 we will describe a process implemented
by the present invention in conjunction with the flowcharts of these figures. FIG.
3 is 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 to FIG. 3, first, process step
81, 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, step
82. Then, step
83, 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, step
84, a routine is set up for prioritizing the documents
received at a web station based upon the weights determined in step
83.
Then step
85, a process is set up for applying the priorities developed
in step
84 when 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, step
86, for providing optionally applied additional rules based
upon the nature of the constraints of the device interface of step
85 to
the priority determination of step
84. The running of the process will now
be described with respect to FIG. 4. First, step
90, a determination is
made, step
90 as to whether a Web session is opened, step
90. If
No, the process loops back to step
90 where the opening of a Web session
is awaited. If Yes, then step
91, 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,
step
92 and to store the attribute values, step
93, to use these
values to determine document priority rules for the particular user, step
94,
and to store such rules,
95. At this point, the process is returned to step
91 where a determination is made as to whether the desktop environment has
continued. If the decision from step
91 is No, then a determination made
as to whether we have one of the constrained user interfaces, step
96; if
Yes, then the received documents are prioritized, step
98, according to
the prioritized rules personalized to the user's needs and interests, and stored
in step
95, and the documents are displayed or otherwise output in the prioritized
order, step
99. It was previously mentioned that the priority rules (of
step
95) 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, step
101. At this point or if the decision
from step
100 is No, then the process returns to decision step
97
via branch "A". In this connection, if the decision from step
96 had been
No, the process would also have proceeded to decision step
97 where 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 step
96, 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
RAM
14, FIG. 1, during computer operations or in the RAM of network server
53, 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.
*
