Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Computer-to-computer data addressing
Reexamination Certificate
1999-01-06
2001-08-14
Coulter, Kenneth R. (Department: 2154)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Computer-to-computer data addressing
C707S793000, C345S215000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06275862
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to web browsers, and more particularly, to a web browser that automatically categorizes bookmarks.
2. Description of Related Art
Bookmarks provide a popular way of identifying frequently visited web sites or pages. All browsers provide facilities (e.g., “Favorites”) for creating folders and sub-folders that store bookmarks. Of course, bookmarks must be created and organized manually by the user.
Often, the user keeps multiple bookmarks to pages served from the same web sites. An example of this is a stock broker site, wherein the user keeps bookmarks for a “quotes” page, a “trading” page, a “holdings” page, a “stock news” page, and so on.
However, these prior art browsers do not automatically create bookmarks. Moreover, these prior art browsers do not have any mechanism for automatically categorizing various bookmarks based on some commonality.
There are some facilities that do enhance the use of bookmarks, however. For example, the WebExtra web site, located at the uniform resource locator (URL) http://www.aescon.com/innoval/webextra/, has a facility to create bookmarks by category. However, the bookmark categories have to be manually created. The same is true in the Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer web browsers.
In another example, the Flying Toolbars (“AdvertisingWARE”) web site, located at the URL http://www.webcom.com/flyingtb/advert.html, has a facility for automatically inserting bookmarks of interest into a menu item on the browser.
In yet another example, the MakeMark web site, located at the URL http://eee.uci.edu/toolbox/makemark2.html, has a facility to compress and archive bookmarks hierarchically and automatically. However, it does not have any facility for automatic categorization.
Still another example is the Smart Bookmarks web site, located at the URL http://www.software.net/PKSN023426/prod.htm, provides a facility for personal web-based notification and delivery of web sites that are of interest to the user and that have changed, but it too does not have a facility to automatically categorize bookmarks.
Another example is the publication entitled “Personalizing the Web” by Udi Manber (Usenix December 1997 Symposium on Internet technologies), which describes a technique wherein the user can select specific sites of interest and create a web page of the sites he/she likes by dragging and dropping a page retrieved from the web site.
It can be seen, then, that there is a need in the art for a web browser that applies intelligence to the creation and management of bookmarks. Specifically, there is a need for browsers that automatically create and categorize bookmarks.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
To minimize the limitations in the prior art described above, and to minimize other limitations that will become apparent upon reading and understanding the present specification, the present invention discloses a method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for automatically categorizing bookmarks in a web browser. When a page to be bookmarked is identified, the web browser compares a property of the identified page with properties of pages already saved in one or more bookmark groups or subgroups. If the web browser finds another page in a bookmark group that is “similar” to the identified page, it adds the URL of the identified page to the bookmark group. On the other hand, if the URLs for the two pages are exactly the same, the URL of the identified page is not added to the bookmark group. Similarity may be defined as commonality in some portion of the URLs for the pages or commonality in textual information associated with the pages.
An object of the present invention is to enhance the delivery of Web content to the user. Another object is to provide mechanisms for more efficiently organizing Web pages for the user.
A feature of the present invention is that it can be realized on many current commercial web browser products with relatively low cost, because it can be implemented with well-structured extensions to existing software. Another feature of the present invention is that none of the other existing software systems have to be changed to implement the present invention.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5813007 (1998-09-01), Nielson
patent: 6037934 (2000-03-01), Himmel et al.
patent: 6041360 (2000-03-01), Himmel et al.
patent: 6100890 (2000-08-01), Bates et al.
“WebExtra . . . Hypercharge the WebExplorer™ ”, (http://www.aescon.com/innoval/webextra/), 1996, 1pp.
“Advertising-Flying Toolbars: A Useful Netscape Navigator Add-on”, Advertising WARE, (http://www.webcom.com/flyingtb/advert.html), 2pp and source code pp. 1-4, Sep. 9, 1997.
“EEE Toolbox: MultiFile Bookmark Publisher”, UCI Electronic Educational Environment (http:/ / eee.uci.edu/toolbox/markemark2.html), revised Apr. 1, 1998, 2pp.
“Smart Bookmarks”, PC Magazine—The 1997 Utility Guide (Smart Bookmarks), (http://ww8.zdnet.com/pcmag/features/utility/offbrwsr/uob7.htm), First Floor Inc., Yvonne, Koulouthros, 2pp. and source code pp. 1-11, Jul. 1, 1997.
Udi Manber, “Creating a Personal Web Notebook”, USENIX Association, USENIX Symposium on Internet Technologies and Systems, Dec. 8-11, 1997, pp. 183-191.
Sharma Nandini
Sundaresan Neelakantan
Coulter Kenneth R.
Gates & Cooper LLP
International Business Machines - Corporation
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