Education and demonstration – Question or problem eliciting response – Cathode ray screen display included in examining means
Reexamination Certificate
1998-05-29
2001-06-26
Martin-Wallace, Valencia (Department: 3713)
Education and demonstration
Question or problem eliciting response
Cathode ray screen display included in examining means
C434S118000, C434S353000, C434S362000, C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06250930
ABSTRACT:
This currently-pending Provisional U.S. Patent Application and any Nonprovisional Patent Applications deriving therefrom in the U.S. or in other countries and the disclosure(s) contained therein are all hereby incorporated by reference herein.
DESCRIPTION
1. Technical Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of computer software for electronic communications and more particularly, to a system and method for automating the generation and transmission of multimedia messages and the collection, aggregation and analysis of responses thereto.
2. Description of Related Art
There is a consensus in the art that the human mind is incapable of compiling, aggregating and analyzing information from a very large number of users. Without the assistance of computers, the human mind is limited in its ability to process and analyze information sent by thousands of users and aggregate responses into a unified report and/or database.
One of the problems where the automated compilation and analysis of responses is particularly important is in the field of opinion gathering. Traditionally, this task was done using personal meetings, written surveys and telephonic interviews. However, the advent of the Internet and the low cost of electronic communications, such as by e-mail, have made it desirable to develop surveying techniques using these new tools.
However, these new media have not proven to be very adaptable to the needs of opinion gatherers. One of the principal problems faced by the use of electronic mail for conducting surveys have been the fact that electronic mail systems have largely been text-based. However, sophisticated surveyors have found that the quality of the answers they obtain depends a lot on the sophistication of the presentations used to elicit those answers. As noted above, e-mail systems have traditionally been hard to meld with multimedia materials. It has been found that response rates to surveys are significantly improved by the use of sophisticated presentations.
Another problem with the use of electronic mail as a vehicle for conducting surveys etc. has been the difficulties traditionally associated with retrieving and analyzing a plethora of responses. In traditional electronic mail systems, each response typically needs to be individually retrieved and analyzed prior to the generation of results.
Decisive Technology Corporation offers software that analyzes on-line survey responses from multiple sources. Yet, the Decisive technology software does not allow for the incorporation of multimedia images, bitmaps, video clips, web pages, browsers, data and/or documents in a survey, feedback engine, correspondence or questionnaire. Furthermore, the Decisive technology software does not allow for two-way “push” and/or “pull” of multimedia content.
Other products, such as Catapult's Inquisite, Saja Software's Survey Select, Decision Architects' MarketSight, Apian Software's Survey Pro, IntelliQuest's ReplyDisk, Marketing Masters' Survey Said, GenTech's PinPoint, Merlinco's Merlinplus, and Princeton Cybernetics' Survey Chef, RaoSoft's EZSurvey, and the Market First software, also do not allow for the incorporation of multimedia and other Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) compatible objects into a questionnaire, nor do they interface with generic decision engines that generate recommendations for an optimal decision based on the aggregated feedback to multimedia objects.
It is therefore desirable to have e-mail systems that permit the incorporation of multimedia materials and other Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) compatible objects directly into the body of an e-mail message. It has been found desirable for such multimedia materials to be directly accessible to a recipient without loading or configuring specialized plug-ins, add-ons or helper applications. It has also been found desirable for content associated with a web site to be directly included in an e-mail message.
It has also been found desirable to be able to interface an automated e-mail based opinion surveying system with one or more generic decision engines that generate recommendations for an optimal decision based on the aggregated feedback to a presented set of multimedia objects. It would be beneficial if such multimedia-enhanced e-mail could be directly routed to a desired set of recipients without requiring such recipients to have an active connection to the Internet or other communications networks.
It has also been found desirable to have automated techniques for collecting, collating, analyzing and reporting responses to opinion surveys conducted using enhanced multimedia e-mail messages.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Therefore, it is primary object of the present invention to create an mass feedback and opinion-gathering system that permits the incorporation of multimedia materials and other Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) compatible objects directly into the body of an e-mail message. It is a further object of the present invention for such multimedia materials to become directly accessible to a recipient without the loading or configuration of specialized plug-ins, add-ons or helper applications. It is yet another object of the present invention for content associated with a web site to be directly included in an e-mail message rather than as an attachment.
It is also an object of the present invention to be able to interface an automated e-mail based opinion surveying system with one or more generic decision engines that generate recommendations for an optimal decision based on the aggregated feedback to a presented set of multimedia objects. It is an auxiliary object of the present invention for such multimedia-enhanced e-mail to be directly routed to a desired set of recipients without requiring such recipients to have an active connection to the Internet or other communications networks.
Yet another object of the present invention is to develop an automated technique for collecting, collating, analyzing and reporting responses to opinion surveys conducted using enhanced e-mail messages.
The system and method of the present invention uses electronic mail (e-mail) as a transport mechanism to enable a complete automated cycle process comprising the authoring and editing of a multimedia message with a feedback element, communicating this message to a plenitude of users, collecting and aggregating the responses from a subset of these users, analyzing the aggregated data, storing the results in a database and generating one or more reports.
The present invention relates to a multi-functional horizontal software platform, comprising at its core of five engines, uniquely organized and operating in an open-sequence architecture. The platform is capable of inter-operating with past, present or future technologies, as well as vertical applications. The platform comprising an authoring and editing engine, a communication engine, a web browser command engine, an aggregation engine and an analysis and distribution engine. These engines can also be used in conjunction with other industry products thus allowing a user to develop a virtually unlimited number of applications.
The system and method of the present invention allows for the incorporation and generation of any combination of multimedia presentation capabilities in an e-mail message, questionnaire, survey or correspondence, for the aggregation/compilation of incoming information from millions of users into a single message/document, spreadsheet, or database instantaneously, simultaneously generating automatic reports in “real time”, exporting the data to presentation software, word processing software applications, database packages, spreadsheet programs, and sharing and publishing the aggregated data with just the click of a button. The system and method of the present invention uniquely enables both one-to-many (broadcast) and many-to-one communications, transactions, electronic commerce and real-time aggregation and analysis in a multi-tasking, multi-media environment.
In one aspect,
Casella Anthony J.
Harris Chanda
Hespos Gerald E.
Martin-Wallace Valencia
Picante Communications Corporation
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