Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
2003-03-17
2004-10-12
Robinson, Greta (Department: 2177)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C707S793000, C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06804675
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF INVENTION
The present invention relates to an online electronic message board system. The invention is especially suited for online services that require intelligent monitoring of subscriber tastes and interests so that relevant content can be located, extracted and presented in accordance with subscriber derived feedback information.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the xerographic reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure in exactly the form it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
BACKGROUND OF INVENTION
Online bulletin board systems (BBS) and discussion group boards are well-known in the art. Surprisingly, however, over the past 15 years or so they have failed to evolve significantly in sophistication and/or ease of use. In fact, compared to the developments made in applications software, user interfaces, internet browsers, etc., online message boards are still remarkably primitive. At this time, some popular stock discussion boards known to applicants are located on the internet at the following locations:
www.dejanews.com
messages.yahoo.com/index.html
boards.fool.com
www.techstocks.com
www.ragingbull.com
www.remarq.com
Of these, the fool.com board website maintained by an organization known as “The Motley Fool” is probably the most technologically sophisticated and user-friendly. However, this message board, as with each of the boards above, is constricted by the fact that it relies on HTML coding, which, while easy to implement on the provider side, is relatively static, and not extremely functional from the user's perspective. HTML is also easily handled by conventional user web browsers as well, and this is another reason why it is in widespread use.
A conventional prior art message board is illustrated in
FIGS. 1A and 1B
. As seen here, an interface
100
for an internet service provider permits the user to visualize a display area
110
which includes a number of posted messages
115
for a particular subject, which, in this case, involves company A. These posted messages are generated by users having access to the website maintained by the service provider, and can include information, commentary, etc., on any one of a variety of different subjects pertaining to company A, such as, for example, discussions of recent stock movements, products offered, press releases, etc. The users (subscribers) of the service provider compose these messages at their local computer systems, and then send (post) the same to a server at the website, where they are screened (usually for improper content), indexed (to identify topic, author, date, etc.) and stored for later retrieval by other users. Each message, therefore, is posted by a user-author within the logical area for Company A according to topic, and date, and such information is usually displayed in a region
115
of display area
110
. A list of such messages, therefore, appears to the user when he/she visits the message board, and selects the logical area reserved for Company A. This list for Company A can be organized by topic, author, date, etc. by clicking an activation button associated with each of the labels “Topic,” “Author” and/or “Date.” An additional set of control buttons
125
can be used by the user to perform such functions as “Request”—i.e., to retrieve the message highlighted by the cursor (the entry marked in shaded form), “Create”—which allows the user to compose a new message for the topic in question, and “Find”—which allows the user to search the list of messages in the topic area for selected content. As seen further in
FIG. 1
b
, when the user Requests a particular message, display area
110
is replaced by a different display area
130
, which shows the user the message entry in question. At this point, the user can read the content of the message as provided in area
135
, and can then respond to the same by activating a “Reply” button
140
. This has the effect, of course, of posting yet another message under the topic in question, identified with an author name corresponding to the user.
This message board system, while commonly used in the industry, is not extremely functional or user friendly. First, from a high level perspective, when first visiting the message board, the user is presented with a first screen as seen in
FIG. 1C
which forces them to select from a broad area of subjects broken down as Company A, Company B, Company C, etc. This means that a decision must be made by the user early on to narrow the focus of his/her query, and this restricts their later retrieval of relevant material that may be of interest to them. Accordingly, it is not extremely accurate or flexible, since the user must return to this first search staging area anytime they want to change subjects.
Second, assuming that the user is at the second stage of the prior art search interface shown in display area
110
, and wants to examine a particular message, display area
110
vanishes from his/her view, so they are unable to jump to any other arbitrary selected message located within the topic area. Instead, the user is confined to moving through the messages (using interface
130
, which is essentially yet a third stage of the interface) sequentially, typically using the “Prior” and “Next” buttons shown in area
140
, which have the effect of moving backwards/forwards respectively through the list of messages for the topic. Since the display list of all the posted messages from the second stage is now out of sight, the user can experience significant frustration in trying to find another message that may have caught his/her attention during the time they were examining display area
110
. The alternative, of course, is to close area
130
and return to the display area
110
, and this option does allow the user to see the list again. This alternative is not attractive, however, since it requires additional keystrokes, and has the effect of now closing area
130
so it is no longer visible by the user.
In short, there is no easy way in the art to browse through messages on a bulletin board in random access fashion, or to see both a message list and content for a particular message at the same time. Also, the user must constantly transcend different stages of visual interfaces to move about during the search process, because such stages do not exist in any integrated, harmonized fashion.
Third, while the user is at the second stage of the search process, he/she is limited to seeing the messages in display area
110
as they are stored at the website; in other words, indexed by Topic, Author, Date, etc., but with no additional screening/filtering capability. This means that the user is sometimes (depending on popular the topic is) forced to browse through hundreds of messages (postings) to find an item of interest. While the prior art does allow some searching capability within this second stage, it is relatively primitive in that it cannot transcend the logical area bound by messages for Company A; in other words, it is not possible to search across all subjects for a keyword of interest. Again, this means that the user is not receiving complete information, and this detracts from the appeal of such system. Also, the search constructs possible with the prior system are very limited, and do not allow for advance filtering techniques, so that, for example, the user can use multiple filters to find content. For instance, locating postings by a specific author having specific keywords is not possible at this time. Moreover, within this second stage, the user must formulate and define his/her own search queries for each new query, and then pass this request to the service provider, where it is processed to return relevant hits to the user. This can take time, of course, and because this portion of the interface has no “memory”—in the sense of remembering the
Gross J. Nicholas
Knight Timothy O.
Gross J. Nicholas
Le Debbie M.
Maquis Techtrix LLC
Robinson Greta
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