Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput – Remote data accessing – Using interconnected networks
Reexamination Certificate
2002-08-02
2004-07-27
Lin, Wen Tai (Department: 2154)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput
Remote data accessing
Using interconnected networks
C709S217000, C709S219000, C705S023000, C705S026640
Reexamination Certificate
active
06769018
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is directed to a system for providing users of the Internet with easy access to the World Wide Web. More particularly, the present invention is directed to providing a central location which World Wide Web users of the Internet can reach and can then instruct to provide them with ready access to a particular location on the World Wide Web portion of the Internet.
DESCRIPTION OF RELATED ART
Use of the Internet, a worldwide network of millions of computers in more than a hundred countries, has become a major communications and information medium influencing many aspects of business and personal life. At the present time, almost every large corporation, university, government, organization, and many businesses and individual users around the world are connected to and have access to the worldwide network known as the Internet. The Internet is a collection of individual computer networks which are connected to each other by means of high-speed telephone and satellite data links, and which are all connected by a public-domain communications software standard.
The Internet was developed in the late 1960s, when it was established by the United States Defense Department as a research project for use by defense contractors and universities. The purpose of the Internet at that time was to create a military computer network which could still function reliably if any parts of it were destroyed in a nuclear war. A series of standardized communications protocols for sending information around the computer network were developed in order to ensure against the inherent unreliability of telephone lines and exposed telephone switching stations.
For over 25 years, the Internet was used primarily as a research-oriented computer communications network for universities, defense contractors, governments, and organizations in science and academia. During those years, it grew slowly but steadily, and its proved, freely available communications protocols were also adopted by the computer and telecommunications industries and by large corporations, who used the Internet for electronic mail communications between and among their companies. In 1992, the United States Government turned over operation of the Internet's high-speed data links to commercial communications networks. That transfer, as well as the concurrent explosion in the use of personal computers, local area networks, bulletin boards systems, and consumer-oriented on-line services, caused the Internet to grow tremendously. Because of the convergence of those events, a critical mass for acceptance of the Internet as a standard means for the worldwide connection of individual computer networks of all kinds and sizes was created.
One of the reasons for the explosive growth of the Internet is the widespread acceptance of the Internet as the standard for electronic mail. The Internet is also well known for its two other main features, its Usenet newsgroups, which constitute thousands of on-line discussion groups covering a wide variety of business, personal, and technical subjects, and perhaps the most commercially important Internet phenomenon, the World Wide Web. The Internet is also increasingly used for real-time chat.
The World Wide Web or Web, as it is more commonly known, is a standardized method of combining the display of graphics, text, video and audio clips, as well as other features, such as secure credit card transactions, into a standardized, graphical, friendly interface that is easy for anyone to use. That is in contrast to the use of the Internet for electronic mail, which primarily consists of rapid text-based communications among individuals.
The Web was designed by a British scientist in 1991 as a way to let researchers easily publish scientific documents online. The creation of the first point-and-click software for “browsing” the Web, known as Mosaic, by the University of Illinois, enabled ready access to the Web by non-technically skilled users. Then, commercial companies, such as Netscape Communications Corporation, developed more sophisticated Web browsers, such as Netscape's Navigator. Another Web browser is Internet Explorer from Microsoft Corporation, which is distributed with Microsoft Windows. Web browsers are also provided by well-known major on-line computer services such as America Online (AOL) and the Microsoft Network (MSN).
The standard protocols which define the Web work in combination with a Web browser which runs on personal computers and handles the chores of accessing and displaying graphics and texts, and playing back video and audio files found on the Web. In addition to providing Web access, Web browsers and the Web tie together all the Internet's other useful features that existed before the advent of the Web, such as the newsgroups, FTP text file access, and, of course, sending or receiving electronic mail.
The World Wide Web standards are essentially a text coding, or “mark-up” method, where selected elements in a text file, such as article headlines, subheads, images and important words highlighted in the body of a text file can, by the insertion of special, bracketed codes (called HTML or Hyper Text Mark-up Language codes), be turned into hot links that are easily and instantly accessible by anyone with a Web browser.
The World Wide Web is considered by many to be the true information superhighway. In fact, the World Wide Web is such an important aspect of the Internet in most people's minds that the terms “Internet” and “World Wide Web” are popularly (but incorrectly) used as synonyms. The World Wide Web lays the foundation for the use of the Internet as an entirely new broadcast medium, one which provides individuals, groups, and companies with unprecedented new opportunities for broadcast communication. For example, it is now fairly easy to create one's own Web site or address on the Web such that all users on the Internet can reach it. The Web thus provides an outlet for anyone who desires to self-publish articles, graphics, video clips, and audio files over the net. Since any individual Web site can be freely accessed by anyone else with Web access, anyone who creates a Web site has a form for broadcasting their information, news, announcements, or creative works to an audience of millions. In addition, communication by Internet electronic mail can be established by any member of this audience with the author of a Web site, thus providing a new level of two-way communication to this new broadcast medium.
Because the Web provides several key benefits for Internet users, those benefits are encouraging the explosive growth of the Web and, ultimately, the acceptance of the Internet as the world's de facto computer communications medium.
First, using the Web is simplicity itself. Compared to the confusing Unix based commands which were once required to use the Internet, using a Web browser provides the user with the same friendly, graphical point-and-click access to all the Internet's features that the users have come to expect from any good stand-alone Windows commercial software product. Once a user has accessed the Web, any of the millions of Web sites and their linked articles, text articles, graphic images, video/audio clips, extensive software libraries, and communications features are easily accessible with a click of the user's mouse key. In addition, any good Web browser software also opens up the Web's multimedia potential by providing users with instant and automatic access to helper applications software that automatically plays video and sound clips. Such multimedia potential has become a big attraction on the Web.
Web browsers also have a bookmark or favorites feature, which allows the user to capture and save the location of any Web site that is visited, so that such sites can be readily reaccessed by clicking on it from the user's Web browser at any time.
Using the Web, users can get instant access to many types of information, entertainment, and interactive resources which are now availab
Blank Rome LLP
Internet Media Corporation
Lin Wen Tai
LandOfFree
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