|Publication number||US7454472 B2|
|Application number||US 11/517,208|
|Publication date||Nov 18, 2008|
|Filing date||Sep 6, 2006|
|Priority date||Jul 6, 2001|
|Also published as||US7133900, US8402097, US20070005719, US20090031000|
|Publication number||11517208, 517208, US 7454472 B2, US 7454472B2, US-B2-7454472, US7454472 B2, US7454472B2|
|Inventors||Christopher Tzann-en Szeto|
|Original Assignee||Yahoo! Inc.|
|Export Citation||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Patent Citations (16), Non-Patent Citations (1), Referenced by (4), Classifications (18), Legal Events (2)|
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet|
This application is a divisional and claims priority to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/930,878 entitled “Sharing and Implementing Instant Messaging Environments”, filed Aug. 15, 2001 now U.S. Pat. No. 7,133,900 which is incorporated herein by reference for all purposes, and which claims Benefit of priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/331,331 filed Jul. 6, 2001.
The present invention relates generally to a message exchange system. More specifically, messaging environments that affect how a messaging application presents messages and interacts with a user are disclosed.
Instant messaging has become one of the most popular applications on the Internet. Instant messaging programs generally allow users to send and receive messages. The messages are generated and displayed by an instant messaging client on each end and an instant messaging server may perform various functions to facilitate the transfer of messages.
A message server 112 is also connected to the Internet. In various instant messaging systems, the message server may perform different functions such as receiving messages and transferring them, replacing certain text with symbols, or otherwise modifying or relaying messages. A second instant messenger client also creates an instant messaging window 122 that also includes a history window and a new text window. Instant messaging window 122 displays a message sent from instant messaging window 102 via message server 112. It should be noted that the client software that runs on the instant messenger clients and the server software that runs on the instant messenger server may be referred to collectively or separately herein as an instant messenger application.
Each instant messenger client provides for various user interface commands that allow a user to interact with the instant messenger window in various ways, and, to some extent, configure the window to the user's taste. For example, the user may select a color for the history window from among various colors available to the user. In this manner, the user configures his instant messenger window to have a desired appearance. In addition, a user may turn certain features such as ringing, on or off.
The instant messaging client may also be configured to react to certain content received as a message by running a routine or performing some function. For example, when a ring is received, the instant messaging client may be configured to react to the ring by playing a sound, shaking, or executing some other action. The instant messaging application may also be configured not to respond to such a ring. Also, the instant messaging application may be configured to insert an image or play a sound when certain text is included in a message. Thus, a user is generally able to exercise a certain amount of control over the appearance and operation of his own instant messaging application. However, users are generally unable to affect the environment or state of another user's instant messaging client or window.
Thus, users are able to send messages and configure their own instant messaging applications to perform certain actions based on message content. However, users are generally unable to configure other user's instant messaging windows to react to messages and provide other useful functions or displays based on a selected messaging environment. It would be useful if a reliable, secure system and method could be provided for instant messaging users to create or select instant messaging environments and share those environments among themselves.
A system and method for storing, configuring, selecting and using instant messaging environments in an instant messaging conversation is disclosed. An instant messaging environment may affect the behavior and appearance of an instant messaging conversation. A sending instant messaging application can specify an instant messaging environment identifier along with a message and cause a receiving instant messaging application to implement the environment corresponding to the environment identifier. The selected instant messaging environment may affect the state of the instant messaging application in a number of ways. The environment may affect how user interface commands are processed by the instant messaging application as well as the appearance of the instant messaging window and the manner in which information is sent and processed by the instant messaging application. In some embodiments, an instant messaging application may be configured to accept specified environments from certain users and not from others. Instant messaging environments may be downloaded from one or more central instant messaging servers so that users may obtain new environments to specify to other users. When the instant messaging application receives an environment identifier for which the instant messaging application does not have the corresponding environment, that instant messaging application may also download the environment from the central instant messaging server.
It should be appreciated that the present invention can be implemented in numerous ways, including as a process, an apparatus, a system, a device, a method, or a computer readable medium such as a computer readable storage medium or a computer network wherein program instructions are sent over optical or electronic communication links. Several inventive embodiments of the present invention are described below.
In one embodiment, sharing an instant messaging environment includes selecting the instant messaging environment from a set of stored instant messaging environments; transmitting an instant messaging environment identifier corresponding to the selected instant messaging environment from a transmitting instant messaging application to a receiving instant messenger application; receiving the instant messaging environment identifier; retrieving the stored instant messaging environment corresponding to the instant messaging environment identifier; and activating the instant messaging environment in the receiving instant messaging application.
In one embodiment, processing a user interface command in an instant messaging application includes receiving the user interface command; and processing the user interface command in a manner specified by a predetermined instant messaging environment.
These and other features and advantages of the present invention will be presented in more detail in the following detailed description and the accompanying figures which illustrate by way of example the principles of the invention.
The present invention will be readily understood by the following detailed description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein like reference numerals designate like structural elements, and in which:
A detailed description of a preferred embodiment of the invention is provided below. While the invention is described in conjunction with that preferred embodiment, it should be understood that the invention is not limited to any one embodiment. On the contrary, the scope of the invention is limited only by the appended claims and the invention encompasses numerous alternatives, modifications and equivalents. For the purpose of example, numerous specific details are set forth in the following description in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. The present invention may be practiced according to the claims without some or all of these specific details. For the purpose of clarity, technical material that is known in the technical fields related to the invention has not been described in detail so that the present invention is not unnecessarily obscured.
It should be noted that the term “application” as used herein is intended to refer to any client application, server application, distributed application, self contained application or combination thereof. An application may be implemented in any appropriate manner, including being embedded in a chip or being loaded into memory or firmware.
In some embodiments, the conversation user interface includes a conventional instant messaging window as shown in
User interface commands are transferred from the instant messenger client to the conversation user interface to cause the conversation user interface to display instant messages and their corresponding environment to the user. For example, an append command is used to send a new message received from another instant messaging application to the conversation user interface. The append command may simply cause the received message to be added to a history window if a generic environment is selected. It should be noted that the phrase “user interface commands” as used herein is intended to encompass any functions, behaviors, actions, capabilities, etc. that are features of the user interface or the instant messaging window.
Other instant messaging environments may cause the append command to behave in different manners. For example, in the cartoon instant messaging environment, the append command would cause the last text bubble generated for the character corresponding to the message sender to disappear and for a new text bubble containing the current message to be created. Thus, the selected environment affects the state of the instant messaging application so that a user interface command specified by the instant messaging client may have different effects depending on the selected environment. A number of different environments may be stored in a cache 206.
In discussing the example shown, for the purpose of explanation, instant messaging client 202 will be described as sending a message to instant messaging client 212. In general, the two instant messaging clients will both send and receive messages in turn. Instant messaging client 202 sends a message that includes an environment identifier along with the message over the Internet. Throughout this specification, the Internet is referred to as a medium over which messages are sent. The disclosed system also operates over any other appropriate network or internetwork including wireless networks, proprietary networks, intranets, local area networks, or wide area networks. In one embodiment, instant messaging server 214 receives a message, processes the message and transfers the message to instant messaging client 212. In other embodiments, a peer to peer messaging system is implemented in which an instant messaging server need not necessarily become involved in transferring messages between instant messaging clients.
If a messaging server does process messages, then the messaging server may perform certain checks to determine whether the environment identifier as specified along with the message corresponds to a valid environment. In some embodiments, environments may expire as a result of a sponsorship or other type of agreement to maintain the environment lapsing.
The message along with the environment identifier is received by instant messaging client 212. Instant messaging client 212 also stores in a cache 220 various environments that it has obtained in the past. Instant messaging client 212 searches the cache for an environment that corresponds to the environment identifier received from instant messaging client 202. If a corresponding environment is found, then instant messaging client 212 changes the environment currently implemented by it.
The current environment affects how user interface commands sent from instant messaging client 212 to conversation user interface 216 are processed. In one embodiment, the instant messaging client may check whether or not an environment has expired before it implements that environment. If an environment has expired, then the instant messaging client may retrieve an updated environment from the instant messaging server or another specified source via the network.
The specified environment alters the response of the instant messaging application to actions performed by the user. As shown in
As a further example, another function that may be redefined is the scroll function. The user may indicate by dragging the mouse over an arrow button in the instant messaging window or by some other convenient means that he would like to scroll the history window. When such a scroll command is received, then a check is first made to determine whether or not the scroll command has been redefined by a loaded environment. For example, an environment may contain a watermark that is intended to always show up in the history window. In such a case, the scroll function would be redefined so that the watermark does not scroll within the window while the rest of the text inside the window does scroll.
As shown in
If an instant messaging application passes an environment identifier that is not accepted by the receiving instant messaging application, then the receiving instant messaging application will send back the default environment identifier and the sending instant messaging application may either change back to the default environment or maintain its own environment according to how it is configured. Thus, the instant messaging environment is either maintained or changed with each message passed back and forth containing an environment identifier.
If the sender is authorized, then control is transferred to step 404 and it is determined whether the environment is already cached by the receiving instant messaging application. If the environment is not cached by the receiving instant messaging application, then control is transferred to a step 406 where the environment is fetched. In one embodiment, the environment is loaded by accessing a website that makes environments available for download. The environment identifier may be sent to the website to identify the environment to be downloaded. In other embodiments, the environment may be obtained from the sender and an authentication code or signature may be used to verify the integrity of the environment. Once the environment is downloaded, then control is transferred to step 410. If the environment is in the cache, then control is transferred from step 404 to step 408 and it is determined whether the environment has expired.
In one embodiment, environments that are not found in a local cache are obtained from a secure source, such as a trusted website. This secure mode of distribution prevents parties from using environments for hostile purposes. Since instant messaging participants merely refer to environments and the referred to environments are separately obtained from a trusted source, participants do not intentionally or inadvertently send damaging environments to each other.
In one embodiment, whenever an environment is downloaded by an instant messaging application, an expiration date is also provided to the instant messaging application so that the instant messaging application can determine if the environment has expired. In another embodiment, the instant messaging application is required to always check with an instant messaging server to determine whether an environment has expired before that environment is implemented.
If the environment has expired, then control is transferred to step 406 and the environment is loaded. If the environment has not expired, then control is transferred to step 410 and an instant messaging window is opened if an instant messaging window is currently not open. Control is then transferred to step 412 where it is determined whether a different environment has been specified by the received environment identifier. If a different environment has not been specified, then the currently loaded environment may continue to be used and control is transferred to step 420 where the message is displayed.
If the environment is different, then control is transferred to step 414 and a clean up function is called for the old environment. Control is then transferred to step 416 and the new environment is loaded into memory. Next, in step 418, the start function is called for the new environment so that any code that should be executed when the new environment is loaded is executed. Control is then transferred to step 420 and the message is displayed. The process ends at 422.
In one embodiment, an environment is downloaded from a website by receiving a series of different types of files. The first type of file is an initialization file that contains information regarding the environment that the instant messenger application can access without actually loading the environment. The initialization file may contain items such as a display name that determines how the environment will be listed in a formatting tool bar used to select environments and an expiration that can be used by the instant messaging application to determine that the environment is invalid and initiate a download of an updated version of the environment.
Requiring that the instant messaging environment be downloaded from one or more central sites enables editorial control to be exercised over the environments that are sent to users. Obscene environments or other undesirable environments can be avoided. Also, viruses and other malicious code can be excluded. In certain embodiments, users may be allowed to create environments and send them to other users, but it is an important feature that in some embodiments, there is at least one mode where environments are only downloaded from a trusted or controlled source that ensures security and, if desired, some control over content. One important use of instant messaging environments is advertising. When an instant messaging environment includes an ad, controlling the source of the environment facilitates tracking of the environment use as well as making sure that the environment is not altered.
It should be noted that when the environment is downloaded, data in the initialization file for the environment may be separately stored in a table or system registry so that information about loaded environments may be readily accessed by the instant messaging application without opening files. For example, if an expiration date is associated with the environment, then that date may be written into an expiration table so that the instant messaging application can periodically perform clean up and delete expired environments or check before an environment is accessed whether or not it has expired. Likewise, the names of various download environments may be stored in a single table used to create a list of environments for a menu that facilitates the selection of environments by a user.
Sending environment identifiers between instant messaging applications and using the environment identifiers to change the environment of a receiving application has been described. Once this capability of redefining user interface command functions, executing animations and creating event driven actions to occur in an instant messaging window has been enabled, a rich variety of environments can be defined for instant messaging applications. Some examples of instant messaging environments that may be created are provided in
The instant messaging server may track statistics about environments for various reasons. For example, if an environment has an advertisement theme associated with it, then each time the environment is specified by a user to another user that event may be counted by the server so that ad revenue can be generated. In addition, when certain functions within the environment are called as a result of events, the instant messaging server may record such occurrences as well and those events may also generate ad revenue.
Procedures for distributing and implementing instant messaging environments have been described. A number of exemplary environments that may be created using these procedures and techniques have also been shown. In addition to being used in instant messaging environments between two users, the techniques described herein may also apply to instant messaging environments that include one, three, or more users.
Although the foregoing invention has been described in some detail for purposes of clarity of understanding, it will be apparent that certain changes and modifications may be practiced within the scope of the appended claims. It should be noted that there are many alternative ways of implementing both the process and apparatus of the present invention. Accordingly, the present embodiments are to be considered as illustrative and not restrictive, and the invention is not to be limited to the details given herein, but may be modified within the scope and equivalents of the appended claims.
|Cited Patent||Filing date||Publication date||Applicant||Title|
|US4819191||Jan 29, 1987||Apr 4, 1989||International Business Machines Corporation||Electronic calendaring method to establish calendar floating triggers for calendared events and processes|
|US5767848||Dec 13, 1994||Jun 16, 1998||Hitachi, Ltd.||Development support system|
|US5822123||Jun 24, 1996||Oct 13, 1998||Davis; Bruce||Electronic television program guide schedule system and method with pop-up hints|
|US5877759||Mar 26, 1997||Mar 2, 1999||Netscape Communications Corporation||Interface for user/agent interaction|
|US6380959||Sep 26, 1997||Apr 30, 2002||Timequarter Computing Corp.||Web calendar architecture and uses thereof|
|US6614450||Mar 3, 1999||Sep 2, 2003||Gateway, Inc.||Information display system for scheduling the utilization of a facility|
|US6677976 *||Feb 28, 2002||Jan 13, 2004||Sprint Communications Company, LP||Integration of video telephony with chat and instant messaging environments|
|US6760580 *||Apr 1, 2002||Jul 6, 2004||America Online, Incorporated||Facilitating instant messaging outside of user-defined buddy group in a wireless and non-wireless environment|
|US7257618 *||Sep 30, 2005||Aug 14, 2007||Microsoft Corporation||Systems and methods for interfacing with a user in instant messaging|
|US20030046296||Aug 28, 2001||Mar 6, 2003||International Business Machines Corporation||Calendar-enhanced awareness for instant messaging systems and electronic status boards|
|US20030117427||Nov 4, 2002||Jun 26, 2003||Universal Electronics Inc.||System and method for interacting with a program guide displayed on a portable electronic device|
|US20040117443||Nov 24, 2003||Jun 17, 2004||International Business Machines Corporation||Method and apparatus for managing instant messaging|
|US20050039134||Aug 11, 2003||Feb 17, 2005||Sony Corporation||System and method for effectively implementing a dynamic user interface in an electronic network|
|US20050055648||Sep 9, 2003||Mar 10, 2005||Zhu Dong||Speech notification|
|US20050160367||Jan 21, 2004||Jul 21, 2005||Real Networks, Inc.||Event scheduling|
|US20060236269||Apr 18, 2005||Oct 19, 2006||Amir Borna||Method and an apparatus for displaying calendar information to a user|
|1||Nelson, et al., "Mirosoft Outlook 98 At A Glance", Microsoft Press, 1997, pp. 98-115, and 118-126.|
|Citing Patent||Filing date||Publication date||Applicant||Title|
|US7848928 *||Dec 7, 2010||Nuance Communications, Inc.||Overriding default speech processing behavior using a default focus receiver|
|US9070118||Sep 14, 2012||Jun 30, 2015||Facebook, Inc.||Methods for capturing electronic messages based on capture rules relating to user actions regarding received electronic messages|
|US9319356 *||Sep 15, 2012||Apr 19, 2016||Facebook, Inc.||Message delivery control settings|
|US20070038462 *||Aug 10, 2005||Feb 15, 2007||International Business Machines Corporation||Overriding default speech processing behavior using a default focus receiver|
|U.S. Classification||709/206, 715/758, 709/203, 709/228, 709/227, 709/204, 715/751|
|International Classification||H04L12/58, G06F15/16, H04L29/08|
|Cooperative Classification||H04L67/34, H04L69/329, H04L12/581, H04L51/04|
|European Classification||H04L51/04, H04L12/58B, H04L29/08N33, H04L29/08A7|
|Apr 25, 2012||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 4
|Oct 8, 2015||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: SNAPCHAT, INC., CALIFORNIA
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:YAHOO! INC.;REEL/FRAME:036759/0287
Effective date: 20150923