Jon A Howell

US Patent:

20030097410, May 22, 2003

Filed:

Oct 4, 2001

Appl. No.:

09/972652

Inventors:

R. Atkins - Santa Cruz CA, US
Alan Vale - Mountain View CA, US
Jon Howell - Scotts Valley CA, US
James Spiers - Santa Cruz CA, US
Adam Freeman - Santa CA, US

International Classification:

G06F015/16

US Classification:

709/206000, 709/204000

Abstract:

A multi-party online collaboration system that optimizes both the participation of the collaborators and the universality of membership is described. The system satisfies the two requirements for networked collaboration by providing shareable objects and a means of notifying the collaborators whenever the state of the shared objects has changed. For an open network (i.e., the Internet), the preferred embodiment uses two open standards mechanisms: URL-addressable networks for the accessible shareable objects, and asynchronous messaging for notification of changes to the objects that do not occur in real-time. The preferred embodiment employs these two open standards systems to ensure universal access, and obviates the need for the collaborators to install/maintain proprietary client systems. The preferred embodiment monitors the state of the objects, and automatically dispatches notification messages, along with addresses (e.g., URLs) to those URL-addressable objects, to only those collaborators who responded to the previous notification. Because the system automatically handles the asynchronous messaging notifications and because these messages are dispatched only to those participants who are actively keeping current with the latest changes, the preferred embodiment precludes the generally chatty nature of asynchronous messaging systems. Whenever a collaborator does decide to use a notification link to visit the URL-addressable network site, he or she is further presented with a message describing an interface to all of the shared objects.