Techniques for electronic aggregation of information

• US 10,331,335 B2
• Filed: 07/26/2016
• Issued: 06/25/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 12/23/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Roth, Tali, Wood, Matthew, Stiles, Scott, Affronti, Michael, Draper, Jodie, Douglas, Malia, Schorr, Janet, Rajabi, Zeyad, Troy, Robin
• Primary Examiner(s): Shiberou, Mahelet
• Application Number:
  US15/219,709
• Publication Number:
  US 20160334987A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,064 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/41 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/44 Browsing; Visualisation therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04842 Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements G06F3/0482 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04847 Interaction techniques to control parameter settings, e.g. interaction with sliders or dials
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0486 Drag-and-drop
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04883 for inputting data by handwriting, e.g. gesture or text

Abstract

Techniques for an electronic montage system are described. An apparatus may comprise a logic device arranged to execute a montage application comprising an authoring component operative to provide a presentation surface having multiple presentation tiles, receive control directives to associate content files with presentation tiles, generate tile objects for the content files based on content file types for the content files, and store the presentation surface and tile objects as a montage. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

providing a presentation surface having multiple presentation tiles;

receiving a control directive to associate a data source with a presentation tile;

identifying a type of digital content for the data source;

retrieving a portion of content from the data source based on the type of digital content using a content selection algorithm having a set of defined rules pertaining to types of information to retrieve from the data source;

generating multiple versions of a tile object based on the set of defined rules, the multiple versions of the tile object pertaining to different combinations of sub-portions of the same content portion;

receiving a control directive to select one of the versions of the tile object as a selected tile object; and

storing the presentation surface and selected tile object as a montage in which the selected tile object is presented in the presentation tile, the montage capable of navigation using a gesture interface that allows manipulation of the tile object through a gesture to present a second tile object in the presentation tile while other tile objects of the montage remain unchanged.

2. The method of claim 1, comprising receiving the control directive to associate the data source with the presentation tile from an input device.

3. The method of claim 1, comprising identifying the type of digital content for the data source as an application type of digital content or a multimedia type of digital content, the application type of digital content including a word processing file, a spreadsheet file, a presentation file, a personal information manager file, a database file, a publisher file, a drawing file, a note file, or a message file, and the multimedia type of digital content including an audio file, an image file, a video file, an audio/video (AV) file, an animation file, a game file, a markup file, a web page file, or a social networking service (SNS) file.

4. The method of claim 1, comprising retrieving the portion of content from the data source based on a type definition for the type of digital content, the portion of content comprising information of a content and properties class, a content objects class, or a content pages class.

5. The method of claim 1, comprising publishing the montage and the data source to a network service.

6. The method of claim 1, comprising receiving a reference to the montage and a reference to the data source stored in a remote datastore from a network service.

7. The method of claim 1, comprising associating a reference to the data source stored in a remote datastore of a network service with the selected tile object.

8. The method of claim 1, comprising publishing a reference to the montage on a network service.

9. The method of claim 1, comprising sending the montage or a reference to the montage in a message.

10. The method of claim 1, comprising:

receiving a control directive to open the montage;

retrieving the montage from a remote datasource; and

presenting a user interface view of the presentation surface with the selected tile object in the presentation tile.

11. The method of claim 1, comprising:

receiving a control directive to select the tile object;

retrieving the data source for the tile object from a remote datastore; and

presenting a user interface view of the data source.

12. An article of manufacture comprising a storage device containing instructions that when executed enable a system to:

generate a montage comprising a presentation surface with multiple presentation tiles each having a selected tile object for a corresponding data source, the selected tile object having been selected from a plurality of tile objects generated via a content selection algorithm having a set of defined rules pertaining to types of information to retrieve from the data source for each tile object, the montage arranged for use with a gesture interface that allows manipulation of a tile object presented in a presentation tile, through a gesture, to present a second tile object in the presentation tile while the other tile objects of the montage remain unchanged;

send the montage and data sources to a network service;

receive references to the montage and each data source; and

associate a reference for a data source with a corresponding tile object.

13. The article of manufacture of claim 12, further comprising instructions that when executed enable the system to publish the reference to the montage to the network service.

14. The article of manufacture of claim 12, further comprising instructions that when executed enable the system to send the montage or a reference to the montage in a message.

15. An apparatus, comprising:

a logic device arranged to execute a montage application comprising an authoring component operative to provide a presentation surface having multiple presentation tiles, receive control directives to associate data sources with presentation tiles, generate multiple versions of a tile object for each data source using a content selection algorithm having a set of defined rules pertaining to types of information to retrieve from the data source for each version, receive a control directive to select one tile object as a selected tile object for each data source, and store the presentation surface and selected tile objects as a montage capable of navigation using a gesture interface that allows manipulation of a tile object presented in a presentation tile, through a gesture, to present a second tile object in the presentation tile while the other tile objects of the montage remain unchanged.

16. The apparatus of claim 15, the authoring component comprising multiple type modules corresponding to each type of digital content, a type module operative to retrieve information from a data source based on a type definition for a type of digital content, and generate a tile object based on the retrieved information and the type definition.

17. The apparatus of claim 15, comprising a security component operative to receive a control directive to authorize communicating data sources from a local datastore to a remote datastore for a network storage device accessible by a network service.

18. The apparatus of claim 15, comprising a publishing component operative to publish the montage and data sources from a local datastore to a remote datastore for a network storage device accessible by a network service.

19. The apparatus of claim 15, comprising a messaging component operative to send the montage or a reference to the montage in a message.

20. The apparatus of claim 15, comprising a presentation component operative to generate a first user interface view to present each selected tile object within each associated presentation tile of the presentation surface, receive a control directive to reselect a selected tile object, and generate a second user interface view to present a data source corresponding to the reselected tile object.