Flexible organization of information using multiple hierarchical categories

• US 20020167538A1
• Filed: 05/11/2001
• Published: 11/14/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 05/11/2001
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Murthy N. Bhetanabhotla
• Original Assignee: Murthy N. Bhetanabhotla
• Inventors: Bhetanabhotla, Murthy N.
• Application Number:
  US09/853,542
• Publication Number:
  US 20020167538A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/700
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/532 Query formulation, e.g. graphical querying
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/54 Browsing; Visualisation therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0481 based on specific properties of the displayed interaction object or a metaphor-based environment, e.g. interaction with desktop elements like windows or icons, or assisted by a cursor's changing behaviour or appearance

Abstract

The present invention discloses a computer software system for organizing hierarchical information collections that are like virtual file cabinets. These are similar to physical file cabinets, but have more flexibility in arranging and accessing information. Just like in a physical file cabinet, the information items can be categorized and placed sequentially in an order. But, unlike in the physical cabinet where an item can be categorized and placed with reference to only one attribute of the item, the information items stored in virtual file cabinets can be categorized using several attributes like time, location, people and subjects involved. With a single-click of the computer mouse all the information items can be seen sequentially in the appropriate order of any of the attribute types used for categorization, i.e. the virtual file cabinet serves as several file cabinets each one holding the items according to the order of each of the attributes. It is as if the same information item is present in several file cabinets that use different categorization systems.

Each of the information items stored in the virtual file cabinet can comprise of graphical images, textual information and tabular information with references to multi-media files. All the information can be kept in one page or several pages. Selecting an item in the virtual cabinet displays the attributes of the item and also the contents of that item. All the contents of the virtual file cabinets can be viewed one-by-one or in a slide show manner sequenced using any of the specified attributes.

The virtual file cabinet can be made available to remote users using Internet without the need of any commercial third parties and the owner of the virtual file cabinet can grant permissions as to who can see what items and if the remote users are allowed to add any items to the virtual file cabinet. The activities of the remote users are logged and can be monitored in real time if desired.

Claims

1. A method of organizing a plurality of information items into a plurality of information collections in such a way that

a. providing a specification means for each said information item to define it with a plurality of attributes of hierarchical category information,

b. providing a categorization means for each said information item in as many said information collections as there are number of said attributes by placing each said information item in an appropriate hierarchical location in a sequential order according to said attributes in said information collections with the references in all said locations pointing to one address of computer memory storage for the content of said information item,

c. providing a selection means to view said information items in a sequential order according to any of said attributes in said information collections,

d. providing an aggregation means to select and view any hierarchical subset of said information items in any of said information collections,

whereby, information collections like photo albums, personal and business organizers, personal dairies can contain information items with several attributes and these information collections can be viewed sequentially according to any of the attributes of the information items, and

whereby, any subset of the information collection can be viewed by selecting a hierarchy level.

2. A method of specifying the content of an information item in such a way that

a. providing a composition means for said information item so that it can comprise of several graphical images, several textual descriptions with mark-up languages and several tabular descriptions with the latter two types referring to other multi-media items,

b. providing an arrangement means to keep said content in one or more pages,

c. providing a conveyance means for said types of said content said information item comprises of to a user, without any additional intervention or action by said user, when said information item is selected,

d. providing a means for viewing multiple pages of said content at the same time in a manual or automatically scrolled fashion,

whereby, information collections like digital photo albums can be prepared with items comprising of several related photos, descriptions of photos and any other multi-media information as a single unit of information.

3. A method of sharing information collections consisting of a plurality of information items with remote users

a. providing access control means by specifying which said remote users can access which subset of said information collection,

b. providing authoring means to said remote users to add new information items to said information collection by marking said information collection as writable and

c. providing monitoring means to see in real time all the activities of said remote users,

d. providing communication means to communicate with remote users by sending and receiving messages,

e. providing control means to terminate said remote user'"'"'s access to the information collection by sending a disconnect message,

whereby, information collections like digital photo albums, or organizers can be made available to a lot of interested people while controlling and monitoring their access.