Accessing, viewing and manipulation of archived information

• US 20040162891A1
• Filed: 02/17/2004
• Published: 08/19/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 07/02/1998
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Copernican Technologies Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Copernican Technologies Incorporated
• Inventors: Volnak, Will
• Application Number:
  US10/781,495
• Publication Number:
  US 20040162891A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/218
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/907 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99938 Concurrency, e.g. lock management in shared database

Abstract

A method and apparatus are provided for accessing, viewing and manipulating data stored in a computer system. This is achieved by selecting one or more of the non-modifiable data objects stored in a computer system, creating references to the selected objects and adding the references to a reference list. The reference list is then manipulated to allow a user to add to, remove from or search the references in the reference list. In some embodiments, different operations are performed by different computers connected to a computer network such as the Internet. In such cases, data objects are stored on a server computer and searched by client computers connected to the server computer over the network. A reference list is stored on the client computers and can be directly manipulated by the user without a need for further interaction with the server computer.

Claims

1. A method for accessing, viewing and manipulating data stored in a computer system, comprising:

selecting a plurality of non-modifiable data objects stored in a storage of the computer system;

creating references to the selected data objects;

adding the references to a first reference list; and

manipulating the first reference list;

wherein the first reference list and the data objects corresponding to the references contained in the first reference list are displayed in a single window of the computer system.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

creating a plurality of modifiable data objects;

storing the plurality of modifiable data objects on the storage device of the computer system; and

converting one or more modifiable data objects into non-modifiable data objects.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the references to the non-modifiable data objects further comprises a modifiable tag field.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the data objects contains a searchable comment field and a searchable tag field.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising storing the first reference list and the data objects corresponding to the references in the first reference list in a non-modifiable collection of data objects.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the non-modifiable collection of data objects is created on a first computer and the method further comprises adding a plurality of references to data objects stored in the non-modifiable collection of data objects to a second reference list stored on a second computer.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the references to the single data object are created by more than one search of the data objects.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

searching the data objects according to one or more new search parameters;

in response to the search, creating one or more new references to data objects satisfying the search parameters and adding the new references to the references in the first reference list.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein a reference to a single data object is contained in more than one reference list.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the references in the first reference list are organized in a user-modifiable order.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein each data object comprises a unique identifier, one or more fields of meta-information and freeform content.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the meta information is used in searching the data objects and Is displayed on the window of the computer system together with the data object.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the data objects and the first reference list are stored on a first computer and a second reference list is stored on a second computer, the first computer being connected to the second computer by a computer network.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising adding references in the first reference list to the second reference list.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the network is a local area network.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein the network is a wide area network.

17. The method of claim 14, wherein the network is a global network.

18. The method of claim 13, further comprising a third computer, wherein the data objects are created on the third computer.

19. The method of claim 1, wherein one or more data objects comprise text data.

20. The method of claim 1, wherein one or more data objects comprise image data.

21. The method of claim 1, wherein one or more data objects comprise audio data.

22. The method of claim 1, wherein one or more data objects comprise multimedia data.

23. The method of claim 1, wherein the search parameters are automatically sifted by comparing a text portion of the data objects to a list of predetermined text segments to determine whether one or more of the text segments occur within a text portion of the data objects.

24. The method of claim 23, wherein the predetermined text segments are stored and used in successive sifting operations.

25. A computer system for accessing, viewing and manipulating data objects comprising:

a plurality of modifiable data objects stored in a storage of the computer system;

a plurality of non-modifiable data objects stored in the storage of the computer system;

a computer program; and

a computer executing the program, wherein the computer program includes instructions for;

selecting one or more non-modifiable data objects stored in the computer system;

creating references to the selected data objects;

adding the references to a reference list; and

manipulating the reference list, wherein the reference list and the data objects are displayed on a single window of the computer system.

26. The computer system of claim 25, wherein the computer program further includes instructions for converting one or more modifiable data objects into non-modifiable data objects.

27. A computer-readable storage medium comprising a computer program, the computer program including instruction for:

selecting one or more non-modifiable data objects stored in a computer system;

creating references to the selected data objects satisfying the search parameters;

adding the references to a reference list; and

manipulating the reference list, wherein the reference list and the data objects are displayed on a single window of the computer system.

28. The computer-readable storage medium wherein the computer program further includes instructions for converting one or more modifiable data objects into non-modifiable data objects.

31. The computer system of claim 28, wherein a timestamp corresponding to the time of the conversion from modifiable data object into non-modifiable data object is added to the non-modifiable data object.

29. A computer system for accessing, viewing and manipulating data objects comprising:

a plurality of modifiable data objects stored in a storage of the computer system;

a plurality of non-modifiable data objects stored in a storage of the computer system;

a plurality of references to the non-modifiable data objects; and

one or more lists of the references.

30. The computer system of claim 29, wherein one or more of the modifiable data objects are converted Into non-modifiable data objects.