Interactive web collaboration systems and methods

• US 20080228881A1
• Filed: 01/25/2008
• Published: 09/18/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/14/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Fiver LLC
• Original Assignee: Family Systems, Ltd.
• Inventors: Reynolds, Brian, Conway, Mark J.
• Granted Patent: US 8,732,251 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/165 Management of the audio stream, e.g. setting of volume, audio stream path
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/253 Grammatical analysis; Style critique
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/289 Phrasal analysis, e.g. finite state techniques or chunking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1822 Conducting the conference, e.g. admission, detection, selection or grouping of participants, correlating users to one or more conference sessions, prioritising transmission
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1831 Tracking arrangements for later retrieval, e.g. recording contents, participants activities or behavior, network status
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/02 using automatic reactions or user delegation, e.g. automatic replies or chatbot-generated messages
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/18 Commands or executable codes

Abstract

A topic room is provided in which one or more individuals or other entities may collaborate on topics of mutual interest. Multiple individuals or participants may use the topic room to communicate in real or non-real time and may work together to create, browse, modify, comment on, and perform any other suitable action on content. A chat room within the topic room receives, records, and transmits the communications and all activity in the topic room to all participants as messages. Client processes at a participant'"'"'s user equipment may listen to the messages and take particular actions. For example, one participant can follow another participant as that participant browses through material by using the messages received from that participant.

Claims

1. A method for communicating between objects and humans, comprising:

enabling a human to communicate with a first object using a language; and

enabling a second object to communicate with the first object using the language.

2. The method defined in claim 1, wherein the language is defined by one or more grammars.

3. The method defined in claim 2, wherein at least one of the one or more grammars is a human language grammar.

4. The method defined in claim 2, wherein the first object uses a first grammar to communicate with a third object and humans and wherein the second object uses a second grammar to communicate with the third object and humans.

5. The method defined in claim 4, wherein the first grammar and the second grammar are the same or compatible.

6. The method defined in claim 1, further comprising receiving at the first object one or more messages communicated from either the human or the second object, wherein the one or more messages include content in the language.

7. The method defined in claim 6, further comprising enabling the first object to interpret the content in the language.

8. The method defined in claim 6, further comprising storing the content in a script.

9. The method defined in claim 8, further comprising storing the script in a location selected from the group consisting of a web page, a folder, a user'"'"'s identity, and any combination thereof.

10. The method defined in claim 6, wherein the content includes a pattern of events and a corresponding action to be taken.

11. The method defined in claim 10, wherein the event on the pattern of events is specified in a whenever statement.

12. The method defined in claim 10, wherein the action is to run a script.

13. The method defined in claim 12, wherein running the script causes the first object to interpret the content.

14. The method defined in claim 10, wherein the event or pattern of events is represented by a regular expression.

15. The method defined in claim 6, wherein the message content includes a for statement that specifies an action or pattern of actions and a corresponding script.

16. The method defined in claim 15, wherein the action or pattern of actions are represented as a regular expression.

17. The method defined in claim 1, further comprising enabling the first object to take an action in response to receiving a message in the language.

18. The method defined in claim 1, wherein the first object exhibits a behavior of a persona.

19. The method defined in claim 18, further comprising storing scripts that define behaviors or capabilities of the persona.

20. The method defined in claim 19, wherein one or more of the behaviors is human-like.

21. The method defined in claim 18, further comprising enabling the persona to communicate using multiple languages.

22. The method defined in claim 18, further comprising enabling the persona to speak or listen to the second object and the human using a language.

23. The method defined in claim 22, further comprising enabling the human to create an audio recording that is communicated to the first object.

24. The method defined in claim 1, further comprising enabling the first object to inherit one or more behaviors from one or more objects.

25. The method defined in claim 24, wherein enabling the first object to inherit the one or more behaviors comprises storing at least one script to inherit the one or more behaviors.

26. The method defined in claim 1, further comprising enabling the first object to be copied or copy itself.

27. The method defined in claim 26, further comprising enabling the first object to control the behavior of copies of the first object.

28. The method defined in claim 1, wherein enabling the human to communicate with the first object comprises enabling the human to communicate with the first object using messages in a chat room and wherein enabling the second object to communicate with the first object comprises enabling the second object to communicate with the first object using messages in the chat room.

29. The method defined in claim 28, further comprising enabling the first and second objects to have identities in the chat room and participate in the chat room.

30. The method defined in claim 29, further comprising enabling the first and second objects to listen to the messages in the chat room and take actions in response to the messages.

31. The method defined in claim 28, further comprising enabling the first object to listen to messages in the chat room.

32. The method defined in claim 1, further comprising creating a log of interactions between the first object, the second object, and the human.

33. The method defined in claim 32, further comprising enabling the first object to take actions based on the log.

34. The method defined in claim 33, wherein enabling the first object to take actions based on the log comprises enabling the first object to play back the log of interactions between the first object, the second object, and the human.

35. The method defined in claim 32, further comprising enabling the first object to filter the log based on content of the log.