Communicating and Displaying Hyperlinks in a Computing Community

• US 20090210493A1
• Filed: 02/15/2008
• Published: 08/20/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 02/15/2008
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Lee, Linus, Holbrook, Chandler J., Lehew, Christian R., Reville, Brendan K., Stone, Jeffrey S., Courage, Michael R., Johnson, Jerry A.
• Application Number:
  US12/032,507
• Publication Number:
  US 20090210493A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/205
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/5506 using advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/572 Communication between players during game play of non game information, e.g. e-mail, chat, file transfer, streaming of audio and streaming of video
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/00 User-to-user messaging in packet-switching networks, transmitted according to store-and-forward or real-time protocols, e.g. e-mail
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/08 Annexed information, e.g. attachments
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/216 Handling conversation history, e.g. grouping of messages in sessions or threads
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/56 Unified messaging, e.g. interactions between e-mail, instant messaging or converged IP messaging [CPM]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/104 Peer-to-peer [P2P] networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1068 Discovery involving direct consultation or announcement among potential requesting and potential source peers

Abstract

Various aspects are disclosed herein for communicating and displaying of hyperlinks in a computing community. Hyperlinks can be communicated by being embedded in messages, such that users of a closed computing community can send and receive such hyperlinks. These hyperlinks can link to hyperlinked content that can be stored on a central computing device responsible for administering the community. Moreover, any content that is associated with hyperlinks, whether that content is in the form of blogs, RSS feeds, and so on, can be made publicly available while any associated hyperlinks will be visible only to a subset of computing devices, namely, the community computing devices (but not to any general computing devices accessing the content). This task may be accomplished by using predetermined and/or proprietary schema properly understood only by the community computing devices.

Claims

1. A system for hyperlinking content and communicating hyperlinks among client computing devices and service computing devices, comprising:

a service computing device configured to host content accessible by a plurality of client computing devices;

said content residing on said media computing device, and comprising hyperlinked content and hosted content;

said service computing device is configured to publish said content to said plurality of client computing devices;

wherein a hyperlink to said hyperlinked content is configured to be sent in a message from at least one client computing device of said plurality of client computing devices to another at least one client computing device of said plurality of client computing devices, or to be sent in a message from an administrator to at least one client computing device of said plurality of client computing devices; and

wherein said hyperlink is visible only to a subset of client computing devices of said plurality of client computing devices.

2. The system according to claim 1, wherein said hyperlink is made visible to only said subset of client computing devices by being stored in a predetermined schema.

3. The system according to claim 1, wherein said hosted content is presented in a format associated with at least one of (a) a blog, (b) a feed, or (c) a podcast.

4. The system according to claim 1, wherein said at least one client computing device of said plurality of client computing devices is one of (a) a closed system gaming console or (b) a general computing device running a closed system environment.

5. The system according to claim 1, wherein said at least one client computing device of said plurality of client computing devices is one of (a) mobile computing device or (b) a stationary computing device.

6. The system according to claim 1, wherein said hyperlink is associated with banner advertisements.

7. The system according to claim 1, wherein said hosted content is controlled by a third party to parties associated with said plurality of client computing devices and said service computing device.

8. The system according to claim 1, wherein said hosted content is publicly available.

9. The system according to claim 1, wherein said subset of client computing devices is set by a party associated with said media computing device.

10. The system according to claim 1, wherein said subset of client computing devices is set by authors of said content.

11. The system according to claim 1, wherein said hyperlink is embedded in at least one of (a) a voice mail, (b) a text mail, (c) a podcast, or (d) a video.

12. The system according to claim 1, further comprising a module allowing at least one user of said plurality of client computing devices to change the appearance of an interface provided by said service computing device.

13. A method for creating, sending, and displaying hyperlinks among a plurality of computing devices, including client and server computing devices, comprising:

selecting a content package to publish to a community of computing device users;

uploading said content package to a server computing device;

storing said content package on said server computing device, wherein said content package is publicly available to said community of device users;

creating a first hyperlink as part of said content package, wherein a hyperlinked content is accessible via said first hyperlink by a community of computing devices;

wherein said first hyperlink is visible to a limited group of computing devices in said community of computing devices;

sending in a first message from a first computing device of said community of computing devices to another at least one computing device of said community of computing devices, wherein said first message has embedded said first hyperlink; and

receiving in a second message from an administrator of said community computing devices a second hyperlink linked to a second hyperlinked content.

14. The method according to claim 13, further comprising receiving in a third message from at least one computing device of said community of computing devices a third hyperlink to publicly available content that is visible only to said limited group of computing devices.

15. The method according to claim 13, wherein said first message is at least one of (a) a voice mail, (b) a text mail, (c) a podcast, or (d) a video.

16. The method according to claim 13, wherein said first hyperlink is visible to said limited group of computing devices by being associated with a predetermined schema.

17. A computer readable medium storing thereon computer executable instructions for at least allowing a plurality of users to send hyperlinks to a community of gaming computing device users and for allowing administrators to send and display hyperlinks to said community of gaming computing device users, comprising:

at least one instruction that receives content from a closed computing device from a set of computing devices, including other closed computing devices and general purpose computing devices, wherein said content is a hosted content on a service computing device;

at least one instruction that stores said hosted content on said service computing device, wherein said service computing device is configured to interact with said set of computing devices as a server computing device or a peer computing device;

at least one instruction that publishes said hosted content to said set of computing devices according to a predetermined schema, resulting in said any hyperlinks associated with said hosted content to be visible only to said closed computing devices and being invisible to said general purpose computing devices; and

at least one instruction that receives and forwards a message with an embedded hyperlink of said hyperlinks to at least one of closed computing device.

18. The computer readable medium according to claim 17, further comprising at least one instruction that makes said hyperlinks visible to said general purpose computing device when said general purpose computing device is running a closed computing system environment that is configured to communicate with said server.

19. The computer readable medium according to claim 17, wherein said hosted content is publicly available.

20. The computer readable medium according to claim 17, wherein said hyperlinks are embedded in at least one of (a) a voice mail, (b) a text mail, (c) a podcast, or (d) a video.