AUGMENTED SCREEN SHARING IN AN ELECTRONIC MEETING

• US 20130212490A1
• Filed: 06/08/2012
• Published: 08/15/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 02/09/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Scherpa, Josef
• Granted Patent: US 9,299,061 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/753
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/101 Collaborative creation, e.g. joint development of products or services

Abstract

Described are methods for providing contextually relevant data to participants of an electronic communication. A screen sharing session is established between a plurality of participants of the electronic communication. A set of contextual relevance data is determined between contents of the screen sharing session, at least one of the participants, and external data related to the at least one of the participants. The screen sharing session is changed to include the contextual relevance data.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for providing contextually relevant data to participants of an electronic communication, comprising:

establishing a screen sharing session between a plurality of participants of the electronic communication;

determining contextual relevance data between contents of the screen sharing session, at least one of the participants, and external data related to the at least one of the participants; and

augmenting the screen sharing session to include the contextual relevance data.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the electronic communication includes at least one of an online meeting, a chat room, a voice over IP conferencing session, a web conferencing session, an email exchange, a text messaging exchange, a real-time or near real-time document exchange, an online discussion forum, a blog, and a social network interaction.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

scanning the screen sharing session to identify the contents of the screen sharing session.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 3, wherein the screen sharing session is scanned for at least one of character recognition and object recognition.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein determining contextual relevance data includes validating the contents of the screen sharing session with the external data.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

applying one or more rules that define the manner in which the contents of the screen sharing session are augmented at a display screen.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 6, wherein the one or more rules can be applied to the contents to determine a region of the display screen to be augmented.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, where the plurality of participants includes a presenter and at least one viewer.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, wherein the screen sharing session includes a first shared screen image at a computer display viewed by the presenter and a second shared screen image at a computer display viewed by the at least one viewer, and wherein at least one of the first shared screen image and the second shared screen image is augmented to include the contextual relevance data between the contents of the screen sharing session, at least one of the presenter and the at least one viewer, and external data related to the at least one of the presenter and the at least one viewer.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the contextual relevance data is displayed at the screen sharing session according to a relevance of the data to the at least one of the participants.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein determining contextual relevance data comprises:

defining one or more rules for identifying the contents of the screen sharing session;

identifying at least one rule from the one or more rules for validating contents against the at least one of the participants;

querying at least one data source for determining contextual relevance data from the external data; and

defining one or more rules for returning data from the at least one data source and determining from the rules a display format of the augmented screen sharing session.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 11, wherein text-object recognition techniques are performed to identify particular keywords from the identified contents.

13. A computer-implemented method for determining a contextual relevance between shared content of an interactive communication, participants of the interactive communication, and external information related to the participants, the method comprising:

determining a type of content object from the shared content;

communicating with a data source to identify external data that is contextually relevant to at least one participant of the participants and the type of content object;

outputting the contextually relevant external data from the data source to an electronic display of the participants; and

displaying the contextually relevant external data at electronic display of the participants.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 13, wherein the interactive communication includes a screen sharing session.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 13, wherein the data source includes a third party data system.

16. The computer-implemented method of claim 13, further comprising:

defining one or more rules for determining the type of content object;

identifying at least one rule from the one or more rules for validating the determined type of content object with respect to the at least one participant; and

querying at least one data source in accordance with the at least one rule for determining contextual relevance data from the external data.

17. The computer-implemented method of claim 16, further comprising:

defining at least one rule for outputting the contextually relevant data from the data source; and

determining from the at least one rule a display format for augmenting the interactive communication according to the contextually relevant external data;