E-READER SYSTEMS

• US 20140047332A1
• Filed: 11/15/2012
• Published: 02/13/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 08/08/2012
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Liu, Ming, Chub, Sergey, Zeng, Wei, Narayanan, Raman, Nickolov, Radoslav Petrov
• Application Number:
  US13/677,760
• Publication Number:
  US 20140047332A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/273
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/106 Display of layout of documents; Previewing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/166 Editing, e.g. inserting or deleting
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/171 by use of digital ink
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

E-reader architecture with rich service infrastructure for identity, storage, protection, commercial exchange, and sharing of content is provided. The architecture may enable consumption of content through a set of compatible cross-platform consumption experiences that provide easy access to professional, institutional, collaborative or personal content with auxiliary capabilities such as search, commenting, posting, and similar ones.

Claims

1. A method at least partially executed on a computing device for providing an electronic reading experience, the method comprising:

enabling one or more content sources to provide content directly or through a cloud-based reader service to an e-reader application; and

storing at least a portion of the content associated with the e-reader application at a cloud-based data store managed by the cloud-based reader service, wherein the content includes one or more of electronic books, magazines, articles, professional content, institutional content, personal content, and collaborative content.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing a rich service infrastructure at the cloud-based reader service for identity, storage, protection, commercial exchange, and sharing of the content through a set of compatible cross-platform consumption experiences.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the consumption experiences include one or more of:

a core reading experience, a note taking experience, a research experience, a reference experience, a social sharing experience, and an aggregation experience for user created content with the professional content.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

enabling one or more of browsing a book store and purchasing a book for downloading to a client device;

rendering content in a standardized format;

rendering content with images, audio/video replays, and interactivity;

adjusting displayed content size for enhanced readability;

creating text annotations anchored to specific content;

creating full page notes anchored to a specific page in the book;

markup of content of interest by highlighting or underlining;

recalling notes or annotations when the content of interest is in view;

synchronizing annotations and full page notes across one or more devices executing the e-reader application;

look-up of the content of interest with web search results shown within a reading experience; and

search of content of the books and notes along with a web search during the look-up.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

enabling one or more of customization of a reading experience through one or more of a page background, a line spacing, a margin, a gutter width, and a text color;

customization of user generated content through one or more of an ink color, a stroke width, an eraser width, a text color, a font type, and a font size;

selection of an area of displayed content and dragging of the selected content to a note taking pane;

addition of existing or captured audio/video stream to notes;

formatting of notes with modification of one or more of a font style, a font color, a font size;

exporting of annotations to another program capable of receiving one or more annotation content types;

synchronizing the annotations to a pre-configured friends'"'"' book;

conducting of a live chat from within the reader experience;

sharing a hyperlink that links to annotation and content of interest through one of email and by posting to a social web site; and

sharing the displayed content with real time annotations appearing during a chat session.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

enabling a user to interact with provided content and forwarding user input to one of the content source and a designated destination.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

enabling execution of the e-reader application on multiple client devices; and

preserving settings and displayed content when a user changes their client device, wherein the displayed content is adjusted based on client device capabilities and characteristics.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising:

reflowing the content and anchoring annotations and notes such that their relative position to the displayed content is preserved when display characteristics change.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

enabling sharing of at least one of the content, notes, and annotations on one or more of a social network, a professional network, and a blog through activation of a control on an e-reader application user interface.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

enabling user interaction with displayed content through one or more of a touch, an optically captured gesture, a voice input, a gyroscopic input, an eye-tracking input, a keyboard input, a mouse input, and a pen input at the e-reader application.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

updating locally stored data at a client device based on changes at one or more of the content source, the cloud-based reader service, and user actions.

12. A server for providing an electronic reading experience, the server comprising:

a memory;

a processor coupled to the memory, the processor executing an e-reader service in conjunction with instructions stored in the memory, wherein the e-reader service is configured to;

enable one or more content sources to provide content directly or through the e-reader service to an e-reader application; and

store at least a portion of the content associated with the e-reader application at a cloud-based data store managed by the e-reader service, wherein the content includes one or more of electronic books, magazines, articles, professional content, institutional content, personal content, and collaborative content.

13. The server of claim 12, wherein the e-reader application is executed at the e-reader service and provided to one or more client devices in a hosted manner.

14. The server of claim 13, wherein the e-reader service is further configured to:

enable sandboxing of downloaded content at the e-reader application to protect against malicious or unsafe content.

15. The server of claim 13, wherein the e-reader service is further configured to:

enable retrieval of scripts and style lists;

inline the retrieved scripts and style lists with content code;

enable marking of a reference for an image as image;

enable retrieval of the inlined content code by a local context,

enable scanning and finding of instances of images and creation of a blob for each instance; and

enable replacement of the image references by the local context in the inlined content code from the blob at a web context.

16. The server of claim 13, wherein processing is performed at a time of creation at the e-reader application for personal documents created or received from one of a personal domain and an organizational domain, and a portion of processing is performed at the content source and another portion of the processing is performed at the e-reader application for books.

17. The server of claim 12, wherein the data is exchanged between the e-reader service and the e-reader application through one of push from the e-reader service and demand from the e-reader application.

18. A computer-readable memory device with instructions stored thereon for providing an electronic reading experience, the instructions comprising:

enabling one or more content sources to provide content directly or through a cloud-based reader service to an e-reader application;

storing at least a portion of the content associated with the e-reader application at a cloud-based data store managed by the cloud-based reader service, wherein the content includes one or more of electronic books, magazines, articles, professional content, institutional content, personal content, and collaborative content; and

providing a rich service infrastructure at the cloud-based reader service for identity, storage, protection, commercial exchange, and sharing of the content through a set of compatible cross-platform consumption experiences, wherein the consumption experiences include one or more of;

a core reading experience, a note taking experience, a research experience, a reference experience, a social sharing experience, and an aggregation experience for user created content with the professional content.

19. The computer-readable memory device of claim 18, wherein the instructions further comprise:

enabling implementation of one or more visual schemes to display available content including a 3D scheme, a shading scheme, a color scheme, a textual scheme, a graphical scheme, an audio feature, and a video feature.

20. The computer-readable memory device of claim 18, wherein the instructions further comprise:

enabling display of available content through one or more views grouping the available content according to predefined categories at an e-reader application user interface.