Tangible icon representing network objects
First Claim
1. A method of providing access to objects on a computer network comprising the steps of:
- initializing a phicon, said phicon comprising a machine-readable tag having a resource identifier encoded thereon, said resource identifier identifying a memory location at a provider server, said initializing step comprising the sub-steps of;
presenting the phicon to a phicon-reading appliance;
contacting the provider server using the resource identifier read from the phicon by the phicon-reading appliance;
creating a network object at the memory location identified by the resource identifier;
placing at least one pointer in the created network object, said at least one pointer identifying at least one data object, whereby the created network object can provide access to a plurality of data objects having arbitrary sizes; and
accessing the at least one data object using said initialized phicon, said accessing step comprising the sub-steps of;
presenting, by an accessing user, the phicon to the phicon-reading appliance;
contacting the provider server using the resource identifier read from the phicon by the phicon-reading appliance; and
presenting to the accessing user the at least one data object identified by the at least one pointer, whereby the accessing user may interact with the at least one data object identified by the at least one pointer.
7 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A tangible icon is permanently encoded with a URL of a first network object. Links (“shortcuts”) to other network objects are assigned as the contents of the first network object. A person in possession of the tangible icon can gain access to the other network objects without having to remember or enter their URLs, but need only present the physical icon to a reader. The system and method uses the URI encoded on the tangible icon to access the network object and to resolve the links contained therein to provide the contents of the linked objects. The number and size of the other network objects the user can access are virtually unlimited. The user gains access to the current version of an object.
39 Citations
22 Claims
-
1. A method of providing access to objects on a computer network comprising the steps of:
-
initializing a phicon, said phicon comprising a machine-readable tag having a resource identifier encoded thereon, said resource identifier identifying a memory location at a provider server, said initializing step comprising the sub-steps of;
presenting the phicon to a phicon-reading appliance;
contacting the provider server using the resource identifier read from the phicon by the phicon-reading appliance;
creating a network object at the memory location identified by the resource identifier;
placing at least one pointer in the created network object, said at least one pointer identifying at least one data object, whereby the created network object can provide access to a plurality of data objects having arbitrary sizes; and
accessing the at least one data object using said initialized phicon, said accessing step comprising the sub-steps of;
presenting, by an accessing user, the phicon to the phicon-reading appliance;
contacting the provider server using the resource identifier read from the phicon by the phicon-reading appliance; and
presenting to the accessing user the at least one data object identified by the at least one pointer, whereby the accessing user may interact with the at least one data object identified by the at least one pointer. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22)
-
Specification