Method and apparatus for organizing and processing information using a digital computer

• US 7,203,910 B1
• Filed: 01/22/1999
• Issued: 04/10/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 11/07/1996
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: TheBrain Technologies Corporation
• Original Assignee: TheBrain Technologies, LP
• Inventors: Hugh, Harlan, Cozad, Michael, Hugh, Errolson
• Primary Examiner(s): SAX, STEVEN PAUL
• Application Number:
  US09/236,057
• Time in Patent Office: 3,000 Days
• Field of Search: 345/326, 345/358, 345853-855, 345705-709, 345835-838, 345819-820, 345804-805, 707/10, 707/1, 707/2, 707/102, 707/203, 715705-712, 715734-739, 715789-792, 715853-855, 715804-805, 715/802, 715/803, 715/767, 715/850, 715/740
• US Class Current: 715/804
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/904 Browsing; Visualisation therefor for navigating the web G06F16/954; browsing optimisation for the web G06F16/957

Abstract

A method and apparatus for organizing and processing pieces of interrelated information (or “thoughts”) using a digital computer is disclosed. The invention employs a graphical user interface to facilitate user interaction with highly flexible, associative “matrices” that enable users conveniently to organize digitally-stored thoughts and their network of interrelationships. Each of the thoughts may be affiliated with one or more application programs, such as a word processing or spreadsheet utility, or an Internet browser. Users are able conveniently to select a current thought along with any applications or content associated with that thought by interacting with the graphical representation. That representation is automatically reoriented about the selected thought, and is revised to reflect only those thoughts having predetermined relations to that current thought. Users can easily modify the matrix by interactively redefining relations between thoughts. Further aspects of the invention include techniques permitting automated generation of thought matrices, delayed loading to facilitate navigation amongst thoughts without undue delay due to bandwidth constraints, and matrix division and linking to allow optimal data structure flexibility. The present invention is interoperable with computer networks including the Internet, and offers an intuitive scalable methodology for the navigation and management of essentially immeasurable information resources and knowledge bases that transcends the limitations inherent in traditional hierarchical approaches. Thought matrices may conveniently be published and shared by multiple users under another aspect of the present invention. Still another aspect enhances communications amongst computer network users by sharing information about users'"'"' navigation amongst shared thoughts. The present invention offers advantages over prior art methods when speech is used to control a computer. Lastly, another aspect of the present invention provides users of a computer network automatically to receive custom content in response to their navigation of network files, without modifying those files.

Claims

1. A method for organizing and processing electronic information comprising the steps of:

organizing the electronic information as a plurality of thoughts;

defining a matrix of the plurality of thoughts in a network and further including a plurality of network relationships among the thoughts, wherein each thought may be related to at least one of the other thoughts, and at least one of the thoughts is directly related to one of the other thoughts;

selecting a first thought from the plurality of thoughts to be a central thought;

displaying on a display direct relationships between at least some of the plurality of thoughts, including an indicium of the central thought and at least one of the related thoughts;

selecting a second thought that is related to the central thought to be a new central thought; and

displaying an indicium of the new central thought and at least one related thought,

wherein each of the indicia comprise a graphical icon that may be activated by a user, and wherein indicia of the thoughts on the display are rearranged upon selection of a new central thought in a manner that graphically reflects the relationship between the thoughts and the new central thought.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the new current central thought is associated with information, the method further comprising the step of viewing, editing or processing the electronic information.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein one or more thoughts related to both the first and second thoughts are also displayed.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one thought is a parent of another thought, and wherein at least one thought is a sibling of another thought, and wherein indicia of each of the thoughts and indicia of the parent and sibling relationships between the thoughts are graphically represented on the display.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein the step of viewing, editing or processing is subsequent of loading the contents of said new central thought.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the loading step is performed automatically.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein said loading step is delayed for a period of time.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the period of time is long enough to permit navigating to another thought before the contents of the central thought are loaded.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein the user is appraised by a visual display of the extent to which the period of time has elapsed.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of creating a file that contains a full location of a device on which the network is initially defined, that file configured so that the thought documents organized by the network are accessible from a remote device having access to the information organized by the network.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising the steps of:

identifying at least one thought document that does not reside in the memory or storage of a local device;

loading selected ones of the identified thought documents to a local device;

changing the recorded location of the loaded thought documents to reflect the new local location of the thought documents.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the thoughts are of a plurality of thought types.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of defining further comprises the step of setting sharing characteristics of at least one thought.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein said network relationships may be forgotten.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein said network relationships may be forgotten automatically in accordance with particular usage statistics.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein memory of the network relationships is of more than one type, and wherein the user may selectively display the relationships remembered by one or more of those memory types.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of defining comprises adding at least one thought to the network by dragging with a pointing device from or to a thought in a plex to or from a window associated with the thought document.

18. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one thought contains more than one version of a single thought document and wherein a user may select from among these multiple versions of the thought document.

19. The method of claim 1 wherein the indicia are highlighted in a manner indicating to the user which thought will be designated should the user select the indicium over which a pointer indicium responsive to a user input means presently resides.

20. The method of claim 1 in which a Train of Thought is highlighted or otherwise made visible or differentiated from other graphical elements of the matrix.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein arrows or other indicia arc used to indicate the order of the Train of Thought.

22. The method of claim 1, wherein the matrix references another matrix.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein an administrator may independently assign access privileges to each of the matrices.

24. The method of claim 1 wherein a user can divide a single matrix into one or more individual matrices.

25. The method of claim 1 wherein multiple users can simultaneously access a single matrix.

26. The method of claim 24 further comprising a method for preventing the creation of conflicting versions of a single thought document.

27. The method of claim 1 wherein the display of the thought indicia is based upon particular usage statistics.

28. The method of claim 27 wherein the thought indicia are graphically differentiated to reflect temporally-based usage statistics.

29. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of defining further comprises the step of generating a matrix based upon a hierarchical file management structure.

30. The method of claim 29, wherein the generated matrix may subsequently be modified to incorporate nonhierarchical associations among thoughts.

31. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of defining further comprises the step of generating a matrix based upon a preexisting self-referencing network.

32. The method of claim 31, wherein the generated matrix may subsequently be modified to incorporate nonhierarchical associations among thoughts.

33. The method of claim 31, wherein the self-referencing network comprises the Internet.

34. The method of claim 31, wherein said self-referencing network comprises a hypertext document.

35. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of defining is, in whole or in part, performed in response to a user'"'"'s serial selection of files or Internet browsing.

36. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of defining is, in whole or in part, performed based upon the results of a database search.

37. The method of claim 36 wherein said database represents an index of content on the Internet.

38. The method of claim 31 wherein the step of generating is performed in accordance with a web crawling technique and in which the self-referencing network comprises at least one site on the World Wide Web.

39. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one file having information associated with a thought resides remotely on a server or other remote device, and wherein the user accesses the matrix from a client or other local device.

40. The method of claim 39, further comprising the steps of:

based upon the current thought and the defined matrix relationships, identifying all thoughts that could possibly be selected as a new central thought from a current plex, and all thoughts that would join the new central thought in a resulting new plex upon the selection of any one of the thoughts;

identifying the thoughts for which the desired information is presently stored at the local device; and

sending from the remote device only that data associated with each thought that could join the new plex upon the selection of a new central thought that is not already stored at the local device.

41. The method of claim 40, wherein the results of at least one of the steps of identifying are stored in a ThoughtList.

42. The method of claim 1, wherein files that store information relating to the matrix are embedded into hypertext and are accessible from hypertext.

43. The method of claim 1, wherein files that store information relating to said matrix comprise both internal and external files.

44. The method of claim 43, wherein a user can selectively convert internal files to external tiles, and can selectively convert external files to internal files.

45. The method of claim 6 wherein files containing the loaded information are saved automatically without user interaction upon the deactivation of their associated thought.

46. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of maintaining a list of parentless thoughts so that it is unnecessary to ensure that each thought has a relationship with at least one other thought.

47. The method of claim 14 wherein all thoughts childward of a first forgotten thought and not having parent relations to any thought other than a forgotten thought are themselves forgotten.

48. The method of claim 1 further comprising the step of enabling the entry of notes relating to at least one thought, wherein the notes are loaded and saved upon the activation and deactivation of the thought to which the notes correspond.

49. The method of claim 48 wherein the notes are entered by a word processor that links at least one OLE or similar object.

50. A method for organizing and processing electronic information comprising the steps of:

organizing a plurality of thoughts;

defining a matrix comprising the plurality of thoughts and further comprising a plurality of network relationships among the thoughts, wherein at least one of the thoughts is related to one of the other thoughts;

displaying a graphical representation of the matrix, the graphical representation comprising a plurality of display icons corresponding to the thoughts, and further comprising a plurality of connecting lines corresponding to the relationships among the thoughts;

receiving a communication from an application program;

identifying at least one command within the communication, the command a request to make a particular thought a current thought; and

loading, viewing, editing or processing information associated with the current thought, wherein icons of the thoughts on the display are rearranged upon selection of the current thought in a manner that graphically reflects the relationship between the thoughts and the current thought.

51. An apparatus for organizing and processing information using a computer, said information comprising a plurality of thoughts and said apparatus comprising:

input means for defining a matrix comprising the plurality of thoughts and further comprising a plurality of network relationships among the thoughts, wherein each thought may be related to at least one other of said thoughts, and wherein at least one of said thoughts is directly related to one of the other thoughts;

display means for displaying graphical representation of direct relationships between at least some of the plurality of thought, including an indicium of a first thought as a central thought and an indicium of a second thought, said second thought having a direct relation to said first thought; and

means for enabling selection of said second thought to be a new central thought, whereby indicia of those thoughts having defined relations with said second thought will be displayed on said display in a manner that graphically reflects the relationship between those thoughts and the new central thought.

52. A computer program product for organizing and processing information using a computer, said information comprising a plurality of thoughts and said product comprising:

a computer-usable medium having computer-readable code embodied therein, said computer-readable code comprising;

a matrix definition module which is configured so that a matrix comprising the plurality of thoughts and further comprising a plurality of network relationships among the thoughts can be defined, wherein each thought may be related to at least one other of said thoughts, and wherein at least one of said thoughts is directly related to one of the other thoughts;

a display module which is configured to display graphical representation of direct relationships between at least some of the plurality of thoughts on a display, including an indicium of a first thought as a central thought and

an indicium of a second thought, said second thought having a direct relation to said first thought; and

a selection module which is configured to enable selection of said second thought to be a new central thought, whereby indicia of those thoughts having defined relations with said second thought will be displayed on said display in a manner that graphically reflects the relationship between those thoughts and the new central thought.

53. A system for organizing and processing information using a computer, said information comprising a plurality of thoughts, and said system comprising:

input means for defining a matrix comprising the plurality of thoughts and further comprising a plurality of network relationships among the thoughts, wherein each thought may be related to at least one other of said thoughts, and wherein at least one of said thoughts is directly related to one of the other thoughts;

a display for displaying graphical representation of direct relationships between at least some of the plurality of thoughts, including an indicium of a first thought as a central thought on the display; and

an indicium of a second thought on said display, said second thought having a direct relation to said first thought, wherein a user can select said second thought to be a new central thought, whereby indicia of those thoughts having defined relations with said second thought will be displayed on said display in a manner that graphically reflects the relationship between those thoughts and the new central thought.