Subscription control panel

• US 7,412,534 B2
• Filed: 02/02/2006
• Issued: 08/12/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/30/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Hayashi, Nathanael Joe, Ott, Edward Stanley IV, Tsang, Audrey Y., Fukuda, Matt, Wascovich, Dan J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Maung; Zarni
• Application Number:
  US11/346,847
• Publication Number:
  US 20070088832A1
• Time in Patent Office: 922 Days
• Field of Search: 709/223, 709/224, 709/226, 709/229, 709/250, 709/219, 709/231, 707/10, 707/100
• US Class Current: 709/231
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management

Abstract

Systems and methods are provided for centrally managing subscriptions to feeds accessible at different locations on a network. A subscription server is provided that a user can log in to from any of the user'"'"'s rendering devices and use to manage subscriptions to feeds, including subscribing to feeds, listening to episodes of feeds, downloading episodes to a rendering device, and rating and reviewing episodes. The user'"'"'s history of actions with respect to feeds is tracked and stored on the subscription server. The user can then access this history via user interfaces generated by the subscription server to determine what actions the user has performed in the past.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a subscription engine implemented on a server configured to communicate with rendering devices over a network, the subscription engine configured to receive feed subscription requests from a user via a first rendering device in communication with the server; and

a subscription data store in communication with the server, the subscription data store comprising subscription information associated with the user, wherein the subscription information identifies one or more feeds that the user is currently subscribed to and comprises user-generated directions received by the server, the feeds being accessible at remote computing devices;

wherein each of the subscription requests comprises a request to monitor the feed for the addition of new episodes, the new episodes being accessible at one or more remote computing devices, and

wherein the subscription information identifies a list of currently subscribed feeds based on feed subscription requests received by the server from the user, a history of episodes rendered by the user as a result of render requests received by the server from the user, and display information to selectively display subscription information.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the subscription engine is further configured to generate, based on the subscription information and the one or more feeds accessible at remote computers, an interface for display on the rendering device to the user, wherein the interface identifies at least one feed the user being currently subscribed to and includes at least one render control that allows a user to cause an episode of the at least one feed to be rendered on the rendering device, and wherein user selection of the at least one render control causes render data to be stored in the subscription data store as subscription information associated with the user.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the interface for display on the rendering device to the user further comprises an unsubscribe control associated with the at least one feed, a user selection of the unsubscribe control causing subscription information associated with the user in the subscription data store to be updated to indicate that the user is no longer subscribed to the at least one feed associated with the selected unsubscribe control.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the subscription engine is further configured to generate and transmit information to a browser on the rendering device, the information being interpretable by the browser of the rendering device to retrieve an episode from a remote computing device and render the episode to the user.

5. The system of claim 2 wherein the interface for display on the rendering device is a web page generated by the subscription engine and transmitted to a browser on the rendering device for interpretation and display.