System and method for adaptive forums communication

• US 7,424,516 B2
• Filed: 01/13/2005
• Issued: 09/09/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/20/2001
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Computer Products for Education Incorporated
• Original Assignee: NeonGeckocom Incorporated (NeonGecko.com)
• Inventors: Leeds, Richard
• Primary Examiner(s): Donaghue; Larry D
• Assistant Examiner(s): BILGRAMI, ASGHAR H
• Application Number:
  US11/036,437
• Publication Number:
  US 20050125504A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,335 Days
• Field of Search: 709/206, 709/218, 705/14
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1831 Tracking arrangements for later retrieval, e.g. recording contents, participants activities or behavior, network status
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols

Abstract

A system and method for adaptive forums provides multiple communication forums in a single instance of a web browser application that actively adapts to conversations therein. In a preferred embodiment, a server system acts as a master controller of a plurality of communication forums. An agent running in the background on the server system monitors the conversations of each forum. When the conversations of different forums sufficiently converge, a temporary communication link is formed. A communication link may be a two-way real-time interaction between users of different forums or simply automated responses using messages stored in a database and associated with the linked forum. Furthermore, establishing the link may entail opening another communication forum on the client computer or directing the messages to a currently open forum. Once a user has connected to one forum controlled by the server system, access to all the other forums controlled by the server system is provided. Embodiments of the present invention provide increased usability over conventional single forum communication, thereby providing users with quick and efficient access to vast amounts of information.

Claims

1. A method to provide adaptive forums within a single instance of a web browser application, the method comprising:

at a server computer, receiving an indication of a first uniform resource locator (“

URL”

) from a client computer across a network communicatively linking the client computer and the server computer;

displaying a screen on the client computer including one or more first forums based on the first URL;

analyzing messages posted to the one or more first forums as displayed on the client computer to identify a topic for each message;

simultenous with analyzing messages posted to the one or more first forums, analyzing each message posted to one or more second forums not displayed on the client computer to identify a topic for each message;

determining a topic of a first message posted to at least one of the first forums has converged with a topic of a second message posted to at least one of the second forums, the first message having been posted substantially contemporaneiously with the second message; and

diverting the second message to the at least one of the first forums for display thereby on the client computer.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

collecting personalized data about a user of the client computer comprising;

sending queries from the server computer to the client computer during a key chat when the client computer initially connects to a forum controlled by the server computer, and

storing responses to the queries in one or more storage devices communicatively linked to the server computer;

using the personalized data about the user to select a third message posted to at least one of the second forums; and

diverting the third message to the at least one of the first forums for display thereby on the client computer.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising diverting the first message to the at least one of the second forums for display thereby.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the first URL particularly identifies one of the one or more first forums.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the one or more first forums and the one or more second forums are chat forums.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

collecting stored data from at least one of the client computer and the server computer including information collected from previous forum connections and stored in a database on the server computer or a cookie on the client computer; and

using the collected stored data to display the screen on the client computer including the one or more first forums.

7. A method comprising:

displaying concurrently one or more first forums within a single instance of a web browser application;

analyzing messages posted to the one or more first forums displayed on a screen of the client computer;

determining when a topic of a first message posted to an identified forum of the one or more first forums has converged with a topic of a second message posted to at least one second forum; and

temporarily interconnecting the identified forum with the at least one second forum so that postings to the identified forum appear on the at least one second forum and postings to the at least one second forum appear on the identified forum.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the one or more first forums and the at least one second forum are chat forums.

9. The method of claim 7, further including automatically formatting the one or more first forums and the one or more second forums to substantially equally share an area on the screen of the client computer.

10. An adaptive forum communication system communicatively linked to one or more client computers, the adaptive forum communication system comprising:

a plurality of unconnected communication forums each configured to receive messages from the one or more client computers, each message having a topic; and

a forum interlink communicatively coupled to each of the communication forums of the plurality of communication forums, the forum interlink being configured to;

monitor the messages received by each of the communication forums;

detect the topic of each message;

determine when the topic of a first message received by a first communication forum has converged with a topic of a second message received by a second communication forum; and

interconnect the first communication forum and second communication forum to display both the first message and the second message in both the first communication forum and the second communication forum.

11. The adaptive forum communication system of claim 10, wherein the forum interlink further comprises a message parser configured to parse each message received by each of the first and second communication forums and detect the topic of each message.

12. The adaptive forum communication system of claim 10, wherein each message comprises one or more words, and the topic of each message comprises a portion of the one or more words of the message.