Techniques for electronic aggregation of information

• US 9,715,485 B2
• Filed: 03/16/2012
• Issued: 07/25/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 03/28/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Draper, Jodie P. B., Roth, Tali, Stiles, Scott, Wood, Matthew, Affronti, Michael, Douglas, Malia, Schorr, Janet, Rajabi, Zeyad, Troy, Robin
• Primary Examiner(s): Debrow, James J
• Application Number:
  US13/422,814
• Publication Number:
  US 20120254713A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,957 Days
• Field of Search: 715209
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/117 Tagging; Marking up details of markup languages G06F40/143; Designating a block; Setting of attributes style sheets, e.g. eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation [XSLT], G06F40/154
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/131 Fragmentation of text files, e.g. creating reusable text-blocks; Linking to fragments, e.g. using XInclude; Namespaces
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/186 Templates

Abstract

Techniques for an electronic montage system are described. An apparatus may comprise a logic device arranged to execute a montage application comprising an authoring component operative to provide a presentation surface having multiple presentation tiles, receive control directives to associate content files with presentation tiles, generate tile objects for the content files based on content file types for the content files, and store the presentation surface and tile objects as a montage. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

providing a presentation surface having multiple presentation tiles;

receiving a control directive to associate a content file with a presentation tile;

identifying a content file type for the content file;

selectively extracting a portion of content from the content file based on rules concerning which content to extract from the content file based upon an available area within a defined region of the presentation tile and the content file type;

generating a tile object based on the content portion;

formatting the content portion within the defined region of the tile object;

storing the presentation surface and tile object as a montage capable of navigation using a gesture interface; and

deleting the tile object from the montage.

2. The method of claim 1, comprising receiving the control directive to associate the content file with the presentation tile from an input device.

3. The method of claim 1, comprising processing a tapping motion to delete the tile object.

4. The method of claim 1, comprising processing a tapping motion on a delete icon to remove the presentation tile.

5. The method of claim 1, comprising moving the tile object from a first position to a second position on the montage.

6. The method of claim 1, comprising adding tile objects to the montage to generate a set of tile objects.

7. The method of claim 1, comprising reordering a set of tile objects of the montage.

8. The method of claim 1, comprising editing a tile object of the montage.

9. The method of claim 1, comprising moving another tile object to a presentation tile previously associated with the tile object.

10. The method of claim 1, comprising:

receiving a control directive to open the montage;

retrieving the montage from a remote datasource; and

presenting a user interface view of the presentation surface with the tile object in the presentation tile.

11. The method of claim 1, comprising:

receiving a control directive to select the tile object;

retrieving the content file for the tile object from a remote datastore; and

presenting a user interface view of the content file.

12. An article comprising a storage medium containing instructions that when executed enable a system to:

generate a montage comprising a presentation surface with multiple presentation tiles each having a tile object for a corresponding content file, each tile object generated by selectively extracting a portion of content from the corresponding content file based on a type definition comprising a set of rules concerning which information to extract from the corresponding content file based upon space within a defined region of the presentation tile and by formatting the extracted content portion within the defined region of a presentation tile, the montage arranged for use with a gesture interface;

send the montage and content files to a network service;

edit a tile object of the montage;

receive references to the montage and each content file; and

associate a reference for a content file with a corresponding tile object.

13. The article of claim 12, further comprising instructions that when executed enable the system to edit at least one of text, a label or a caption associated with the tile object.

14. The article of claim 12, further comprising instructions that when executed enable the system to delete the tile object from a corresponding presentation tile.

15. An apparatus, comprising:

a processor arranged to execute a logic device; and

the logic device arranged to execute a montage application comprising an authoring component operative to provide a presentation surface having multiple presentation tiles, receive control directives to associate content files with presentation tiles, generate tile objects for the content files based on content file types for the content files by deriving a portion of content from each content file to fit within a defined region of a presentation tile based on a set of rules concerning which content to derive from the each content file based upon that content file'"'"'s content file type, and store the presentation surface and tile objects as a montage capable of navigation using a gesture interface, the authoring component operative to modify the montage in response to user gestures.

16. The apparatus of claim 15, the authoring component comprising multiple type modules corresponding to each content file type, a type module operative to retrieve information from a content file based on a type definition for a content file type, and generate a tile object based on the retrieved information and the type definition.

17. The apparatus of claim 15, comprising a security component operative to receive a control directive to authorize communicating content files from a local datastore to a remote datastore for a network storage device accessible by a network service.

18. The apparatus of claim 15, comprising a publishing component operative to publish the montage and content files from a local datastore to a remote datastore for a network storage device accessible by a network service.

19. The apparatus of claim 15, comprising a messaging component operative to send the montage or a reference to the montage in a message.

20. The apparatus of claim 15, comprising a presentation component operative to generate a first user interface view to present each tile object within each associated presentation tile of the presentation surface, receive a control directive to select a tile object, and generate a second user interface view to present a content file corresponding to the tile object.