Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080215990 | Electronic Calendar with Message Receiver - It is difficult to effectively manage an electronic calendar that is shared by a group of people such as family members. This is achieved by enabling users to send messages to an electronic calendar apparatus. The messages are received and stored at the apparatus and may be viewed by a user such as a mother of a family. A graphical user interface at the calendar apparatus provides a calendar and a message receiver region. A user is able to edit the calendar using information from the messages and in some examples may move or copy message indicators into the calendar from the message receiver region. In some examples, the calendar may only be edited by user input received directly at the calendar apparatus rather than from a remote location. The calendar apparatus may be provided in a protective housing to enable the apparatus to be used in a domestic kitchen. | 09-04-2008 |
20080235600 | Interaction with a Display System - A method of interacting between a display system and a user device is described in which a number of images are displayed by the display system. A user captures one of the images using a camera on the user device and sends the captured image over a wireless link to the display system. Upon receipt, the display system determines the identity of the sending user device and analyses the received image, and if the image matches one of those displayed, the system sends any data associated with the displayed image to the user device over the wireless link. A user may also upload data to form a media package over the wireless link. | 09-25-2008 |
20090193348 | Controlling an Integrated Messaging System Using Gestures - Methods and apparatus for displaying and interacting with messages are described. Messages are displayed using one of a number of different visualization schemes provided. A user can interact with messages or change the selected visualization scheme using gestures and the mapping of gestures to particular actions is different for different visualization schemes. In an embodiment the messages are received via integrated messaging channels and messages are classified using a number of properties. Each of the visualization schemes has a different way of graphically representing messages and each scheme is adapted to emphasize a different combination of message properties. | 07-30-2009 |
20090213245 | Linking captured images using short range communications - Methods and apparatus for linking captured images using short range communications or a personal area network are described. In an embodiment, an image capture device is described which detects devices in proximity to the device and stores data identifying the devices and the times when they were in proximity. In another embodiment, a computing-based device is described which uses the data stored by an image capture device to identify sequences of images which were captured by a group of devices in proximity to each other and to present these sequences to a viewer concurrently and in temporal alignment. | 08-27-2009 |
20090262663 | Wireless Discovery of Devices - A method for wireless discovery of devices is described. In an embodiment, a Wireless Personal Area Networking (WPAN) device advertises its presence to other WPAN devices by transmitting a beacon which includes its identity. The beacon may include a header and/or footer. This message is picked up by other WPAN devices in proximity to the transmitting device and these receiving devices store data identifying the transmitting device. In some embodiments, a database of beacons received by WPAN devices is maintained. This database may be used to associate data which is relevant to transmitting WPAN devices (or to a user thereof) with a WPAN identity. | 10-22-2009 |
20100036854 | Sharing Television Clips - Methods, software and apparatus are described which enable users to share and exchange clips from broadcast media using their mobile devices. Whilst watching broadcast media, a user can cause their mobile device to capture a clip, for example by pressing a button. The capture of the clip enables the user to show and share the clip with friends as part of a system of exchange. | 02-11-2010 |
20100037148 | Social Networking Tool - A social networking tool is described for use with a display. In an embodiment, the display is permanently located in an enterprise office and facilitates social interaction between users some of whom are remote of the display and at least one of whom is physically local to the display. In an embodiment messages comprising content are received from remote users and the content displayed. One display region for each remote user is displayed concurrently and content received from any particular remote user is only displayed in the display region for that remote user. In an embodiment a user local to the display is able to send a message to a remote user by selecting the appropriate display region. In another embodiment a user local to the display is able to change the position of the display regions on the display and may also annotate the display. | 02-11-2010 |
20100082662 | Information Retrieval System User Interface - A user interface for an information retrieval system is described. In an embodiment an output region for showing retrieved documents is displayed on an interactive surface. One or more movable user interface items, such as digital buttons or tangible objects, may be positioned in an active region. Each movable user interface item has a stored query associated with it and for example, the queries may be words or images. In an embodiment a user interface controller apparatus identifies any movable user interface items in the active region and identifies a spatial relationship between those items and the output region. In an embodiment, a query is accessed for each of the user interface items in the active region and those queries and the information about the spatial relationship are used to retrieve documents from a document database. | 04-01-2010 |
20100291952 | Proximity-Based Mobile Message Delivery - Proximity-based mobile message delivery is described. In an embodiment, a first user stores a message intended for a second user on a first mobile terminal, whilst the first mobile terminal is located remote from a second mobile terminal of the second user. Subsequent to this, the first mobile terminal detects that it is now in proximity with the second mobile terminal, and this triggers the first mobile terminal to transmit the message to the second mobile terminal. In embodiments, authentication of the second mobile terminal can be performed before transmitting the message. In another embodiment, a mobile terminal comprises a short-range wireless transceiver that can detect that a further mobile terminal is in proximity, and trigger the transmission of a pre-stored message to the further mobile terminal. | 11-18-2010 |
20110270816 | Information Exploration - Information exploration is described. For example, a user provides gathering terms to an information exploration system which uses those terms to generate many composite items formed from content of different media types obtained from a web search engine. For example, the composite items are displayed simultaneously on a user interface and provide a user with a partial map of information “territory” accessible through the system. In some examples the user is able to select a composite item and use it to explore further in the same direction by generating more composite items using related gathering terms. In some examples the user is able to select a composite item and use it to explore further in a manner indirectly related to the selected composite item. In examples the composite items may be saved in scrap books, sent to other users or used to access content. | 11-03-2011 |
20110310735 | Resource Allocation Framework for Wireless/Wired Networks - A resource allocation framework for wireless/wired networks is described. In an embodiment, methods of end host based traffic management are described which operate separately from the underlying access control protocol within the network (e.g. wireless MAC protocol or TCP). The rate limits for each flow are set based on per-flow weights, which may be user specified, and based on an estimate of the utilization of the shared resource and the rate limits are adjusted periodically so that the resource is not underutilized or saturated. Some embodiments compute a virtual capacity of the resource which is adjusted to optimize the value of the utilization and then the virtual capacity is shared between flows according to the per-flow weights. Methods for estimating the utilization of a wireless network and the capacity of a broadband access link are also described. | 12-22-2011 |
20120144448 | Data Store Including a File Location Attribute - A data store including a file location attribute is described. In an embodiment, the location attribute for a data element, such as a file or database record, is stored with the bytes of data and records the geographic location of the data element. Writing to this attribute is limited to a single trusted entity, such as an operating system, to ensure that the location data can be trusted and when a data element is moved or replicated, the attribute is updated to reflect the new location of the data element. This location data is made available to users and applications by a metadata service which tracks the locations of data elements and responds to requests from users. Access control policies can been defined in terms of location and stored at the metadata service and the metadata service can then enforce these policies when responding to requests. | 06-07-2012 |
20120151339 | ACCESSING AND INTERACTING WITH INFORMATION - In some implementations, an access device may sense movement in six degrees of freedom for interacting with information in a user interface. In some implementations, a security feature may be included for verifying an authorization of a user to use the access device. Additionally, in some implementations, the access device may establish communication with an available computing device for accessing and interacting with information that may include remotely stored information, cloud data, cloud services, and the like. | 06-14-2012 |
20120254116 | Distributed File System - A distributed file system for devices is described. In an embodiment, each data element stored on one of the devices has an associated location and availability attribute. The location attribute is stored co-located with the data element. The availability attribute and a copy of the location attribute are stored by a metadata service. When a client on a device needs to access a data element, it sends a request to the metadata service to find the location of the data element. If the data element is available, this information is provided to the client and this may involve waking a dormant device which holds the data element. Where the data element is not available, read only access may be granted to a cached copy of the data element. Where replication is used and one of the devices holding a replica is unavailable, the system may use write off-loading. | 10-04-2012 |
20120276852 | Proximity-Based Mobile Message Delivery - Proximity-based mobile message delivery is described. In an embodiment, a first user stores a message intended for a second user on a first mobile terminal, whilst the first mobile terminal is located remote from a second mobile terminal of the second user. Subsequent to this, the first mobile terminal detects that it is now in proximity with the second mobile terminal, and this triggers the first mobile terminal to transmit the message to the second mobile terminal. In embodiments, authentication of the second mobile terminal can be performed before transmitting the message. In another embodiment, a mobile terminal comprises a short-range wireless transceiver that can detect that a further mobile terminal is in proximity, and trigger the transmission of a pre-stored message to the further mobile terminal. | 11-01-2012 |