Graphical e-commerce shopping terminal system and method

A computer readable medium encoded with software for presenting information regarding products, suppliers and offerors to users in a virtual shopping mall on a communications terminal, said communications terminal having a user graphical display, a user input, and a memory, said software when executed by said communications terminal causing the communications terminal to perform the following actions:

• storing in said memory a set of mall data objects, said mall data objects comprising a graphical map of a virtual shopping mall said map having a coordinate system associated with positions within the shopping mall, and a plurality of multimedia data objects indexed to said coordinate system;
• providing a map of a virtual shopping mall, said map having a coordinate system associated with positions within the shopping mall;
• assigning a customer an initial position having a set of coordinates within the shopping mall;
• presenting at least one multimedia data object to a customer indexed to said initial position;
• updating said initial position to a subsequent position responsive to a position change command from a user received via said user input;
• and
• presenting at least one multimedia data object to a customer indexed to said subsequent position.

A geographically-centered shopping mall browser for presenting information regarding products, suppliers and offerors to users in a virtual shopping mall using a communications terminal, said communications terminal having a user graphical display, a processor, a user input, and a memory, said shopping mall browser comprising:

• a set of mall data objects disposed in said memory, said mall data objects comprising a graphical map of a virtual shopping mall, said map having a coordinate system associated with positions within the shopping mall, and a plurality of multimedia data objects indexed to said coordinate system;
• a mall map displayer for showing on said communications terminal graphical display a geographical organization of a virtual mall contents;
• a customer position initializer for assigning an initial user position having a set of coordinates within the virtual shopping mall;
• a position tracker for updating said initial position to a subsequent position responsive to a position change command from a user via said user input;
• and
• a multimedia data object presenter for presenting at least one multimedia object to a customer indexed to said initial position or said subsequent position.