Dynamic customized web tours
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsNelson R. Manohar, Marc Hubert Willebeek-LeMair, Philip Shi-Lung Yu
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An interactive and dynamically customizable guided tour of some portion of the World Wide Web monitors and dynamically adapts in response to like-minded users as well as provides recommendations during the traversal. The invention includes features for: electronic commerce; side trips; true visiting of Web sites; maps; pre-fetching of Web objects; insertion of interactive decision points; customized insertion of advertisements; simultaneous traversal of multiple hyperpaths; collection of and dynamic modification of a tour based on collected route information and/or touring statistics.
Claims25
A method for touring a dynamic collection of objects distributed over a computer network, the method comprising the steps of:
- traversing a tour sequence of a tour, wherein the tour sequence comprises a plurality of tour stops and at least one interactivity stop within the tour sequence;
- collecting user preference information at an interactivity stop in the tour sequence;
- dynamically adapting tour stops in the tour sequence following the interactivity stop, if necessary, based on collected user preference information;
- dynamically generating and inserting an additional interactivity stop in the tour sequence, if necessary, based on collected user preference information;
- presenting navigation recommendations at an interactivity stop;
- dynamically customizing the navigation recommendations presented at an interactivity stop in the tour sequence, if necessary, based on collected user preference information;
- collecting user navigation route information while traversing the tour, wherein the step of collecting user navigation route information comprises collecting a token associated with each tour stop, and generating touring statistics based on the collected tokens;
- and
- utilizing the user navigation route information for one of dynamically adapting the tour sequence, dynamically customizing navigation recommendations, and a combination thereof,
- wherein the step of traversing the tour comprises the step of simultaneously traversing a plurality of tour paths, and wherein the step of simultaneously traversing a plurality of tour paths comprises concurrently displaying each tour path in separate, synchronized browser windows.
A method for touring a dynamic collection of objects distributed over a computer network, the method comprising the steps of:
- traversing a tour sequence of a tour, wherein the tour sequence comprises a plurality of tour stops and at least one interactivity stop within the tour sequence, and wherein the tour sequence comprises an ordered collection of tour elements, wherein each tour stop and interactivity stop in the tour sequence is associated with a tour element, wherein each tour element associated with tour stops comprises data fields comprising (1) an amount of tour stops associated with the tour element, (2) a link to each tour stop associated with the tour element, (3) a touring operating type of the tour stops associated with the tour element and (4) a presentation duration of the touring element, and wherein the tour element associated with tour stops further comprises a list of tokens corresponding to each tour stop associated with the tour element, wherein each token represents a content indicator for the tour stop;
- collecting user preference information at an interactivity stop in the tour sequence;
- dynamically adapting tour stops in the tour sequence following the interactivity stop, if necessary, based on collected user preference information;
- and
- dynamically generating and inserting an additional interactivity stop in the tour sequence, if necessary, based on collected user preference information,
- wherein the step of traversing the tour comprises the step of simultaneously traversing a plurality of tour paths, and wherein the step of simultaneously traversing a plurality of tour paths comprises concurrently displaying each tour path in separate, synchronized browser windows.
A method for touring a dynamic collection of objects distributed over a computer network, the method comprising the steps of:
- traversing a tour sequence of a tour, wherein the tour sequence comprises a plurality of tour stops and at least one interactivity stop within the tour sequence;
- collecting user preference information at an interactivity stop in the tour sequence;
- dynamically adapting tour stops in the tour sequence following the interactivity stop, if necessary, based on collected user preference information;
- and
- dynamically generating and inserting an additional interactivity stop in the tour sequence, if necessary, based on collected user preference information,
- wherein the tour stops comprise Web objects, further comprising the steps of:
- associating each web object with at least one token to semantically indicate content of the web object;
- capturing tokens from visited Web objects during the traversal of the tour;
- and
- maintaining a collection of tokens that are captured;
- wherein the step of collecting user preference information at an interactivity stop comprises the steps of:
- displaying the collection of tokens at an interactivity stop;
- and
- one of inserting, disabling, modifying, and a combination thereof, one or more tokens in the displayed collection of tokens.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.