Image exchange with image annotation
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsKentaro Toyama, David Vronay, Padmanabhan Anandan
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system and method for providing a peer-to-peer photo-sharing environment. The system includes: manual and automatic photo annotation at the client; periodic client-server synchronization; an index of client photos on a central server or a photo database that is resident on the central server, which is updated by the client-server synchronization function; end-user search functionality to search the centralized index or photo database; and transmission of the relevant photos to the client via an on-line image cache. In one embodiment, one client's new photos are automatically displayed on another client's computer (e.g., via screen saver or another mechanism).
Claims21
A computer-implemented process for sharing images comprising the process actions of:
- inputting images at a hosting client;
- annotating said images with metadata associated with the same image located in a different location at said hosting client, comprising
- locating the same image as said image in other locations;
- extracting all annotation data from said same image in said other location;
- annotating said image with said annotation data extracted from said image in said other location;
- creating a local index of said images and local database of said images at said hosting client;
- synchronizing said hosting client's local index with a master index of a central server, said master index comprising all images available for sharing;
- and
- providing images from said hosting client.
A computer-implemented process for sharing images comprising the process actions of:
- inputting images at a hosting client;
- annotating said images with metadata associated with the same image located in a different location at said hosting client, wherein the process action of annotating said image with metadata associated with the same image located in a different location further comprises the process actions of:
- locating the same image as said image in other locations;
- extracting all annotation data from said same image in said other location;
- annotating said image with said annotation data extracted from said image in said other location;
- and
- creating a local index of said images and local database of said images at said hosting client;
- providing images from said hosting client.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.