Interactive web collaboration systems and methods

摘要

A topic room is provided in which one or more individuals or other entities may collaborate on topics of mutual interest. Multiple individuals or participants may use the topic room to communicate in real or non-real time and may work together to create, browse, modify, comment on, and perform any other suitable action on content. A chat room within the topic room receives, records, and transmits the communications and all activity in the topic room to all participants as messages. Client processes at a participant's user equipment may listen to the messages and take particular actions. For example, one participant can follow another participant as that participant browses through material by using the messages received from that participant.

主权项

1. A method for providing a topic room including a chat room, the method comprising:
receiving chat messages communicated through the chat room from users and software components of the topic room, wherein the chat messages from the users are associated with user-generated content and the chat messages from the software components include commands or log messages indicative of actions; adding the received chat messages to a log of the topic room, such that the log includes a history of the topic room, including of the user-generated content transmitted to the topic room and the actions performed by the software components in the topic room; transmitting messages stored in the log to one or more topic room clients in response to a request for at least a portion of the topic room history; receiving and interpreting a chat message including a command to replay a portion of the topic room history; retrieving chat messages stored in the log corresponding to the requested portion of the topic room history; and resending the retrieved chat messages to a chat server or client device in chronological order, wherein the chat server or client device is configured to:
receive the resent chat messages; andplay back the resent chat messages to reproduce recorded chat room interactions by:
displaying, upon user request, the chat messages associated with user-generated content; andinterpreting the chat messages that include commands to execute functions, wherein the user-generated content is displayed and the functions are executed in a same relative order and timing as the original topic room interactions.