User interface for a system and process for providing dynamic communication access and information awareness in an interactive peripheral display

摘要

The system and method of the present invention provides a user interface for providing peripheral awareness of information to a user. The information to be provided is either determined automatically, or specified by the user. Once the information to be provided is determined or specified, it is automatically tracked or watched via at least one conventional communications interface. Current information is then automatically dynamically provided in an interactive peripheral display which minimizes any potential distraction to the user. Determining or specifying, tracking or watching, and providing the information is accomplished using at least one customizable dynamic encapsulated object, a “ticket,” that when paired with a “viewer,” provides peripheral awareness of information to the user. Further, in one embodiment, the tickets are sharable among users, and may be copied, cut, pasted, saved, transmitted, dragged and dropped from web pages, etc., like any other electronic file using conventional techniques.

主权项

1. A system executed by a processor for automatically providing dynamically updated information on a display device, comprising:
a user interface associated with a user computing device for specifying information of interest to be automatically tracked via instructions embedded within each of a plurality of graphically represented customizable tickets, each customizable ticket being automatically transferred to the user computing device from a remote server, wherein automatically transferring the customizable ticket to the user computing device comprises using the user interface for dragging an iconized representation of the customizable ticket from a remote web page on the remote server and dropping the iconized representation of the customizable ticket into the container on the display device, wherein the instructions embedded within each customizable ticket comprise:
a definition of the information of interest specified to be tracked;a definition of how the information of interest is to be tracked; anda definition of how the information of interest is to be displayed, wherein the definition of how the information of interest is to be displayed identifies one viewer of a plurality of viewers capable of displaying the type of information of interest as defined in the ticket, wherein the one viewer of the plurality of viewers is paired with the ticket for displaying the information of interest defined in the ticket; at least one container displayed on the display device, said container holding the plurality of tickets; displaying each of the tickets as an individual dynamic thumbnail within the container, wherein each of the tickets is displayed within the container via the viewer identified in the ticket and paired therewith, wherein at least two of the tickets are displayed within the container via different viewers; automatically tracking the information of interest via at least one communications access point in accordance with the definition of how the information of interest is to be tracked embedded within each of the tickets; and dynamically providing the automatically tracked information of interest within each thumbnail.