8173 results about "Uniform resource locator" patented technology

A method and apparatus for providing hypermedia content maintained remotely on a network to a wireless device without a browser are described. A Short Message Service (SMS) request for Internet-based content is received from the wireless device at a proxy server, via an SMS Center (SMSC). The SMS request is transmitted to the SMSC on a wireless network. The proxy server transcodes the SMS request from a character set of the SMSC to a character set of an application and extracts a keyword from the trancoded request. The proxy server maintains a mapping of keywords to URLs. The proxy server looks up the extracted keyword in the keyword-to-URL mapping to identify the URL of an application associated with the keyword. The proxy server constructs an HTTP POST operation containing the keyword and the URL, and submits the HTTP POST operation to the application over a wireline network such as the Internet. Upon receiving an HTTP response containing the requested content from the application in response to the POST operation, the proxy server extracts the content from the HTTP response. The proxy server then translates the content from the content-type used by the application to the content-type used by the SMSC and transcodes the content from the character set used by the application to the character set used by the SMSC. The proxy server then sends the translated and transcoded content in an SMS response to the SMSC, for subsequent delivery to wireless device as an SMS message.

An e-mail system that re-packages message attachments optimized for delivery to wireless handheld devices is described. The preferred embodiment provides an optimization of the e-mail deliveries to allow for the recipients to receive e-mail attachments at a time and in a size/format as desired. The preferred embodiment compares the size of attached images to the capabilities of the type of the recipient client device, and preempts delivery of the original format of those attachments if they are determined to be burdensome or overwhelming. In cases wherein these attachments would strain the capabilities of the recipient devices' wireless bandwidth and/or display features, the original attachments are removed from the messages and do not accompany the e-mail delivery. Any detached attachment is saved in a network media-sharing repository, and can be subsequently accessed via a link (e.g., URL) referencing that storage address. Recipients can specify their wireless handheld device types, and opt to receive transformations of this type of attachment as a default substitute in subsequent e-mail deliveries. In cases wherein the recipient has previously used multiple types of client devices when receiving messages from the system, the present invention applies a transformation on the current attachment that corresponds to the least capable in the set of those multiple devices. Recipients may also elect to receive the URL for the network storage address of copies of either the original and/or transformed attachments.

A method of and system for finding and serving consumer product-related information on the Internet comprising a database serving subsystem which stores: a plurality of manufacturer identification numbers (MINs) assigned to a plurality of manufacturers of consumer products; a plurality of home-page specifying URLs symbolically linked to the plurality of MINs; a plurality of universal product numbers (UPN) assigned to a plurality of consumer products made by the plurality of manufacturers; and a plurality of product-information specifying URLs symbolically linked to the plurality of UPNs. During operation, a client subsystem transmits to the database serving subsystem, a request for information which includes the UPN assigned to the consumer product on which product-related information is being sought. The database serving subsystem automatically compares the UPN against the stored plurality of MINs, and automatically returns to the client subsystem, one or more of URLs symbolically linked to the UPN, if URLs have been symbolically linked to the UPN within the database serving subsystem. However, if no URLs have been symbolically linked to the UPN, then the database serving subsystem automatically returns the home-page specifying URL symbolically linked to the MIN contained within the UPN in the request. By virtue of this novel MIN-based search mechanism embodied within the database serving subsystem, client subsystems are automatically provided with the home-page of the manufacturer's World Wide Web (WWW) site in situations where product-information specifying URLs have not yet been symbolically linked with the UPN on any one of the manufacturer's products.

The present invention consists of a secure interactive electronic account statement delivery system suitable for use over open networks such as the Internet. The invention utilizes a certification hierarchy to insure that electronic bills, invoices, and other account statements can be securely sent over open networks. The participants in the system are a certification authority, certificated banks, billers, and customers. The certification authority grants digital certificates to the certificated banks, which in turn grant digital certificates to billers and customers. Digital certificates form the basis for encryption and authentication of network communications, using public and private keys. The certificates associate a customer and biller with a certificated bank and with the electronic billing system, much like payment cards associate a customer with a payment card issuer and a particular payment card system. Digital signatures are used for authentication and non-repudiation. The certificates may be stored as digital data on storage media of a customer's or biller's computer system, or may be contained in integrated circuit or chip cards physically issued to billers and customers. The electronic bill itself may be a simple text message containing the equivalent of summary information for the bill, or may be more elaborate. In one embodiment of the invention, the electronic bill contains a number of embedded links, for example an embedded URL of a biller's world wide web server that allows the customer to interactively bring up detailed billing information by activating the link. The e-mail message may also include links to third party websites.

A visual index method provides graphical output from search engine results or other URL lists. Search engine results or a list of URLs are passed to a web crawler that retrieves the web page and other media information present at the associated URL. The web crawler then passes this information to a page renderer which also receives image scale and format information regarding the web pages present at the URLs. The graphical information as well as other media information is then rendered into a reduced graphical form so that the page may be summarily reviewed by the user. Media, visual, or other information may also be downwardly scaled as appropriate or rendered in its original as appropriate (such as with audio data streams). A variety of convenient formats allows the user to quickly and readily scan the presentation at the URL web pages or other data present. Image maps associated with the reduced images may also provide hyperlink access to the linked web page and/or multimedia allowing the links present on the web page in its original to be accessed through the reduced image provided by the web page renderer.

In embodiments of the present invention improved capabilities are described for sending a communications header with the voice recording to send metadata for use in speech recognition, formatting, and search in searching for web content on a mobile communication facility comprising capturing speech presented by a user using a resident capture facility on the mobile communication facility; transmitting a communications header to a speech recognition facility from the mobile communication facility through a wireless communications facility, wherein the communications header includes at least one of device name, network type, audio source, display parameters for the wireless communications facility, geographic location, and phone number information; transmitting at least a portion of the captured speech as data through the wireless communication facility to a speech recognition facility; generating speech-to-text results utilizing the speech recognition facility based at least in part on the information relating to the captured speech and the communications header; and transmitting text from the speech-to-text results along with URL usage information configured to enable a user to conduct a search on the mobile communication facility.

An environmental control system controls monitoring and operation of a multiplicity of disparate environmental control devices by determining an appropriate configuration for each control device and communicates corresponding monitoring and control commands to each device in accordance with its corresponding communication protocol over a selected I/O port. An operational instruction set includes a structural definition of an enterprise facility in which devices are defined by personality modules and communicate with a system host in accordance with a protocol defined in a protocol module. Facility implementation is defined by a node tree structure which collects suitable protocol nodes under a corresponding I/O interface port node. Device (personality) nodes are collected under corresponding protocol nodes, and data point nodes depend from their corresponding device nodes. Data points nodes are individually accessible by merely traversing the node tree using a URL-like notational structure, allowing off-site users to control and monitor environmental devices by issuing commands in the form of a URL.

A server architecture for a digital rights management system that distributes and protects rights in content. The server architecture includes a retail site which sells content items to consumers, a fulfillment site which provides to consumers the content items sold by the retail site, and an activation site which enables consumer reading devices to use content items having an enhanced level of copy protection. Each retail site is equipped with a URL encryption object, which encrypts, according to a secret symmetric key shared between the retail site and the fulfillment site, information that is needed by the fulfillment site to process an order for content sold by the retail site. Upon selling a content item, the retail site transmits to the purchaser a web page having a link to a URL comprising the address of the fulfillment site and a parameter having the encrypted information. Upon following the link, the fulfillment site downloads the ordered content to the consumer, preparing the content if necessary in accordance with the type of security to be carried with the content. The fulfillment site includes an asynchronous fulfillment pipeline which logs information about processed transactions using a store-and-forward messaging service. The fulfillment site may be implemented as several server devices, each having a cache which stores frequently downloaded content items, in which case the asynchronous fulfillment pipeline may also be used to invalidate the cache if a change is made at one server that affects the cached content items. An activation site provides an activation certificate and a secure repository executable to consumer content-rendering devices which enables those content rendering devices to render content having an enhanced level of copy-resistance. The activation site “activates” client-reading devices in a way that binds them to a persona, and limits the number of devices that may be activated for a particular persona, or the rate at which such devices may be activated for a particular persona.

An Internet directory system and method that is based on user telephone number addressing. The system includes an interactive white and yellow pages directory that is based on telephone numbers. Thus, a user's telephone number is a unique identifier used to key other information within the directory. The telephone number may also be used as the primary component of an email address, domain name, or web site URL for the user. The use of a telephone number as the primary component of an e-mail address or domain name greatly simplifies the process of locating a user. E-mail addresses and domain names may be readily found using standard telephone information services, such as "411", as well as other telephone-based methods for obtaining telephone directory information. This Internet directory system and method brings all communication methods and directory services together using one searchable key, a user's telephone number. The directory entry page may be created, edited and updated by the subscriber using simple html editing or using a voice telephone call or via fax, without the use of a personal computer. Thus, the present invention provides an open directory model wherein the end users construct the directory, and the directory is "living", i.e., dynamically changeable and updateable. The power of the directory is thus placed in the users' hands. The telephone based Internet directory system of the present invention also provides addressing for unified messaging as well as locality in addressing.

The method and the information processing system dynamically creates an HTML document with at least one embedded hyperlink code therein. The HTML document is based upon a source document provided by a manufacturer or a supplier of services. Typically, the system and the method is operable in a client-server computer environment. A database is provided on the server computer system which database associates location data of a plurality of data strings in the source document with hyperlink addresses. The location data in the database maps at least one predetermined data string in the source document. An HTML document, based upon the source document, is published with an image tag on, in or near the predetermined data string. As an example, the string may be a "part number" or a string of words "SONY PLAYSTATION II.". The published HTML document has an image tag on, at or near the part number and a map attribute command which supplies or generates an HTML location data unique to the image tag location in the HTML document when the browser calls the server's common gateway interface (CGI). The image tag URL points to the database on the server. The server, via the database provides a corresponding hyperlink address, associated with the unique location data correlated to the HTML location data, to the browser on the client computer system. The method and the system then publishes and embeds in the original or initial HTML document at, on or near the predetermined data string or part number an active hyperlink tag (an embedded code) with the corresponding hyperlink address obtained from the database.

Improved method of and apparatus for aggregating data elements in multidimensional databases (MDDB). In one aspect of the present invention, the apparatus is realized in the form of a high-performance stand-alone (i.e. external) aggregation server which can be plugged-into conventional OLAP systems to achieve significant improments in system performance. In accordance with the principles of the present invention, the stand-alone aggregation server contains a scalable MDDB and a high-performance aggregation engine that are integrated into the modular architecture of the aggregation server. The stand-alone aggregation server of the present invention can uniformly distribute data elements among a plurality of processors, for balanced loading and processing, and therefore is highly scalable. The stand-alone aggregation server of the present invention can be used to realize (i) an improved MDDB for supporting on-line analytical processing (OLAP) operations, (ii) an improved Internet URL Directory for supporting on-line information searching operations by Web-enabled client machines, as well as (iii) diverse types of MDDB-based systems for supporting real-time control of processes in response to complex states of information reflected in the MDDB. In another aspect of the present invention, the apparatus is integrated within a database management system (DBMS). The improved DBMS can be used to realize achieving a significant increase in system performance (e.g. deceased access/search time), user flexibility and ease of use. The improved DBMS system of the present invention can be used to realize an improved Data Warehouse for supporting on-line analytical processing (OLAP) operations or to realize an improved informational database system, operational database system, or the like.

A method and apparatus are provided for optimizing retrieval of network resources. In one embodiment, a method of optimizing access to a network resource is implemented in a computer program executed by a router, cache server, or proxy server. A network resource that contains one or more embedded symbolic host name references is received. A network address corresponding to each of the embedded symbolic host name references is determined. A modified copy of the network resource is created and stored; in the modified copy, a network address is substituted for each corresponding embedded symbolic host name reference. Thereafter, the modified copy of the network resource in responding to all subsequent client requests for the network resource, thereby greatly reducing the required number of network address lookup operations. In one specific embodiment, IP addresses are determined using DNS queries for the hostname portion of all URLs that are embedded in a Web page using image, applet, object, or embed tags. The IP addresses are stored in place of the hostname portions in a modified copy of the Web page, typically in a cache. As a result, when the modified page is subsequently served to clients, the clients need not carry out DNS resolution of all the embedded URLs, resulting in reduced network message traffic and more rapid page display.

A computer-based system is provided for composing menus of URL-encoded bar code symbols specifying the location of Internet-based information resources on the Internet. In the illustrative embodiment, the system comprises a computer system operably connectable to the Internet and including a visual display screen, a keyboard, and printer. The system also includes a GUI-based Internet browser program and a URL-menu composition program supported by the computer system. The function of the GUI-based Internet browser program is to enable a user to access and display Internet-based information resources stored on an Internet information server at a location specified by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). The function of the URL-menu composition program is to enable the user to compose a menu of URL-encoded bar code symbols while surfing the Internet using the GUI-based Internet browser program. After the menu of URL-encoded bar code symbols has been composed, it may be edited and then printed on a selected print medium. By virtue of the present invention, any Internet-based information resource can be automatically accessed and displayed by reading its URL-encoded bar code symbol from the printed menu using a bar code symbol reader operably connected to an Internet-enabled computer system supporting a bar code driven Internet browser program.

A multi-party online collaboration system that optimizes both the participation of the collaborators and the universality of membership is described. The system satisfies the two requirements for networked collaboration by providing shareable objects and a means of notifying the collaborators whenever the state of the shared objects has changed. For an open network (i.e., the Internet), the preferred embodiment uses two open standards mechanisms: URL-addressable networks for the accessible shareable objects, and asynchronous messaging for notification of changes to the objects that do not occur in real-time. The preferred embodiment employs these two open standards systems to ensure universal access, and obviates the need for the collaborators to install/maintain proprietary client systems. The preferred embodiment monitors the state of the objects, and automatically dispatches notification messages, along with addresses (e.g., URLs) to those URL-addressable objects, to only those collaborators who responded to the previous notification. Because the system automatically handles the asynchronous messaging notifications and because these messages are dispatched only to those participants who are actively keeping current with the latest changes, the preferred embodiment precludes the generally chatty nature of asynchronous messaging systems. Whenever a collaborator does decide to use a notification link to visit the URL-addressable network site, he or she is further presented with a message describing an interface to all of the shared objects.

The present invention is directed towards methods and systems for redirecting an access request to an unsecure virtual machine. A computing device may execute a hypervisor hosting a secure virtual machine and an unsecure virtual machine. A control virtual machine, hosted by a hypervisor executing on the computing device, may intercept a request to access an unsecure resource. The unsecure resource may include one of: a file, an application and an uniform resource locator (URL). The control virtual machine may further determine that the request originates from a secure virtual machine executing on the computing device. The control virtual machine may redirect, responsive to the determination, the request to an unsecure virtual machine executing on the computing device, whereupon the unsecure virtual machine may provide access to the requested unsecure resource.

A technique is described for delivering contextual information to end users of a data network which includes at least one client system associated with an end user. According to a specific embodiment, the technique of the present invention provides a contextual-based platform for delivering to an end user in real-time proactive, personalized, contextual information relating to web page content currently being displayed to the user. A portion of web page content relating to a web page intended for display on the client system is received. According to a specific embodiment, the web page corresponds to a URL associated with a content provider. The portion of web page content is analyzed for keyword information. A portion of keyword information associated with the portion of web page content is identified. According to a specific embodiment, the portion of keyword information includes at least one keyword. Contextual information to be delivered to the end user is selected using the portion of keyword information. According to a specific implementation, the contextual information corresponds to ad information which is provided by a campaign provider server system. A set of web page modification instructions is generated using the contextual information. According to a specific embodiment, the set of web page modification instructions includes instructions for modifying the web page content to include the selected contextual information. The set of web page modification instructions is provided to the client system to thereby cause the portion of contextual information to be delivered to the user. According to a specific embodiment, when the client system implements the web page modification instructions, the web page content is caused to be modified in a manner which results in a display of contextual information on the client system.

A method and apparatus for providing user specific request redirection in a content delivery network includes parsing a page having embedded objects intended for redirection to at least one cache server, and transforming the embedded objects into relative uniform resource locators (URLs). A content-base token is inserted into an HTTP response header in response to a user request for the page. In an instance where the content-base token is not supported by the server and/or client devices, a base token is inserted into the page in response to a user request for the page. The content-base token and base token provide identification of a server or URL prefix where the embedded objects in the page are to be retrieved. The requested page is then sent to the user's browser. The browser constructs absolute URLs from the embedded URLs using either the received content-base token or base token, to retrieve embedded objects from the server.

A URL re-writing system and method in a network examines and modifies HTML data and its embedded URLs. The re-writing system can be implemented in a router and can replace URLs found in the HTML data in order to accomplish more efficient routing for example to a close mirror site or for content routing. The re-writing system can also use URL replacement to insert important or emergency information to data received by users on a Web-based network.

An aspect of the present invention is a method for routing content information to a mobile user or client application. The method preferably comprises re-directing a user request to one or more gateway servers provided via an overlay network. In another aspect, the present invention is an apparatus that includes a proxy service that intercepts content information requests to the Internet and re-directs the content requests to an overlay. Another aspect of the present invention comprises a location-based Uniform Resource Locator that includes a protocol semantic portion and a location-based resolver address portion that identifies one or more resources on a network based on the geographical location of the resources.

A method of and system for accessing a primary content file with a client device that is browser-based; i.e. that does not require a plug-in type program to be executed on the client device in addition to the browser. URLs based on linkage codes entered into the client device are assembled by a network-based URL-assembly server rather than at the client device. This invention is especially suited for use with web-enabled cell phones or an internet kiosks.

A computer system identifies malicious Uniform Resource Locator (URL) data items from a plurality of unscreened data items that have not been previously identified as associated with malicious URLs. The system can execute a number of pre-filters to identify a subset of URLs in the plurality of data items that are likely to be malicious. A scoring processor can score the subset of URLs based on a plurality of input vectors using a suitable machine learning model. Optionally, the system can execute one or more post-filters on the score data to identify data items of interest. Such data items can be fed back into the system to improve machine learning or can be used to provide a notification that a particular resource within a local network is infected with malicious software.