System and process for providing dynamic communication access and information awareness in an interactive peripheral display

Abstract

The system and method of the present invention provides 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 for accessing one or more conventional communications sources. 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.

What is claimed is:  
     
         1 . A system for automatically providing peripheral awareness of information of interest to a first user, comprising: 
 representing the information of interest with at least one ticket, each ticket comprising a customizable dynamic encapsulated object;    using at least one viewer for defining how the information of interest represented by each ticket is displayed;    pairing at least one viewer with each ticket; and    hosting at least one ticket/viewer pairs in at least one container on a display device, wherein each ticket/viewer pair is represented by a thumbnail displayed in one of the containers.    
     
     
         2 . The system of  claim 1  further comprising using more or more services for automatically and dynamically tracking a current state of the information of interest.  
     
     
         3 . The system of  claim 1  wherein the displayed thumbnail dynamically displays the current state of the information of interest on the display device.  
     
     
         4 . The system of  claim 1  wherein each ticket is sharable.  
     
     
         5 . The system of  claim 1  wherein each container is resizable and wherein the thumbnails hosted in any container are automatically resized after resizing that container.  
     
     
         6 . The system of  claim 1  wherein at least two tickets are aggregated into at least one group.  
     
     
         7 . The system of  claim 6  wherein the group is displayed as a group thumbnail within the container.  
     
     
         8 . The system of  claim 7  wherein a multi-viewer is paired with the group, and wherein the multi-viewer is capable of displaying a summary within the thumbnail of the information represented by the tickets comprising the group.  
     
     
         9 . The system of  claim 6  wherein the group is expandable to show the tickets within the group.  
     
     
         10 . The system of  claim 6  wherein at least two groups are aggregated into a nested group.  
     
     
         11 . The system of  claim 10  wherein a multi-viewer is paired with the group, and wherein the multi-viewer is capable of displaying a summary within the thumbnail of the information represented by the tickets comprising the group.  
     
     
         12 . The system of  claim 6  wherein any number of groups are aggregated into any number of levels of recursively nested groups.  
     
     
         13 . The system of  claim 12  wherein the recursively nested groups are recursively expandable.  
     
     
         14 . The system of  claim 10  wherein the nested group is expandable to show the groups within the nested group.  
     
     
         15 . The system of  claim 7  wherein the groups within the nested group are expandable to show the tickets within the groups.  
     
     
         16 . The system of  claim 1  wherein at least one of the containers are persistent such that the persistent containers are not coverable by other application windows such that the persistent containers are always visible.  
     
     
         17 . The system of  claim 4  wherein ticket are sharable between the first user and the at least one additional user by sending at least one ticket as an email attachment.  
     
     
         18 . The system of  claim 1  wherein each ticket is sharable between the first user and the at least one additional user by saving each ticket to a computer readable medium, and providing the computer readable medium to the at least one additional user.  
     
     
         19 . The system of  claim 1  wherein at least one ticket is provided to any user by dragging and dropping at least one ticket from a remote web site to at least one user display device.  
     
     
         20 . The system of  claim 19  wherein a ticket dropped within a container is automatically paired with a compatible viewer, and wherein the information represented by the dropped ticket is automatically displayed as a thumbnail within the container.  
     
     
         21 . The system of  claim 1  wherein an actionable tooltip window is provided in response to selecting a thumbnail.  
     
     
         22 . The system of  claim 1  wherein the information of interest is a contact.  
     
     
         23 . The system of  claim 22  wherein the thumbnail provides a graphical indication of an availability status of the contact.  
     
     
         24 . The system of  claim 22  wherein a person window is provided in response to selecting a thumbnail representing the contact.  
     
     
         25 . The system of  claim 24  wherein the person window provides communications availability status of the contact via at least one communications channel.  
     
     
         26 . The system of  claim 25  further comprising a user interface for initiating communications via at least one of the communications channels.  
     
     
         27 . The system of  claim 24  wherein the person window provides a representation of a historical availability of the contact.  
     
     
         28 . The system of  claim 1  further comprising a capability to arrange thumbnails within the container.  
     
     
         29 . The system of  claim 28  wherein the thumbnails are arranged automatically.  
     
     
         30 . The system of  claim 28  wherein the thumbnails are arranged via a user interface.  
     
     
         31 . The system of  claim 5  wherein the thumbnail dynamically displays a summary of the current state of the information of interest on the display device, and wherein additional information is provided when the size of the thumbnail is increased.  
     
     
         32 . The system of  claim 5  wherein the thumbnail dynamically displays a summary of the current state of the information of interest on the display device, and wherein less information is provided when the size of the thumbnail is decreased.  
     
     
         33 . The system of  claim 1  wherein a ticket is automatically created by dragging and dropping any electronic file onto a container.  
     
     
         34 . The system of  claim 1  wherein each ticket is represented by an XML data structure.  
     
     
         35 . The system of  claim 1  wherein each ticket further includes a visibility flag, and wherein particular thumbnails are only displayed when the visibility flag is set for the associated ticket.  
     
     
         36 . The system of  claim 1  wherein at least one thumbnail is automatically displayed at a predetermined time in response to at least one scheduled event for a user.  
     
     
         37 . A method for providing dynamic objects for automatically providing dynamically updated information to a user, comprising: 
 creating at least one ticket having a definition of information to be tracked and a definition of how the tracked information is to be displayed;    automatically transferring at least one ticket to a user computing device;    automatically tracking the information defined by each ticket from the user computing device via a communications interface;    dynamically retrieving the tracked information; and    providing the retrieved information to the user.    
     
     
         38 . The method of  claim 37  further comprising automatically reporting ticket use statistics to a remote server for providing a ticket subscription service wherein subscribers are charged a fee for user use of tickets.  
     
     
         39 . The method of  claim 37  wherein automatically transferring at least one ticket to a user computing device comprises sending at least one ticket to the user as an email attachment.  
     
     
         40 . The method of  claim 37  wherein automatically transferring at least one ticket to a user computing device comprises dragging an iconized representation of at least one ticket from a remote web page and dropping each iconized representation of tickets on a user display of the user computing device.  
     
     
         41 . The method of  claim 37  wherein automatically transferring at least one ticket to a user computing device comprises providing at least one ticket to the user computing device on a computer readable storage medium.  
     
     
         42 . The method of  claim 37  wherein each ticket is sharable between at least two users.  
     
     
         43 . The method of  claim 37  wherein at least one ticket is automatically transferred to the user computing device from a remote database.  
     
     
         44 . The method of  claim 37  wherein the tracked information is automatically cached.  
     
     
         45 . The method of  claim 44  wherein the cached information is displayed until updated information is retrieved.  
     
     
         46 . The method of  claim 45  wherein an appearance of the cached information is automatically changed over time to indicate a relative age of the information.  
     
     
         47 . A computer-readable medium having computer executable instructions for automatically tracking the availability of at least one entity, said computer executable instructions comprising: 
 creating at least one dynamic encapsulated object for tracking the availability of each entity;    tracking the availability of each entity over time via at least one communications pathway, and compiling the tracked information for each entity over time;    dynamically providing a real-time availability status for each entity based on the tracked availability information; and    providing a historical availability for each entity based on the compiled availability information.    
     
     
         48 . The computer-readable medium of  claim 47  wherein providing a real-time availability status each entity comprises displaying a visual representation of each entities availability status as an icon on a user display device.  
     
     
         49 . The computer-readable medium of  claim 48  wherein each icon is displayed within a peripheral strip on the user display device.  
     
     
         50 . The computer-readable medium of  claim 48  wherein at least two icons are combined into at least one group having at least two icons each.  
     
     
         51 . The computer-readable medium of  claim 48  wherein each group is dynamically represented by an individual icon that is dynamically updated based on data provided by the icons inside the group.  
     
     
         52 . The computer-readable medium of  claim 47  wherein at least two dynamic encapsulated objects are combined into at least one group.  
     
     
         53 . The computer-readable medium of  claim 52  wherein each group is displayed as an individual icon within a persistent display strip on at least one display device.  
     
     
         54 . The computer-readable medium of  claim 50  wherein the peripheral strip covers the entire display device.  
     
     
         55 . The computer-readable medium of  claim 50  wherein the peripheral strip is movable about the display device.  
     
     
         56 . The computer-readable medium of  claim 47  wherein each dynamic encapsulated object is sharable between at least two users.  
     
     
         57 . The computer-readable medium of  claim 53  wherein the individual icon representing each group is sharable.  
     
     
         58 . A system for automatically providing peripheral awareness of information of interest, comprising: 
 representing the information of interest with at least one ticket, each ticket comprising a customizable dynamic encapsulated object;    using at least one viewer for defining how the information of interest represented by each ticket is displayed;    pairing at least one viewer with each ticket;    hosting at least one ticket/viewer pairs in at least one container on a display device, wherein each ticket/viewer pair is represented by a thumbnail displayed in one of the containers;    interacting with the information of interest by using at least one service for each ticket; and    providing the information of interest in an interactive persistent display.    
     
     
         59 . The system of  claim 58  wherein the services represent functionality for any of interacting with, accessing, receiving and retrieving the information of interest.  
     
     
         60 . The system of  claim 58  wherein each service is sharable by more than one ticket, and wherein more than one ticket can use one or more services simultaneously.  
     
     
         61 . The system of  claim 58  wherein more than one service is combined for use by one or more tickets for interacting with the information of interest.  
     
     
         62 . A system for automatically providing peripheral awareness of information of interest to a user, comprising: 
 representing the information of interest with at least one ticket, each ticket comprising a customizable dynamic encapsulated object;    using at least one viewer for defining how the information of interest represented by each ticket is displayed;    pairing at least one viewer with each ticket; and    hosting at least one ticket/viewer pairs in at least one container on a display device, wherein each ticket/viewer pair is represented by a thumbnail;    displaying each thumbnail in one of the containers; and    providing at least one actionable tooltip window in response to selection of any thumbnail.    
     
     
         63 . The system of claim  62  wherein the information of interest is a contact.  
     
     
         64 . The system of claim  63  wherein the tooltip window includes at least one communication access point for the contact.  
     
     
         65 . The system of claim  64  further comprising automatically identifying a best available communication access point for the contact.