09/20/2007, 4:15pm, EDT
Thursday, September 20th
Apple files self-organizing patent
Apple has filed a patent application titled "System and Methods for Organizing Data Items," which discusses the use of new methods for organizing information within Safari and file system managers, audio or video players, photo editors/managers, or any other system in which multiple data items are accessed. The patent largely seeks to address several issues Apple sees with the typical way that browsers provide history functionality: namely that users can visit a large number of web pages, which are confusing to view in a chronological order, and the forward and back buttons are an inefficient and cumbersome way to navigate through multiple web pages. Hence the patent calls for a self-organizing list of previously accessed data items based on criteria such as information about what content was viewed, information about where the content was viewed, information about when the content was viewed, information about why the content was viewed, and information about who the content was viewed by or owned by.
The patent gives an example of a user, Henry, who is using a Web browser that has the capability to group recently visited pages by subject matter. The web browser automatically determines how to organize the web pages in the history list based on information from or about the web pages. The method used to organize the web pages may change for an individual user as the items in the user's browsing history change.
In another case, the user Maggie has recently viewed Web pages categorized according to how often they are viewed: daily, monthly, etc. Henry and Maggie are using the same browsing application, but the organization is changed dynamically based on their habits.
Other embodiments of the patent may include file system managers, audio or video players, photo editors/managers, or any other system in which multiple data items are accessed.
Filed under: Apple
, 
, 5
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
Top
subscribe to comments
for this article
Later on, I'd simpy do a Spotlight search looking for, say, "solar cells" to find the articles I'd flagged on solar power and solar rechargers.
And patent holders have squeezed Apple for fees before...
But as hokizpokis said, logic and content are important values for organization of all kinds of information. It has been mostly used in UI rules, but now needs to be better integrated in file structures and searches.
Doesn't work. Tried it, and over the course of a year I had a folder with literally thousands of items, half of which were not "findable" since the URL title didn't contain the terms needed to recover the article.
And I don't think different flags are needed either, as then you're simply getting back to the complexity of bookmarks, just in a different way. Think of being able to do a full-powered Google search, but having it be limited to the universe of articles and pages you've found to be of interest.