Thursday, September 20,2007 @ 4:15pm
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.
