Personal Inventor History

Name:Mcardle, J.M.        Serial:044964     Loc:SANTA TERESA         
Patent Pts:54      TDB Pts:17      Total Pts:71      Plateau Lvl:5   
Plateau Date:09/24/2005   File Update:1/30/2006  
Awards Due:None

Title: METHOD AND PROCESS TO ADD PRODUCTS TO A WISHLIST BASED ON FEEDBACK FROM A COMPUTER MOUNTED WEBCAM THAT TRACKS EYE MOVEMENTS AND DETERMINES WHICH PRODUCTS ARE BEING EXAMINED CLOSER

10/21/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051947              Status:Opened 
12/05/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
12/05/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:FILE 
Co-inventors:  Paolini, M.A.  Grigsby, T.M.  Abernethy, M.N.

This invention takes advantage of the rapidly increasing use of webcams in computers. The webcams, instead of taking pictures, can also be used to follow the eye movements of the people using their computer. These eye movements, when tracked, can lead to an indication of which parts of the screen are being looked at at any given time, and can offer feedback to e-tailers about which products are being examined more closely by the user.

Title: METHOD AND PROCESS TO DETERMINE SEARCH RESULTS' POPULARITY USING SCROLLBAR POSITION AND DURATION UTILIZING A STATISTICAL MODEL TO MEASURE POSITION OF RESULT ON PAGE IN RELATION TO LIKELIHOOD OF SEARCH RESULT BEING THE DESIRED SEARCH RESULT

10/14/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051883              Status:Opened 
12/05/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
12/05/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
Co-inventors:  Paolini, M.A.  Grigsby, T.M.  Abernethy, M.N.

This invention describes a process in which companies that offer search results can use the scroll bar position, and the duration that the scroll bar stays at that location, in relation to the how the results appear on the page, to form a statistical model to approximate which result the end user is most likely examining closer.

Title: METHOD AND PROCESS TO ADD PRODUCTS TO A WISHLIST BASED ON TEXT SELECTION OF A PRODUCT'S DESCRIPTION

10/14/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051882              Status:Opened 
12/05/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
12/05/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
Co-inventors:  Paolini, M.A.  Grigsby, T.M.  Abernethy, M.N.

This invention creates a way for an on-line retailer to add products to a wish-list based on the highlighting of text in the desired product's description.

Title: METHOD AND PROCESS TO ADD PRODUCTS TO A WISHLIST BASED ON SCROLLBAR POSITIONING

10/14/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051881              Status:Opened 
12/05/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
12/05/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
Co-inventors:  Paolini, M.A.  Grigsby, T.M.  Abernethy, M.N.

This invention creates a way for an on-line retailer to add products to a wish-list based on the relative position of the scroll bars on the browser and the duration which these scroll bars are not repositioned in relation to the products currently being displayed on the viewable portion of the screen.

Title: METHOD AND PROCESS TO ADD PRODUCTS TO A WISHLIST BASED ON MOUSE HOVER DURATION

10/14/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051880              Status:Opened 
12/05/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
12/05/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
Co-inventors:  Paolini, M.A.  Grigsby, T.M.  Abernethy, M.N.

This invention creates a way for an on-line retailer to add products to a wish-list based on how long the mouse pointer hovers over products currently being displayed on the viewable portion of the screen.

Title: ZIP TO ZIP WITHOUT ANY LIP

09/23/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051725              Status:Opened 
Co-inventors:  Peloquin, M.A.

The core idea here is to develop a method whereby zipped files within an archive can be moved around without being uncompressed. In one particular scenario, the enduser might want to select a group of files from one ZIP archive to be extracted and a new ZIP archive to be created to contain them. In another scenario, a new directory organization is being constructed by copying files and directories from an old archive.

Title: PHP WORKING WITH JAVA VIA BSF

09/23/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051724              Status:Opened

The core idea is to develop a PHP compiler that would generate Java byte codes using BSF technology so that PHP can interoperate with Java code, be deployed on a J2EE server such as WAS.

To PHP developers it would bring the vast Java library, to the java-based enterprize server it would bring in the small/medium businesses who use PHP based websites extensively.

Title: ORIENTABLE CDS AND DVDS TO SKIP PAST MENU SYSTEMS

09/22/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051719              Status:Opened

The core idea is to have orientable media with marks on the outer edge of the disk that can be oriented when placing it in the drive tray. The orientation you select then determines the play mode of the disk. For a CD the orientation might mean which track do you want to hear first or whether to use random mode or sequential mode.

For DVDs the orientation could select which language or whether full screen or wide screen...

Title: EFFECTIVE WEIGHT-WATCHING WITH A MOBILE DEVICE

09/22/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051718              Status:Opened 
Co-inventors:  Chakrabarty, S.

The core idea is to use a phone wand that can read scan codes off of a restaurant menu to get calorie information for a meal.

Title: BARCODES SPECIAL CODES ON DVD DISK CONTROL PLAYBACK

09/19/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051712              Status:Opened

The core idea is to have the DVD disk label scannable when the disk is inserted into the DVD player. The barcode or other scannable marks would indicate to the player what can and can't be shown. As an example, the DVD menuing software might check the disk coding to see what menus or tracks should be suppressed because someone made a mark in that particular box on the DVD disk or that a specific barcode was pasted onto the DVD disk.

Title: ELECTRONIC SYSTEM FOR SELECTING THE BEST CARD FROM A CONSUMERS COLLECTION OF CREDIT, DEBIT... CARDS

09/19/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051705              Status:Opened 
Co-inventors:  Jain, G.A.  Behnen, M.A.  Akella, R.L.

The core idea is to have a central credit card holding authority select the best credit card for the purchase and present it to you for
your approval. It would do this selection based on the amount you have left and on the interest rate and possibly on some other external factors such as general preference of use (you ranked them) or you not preferring one particular card for some reason (like maybe it prints too many targetted coupons using the preceding invention and its giving you a headache and putting you into debt faster).

Some extensions here would be that new credit cards or other kinds of cards could be offered as well with your using them through this central authority as acceptance to their terms and conditions. They too could be ranked by interest rate. This could extend to phone cards, debit cards, discount cards... as well say for presenting debit cards before credit cards or whatever order the cardholder selects or applying a discount automatically to your transaction because you are a member of the retailers preferred customer group as in a Sams Card or Barnes and Noble Readers Advantage card.

The interest rate selection is interesting because then credit card companies could lower it by a fraction to gain some advantage in the market by making thier card more selectable at select retailers or during select times during the year.

Title: CREATING A JMX BEAN CUSTOM SERVICE EXTENSION PLUGIN AGENT FOR WAS

09/14/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051678              Status:Opened

The core idea of this invention is to apply the Eclipse plugin model to the Custom Service Extensions and JMX beans. A generic JMX agent would be developed to scan a JMX bean plugin directory looking for JMX beans to create and register with the MBeanServer.

Each JMX Bean collection would come with a plugin.xml file that describes the necessary configuration parameters. Use of an Eclipse style plugin model makes it easier to deploy JMX beans to WAS instances and even provides for plugin dependency and version control.

Title: TO CALCULATE OR NOT? THAT IS THE QUESTION.

09/14/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051677              Status:Opened

US Highschool students today use calculators for all math and science classes. The most popular of which is the TI 83 sanctioned by the SAT and very easy to use device. There are several extensions which could be applied to the device to make it more useful as an educational unit. The core of this idea is to extend the basic student calculator with the following components:

USB drive (embedded/non removeable drive)
MP3 player
limited cell phone capability
wireless enablement via bluetooth or some similar strategy
digital camera
RFID tag identification

The USB/internal drive could be used for storing school notes from the teacher, school assignments to be handed in, and audible class discussion in the form of a podcast / mp3 file.

Automatic procedures could be established for the teachers computer to collect all assignments during class electronically and to distribute or update class materials on the calculator.

Textbook publishers could provide portions of a textbook as a downloadable file in a controlled format, teacher computers would download the portion appropriate to the class discussion or containing the homework assignment pages to be done. Students could view them at home, or

The MP3 player could be used to play back class discussion to clarify points made by the teacher or go over missed material. Teachers could provide course content in smaller pieces and could extend the use of the calculator into English, Social Sciences and Language Arts class and could even extend the use of the calculator as a teaching tool into middle and elementary school.

The limited cell phone capability would be setup to allow school or 911 emergencies to issued by the student. As an example, a 911 button is provided, the student can press it and enter his/her student PIN code to actually issue a distress signal including the room #, time of day and nature of the emergency (from a menu of items: fire/smoke/electrical, intruder, medical emergency, fight/riot, boring class... Parents could call the calculator and leave messages for the student to listen to between classes or in the case of a family emergency immediately.

The wireless enablement would allow easy transfer of school assignments both to and from the teacher, access to 911, file sharing among other students.

The digital camera could be used during science class to capture a lab experiment for use in a lab report, or in shop class to capture a project schematic, design or model. The digital camera could be further used in the library to make a copy of some information reference for use in a school report.

School assignments could be tagged with the originating calculator ID so that rampant copying of homework could be averted.

Lastly, the RFID tag because every invention needs one and in this case it could prevent theft in the school environment and identify the owner of a lost calculator.

Title: JMX MBEAN DEPLOYMENT VIA WEB SERVICE

09/14/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051676              Status:Opened 
Co-inventors:  Nickolas, S.E.

Current industry trends are to make services available on the the web using Web Services technology. This promotes the idea of computer to computer interaction over the web as opposed to the person to computer model used today. A program codes a request as a SOAP message sends it to another computer using standard web protocols, the website computer responds in kind with a SOAP message response. SOAP message can handle the transfer of complex data types via serialization technology making it easy to transfer tables, trees, and other complex and arcane data structures.

JMX provides a means for doing web server administration in a programmatic fashion. As an example in the WAS environment, the client can invoke JMX MBeans via any BSF compliant scripting language using the WSADMIN client interface. JMX Mbeans may be configured as custom service extensions of a WAS server where they run in the same process space as the server and can do tasks not available to an ordinary web application.

The problem with JMX is that it is currently limited to BSF-compliant languages meaning that other languages such as PHP can't take easy advantage of existing MBeans available in a web server.

The core idea is to create an adapter bean that connects to the JMX MBean converting Java method calls to JMX method calls and to then deploy the adapter bean as a web service.

Title: NOT ONLY DID I SAVE A BUNCH OF DISK SPACE BUT I FOUND THAT LONG LOST /@#$%^&* DOCUMENT

09/04/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051620              Status:Opened

The core idea here is to allow the Google Desktop Search tool and other similar types of tools to further index offline storage disks such as CDs/DVDs and USB drives so that now the desktop search tool could say mount this disk to view this reference. Of course tieing the earlier in vention in, the tool could recommend those archived files that can be deleted from storage if so desired (as in being stored on a USB drive)

Title: HEAR THE GOOD NEWS: GOOGLE DESKTOP SEARCH IS HERE AND I JUST SAVED A BUNCH OF SPACE ON MY HARD DRIVE

09/04/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051619              Status:Opened 
Co-inventors:  Behnen, M.A.

The core idea is to enlist the indexing capabilities to further identify files on your hard Drive that have doppelgangers on the local corporate network or available on the web. The user would have an option to remove those files that are seldom accessed and that are reasonably accessible on the local network or web.

The threshold for seldom use parameters could be set by the enduser, search ordering could be specified to say:

auto delete document if on a specific network drive, or corporate site
recommend delete if on some other drive or some other web site.

If document versioning or publication timestamps are available obsoleted documents could also be marked with options for downloading the new version, deleting or archiving the old version.

The primary benefits of doing this are:

space savings
speedier virus scans
up-to-date documents and software versions

Title: ASSOCIATING ANNOTATION RECORDING WITH A CELL PHONE NUMBER

08/30/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051578              Status:Opened 
Co-inventors:  Jain, G.A.  Akella, R.L.  Masterson, M.L.

Mobile professionals are often too busy to properly record telephone conversation action items. This means that they may promise to do something for someone and then forget to followup.

The core idea is to provide a means to annotate a telephone conversation with verbal action items.

The mobile user would click a conveniently placed button either during or after the conversation and record a small list of action items, recollections or notes from the conversation as an aid in recalling what transpired. If pressed during the conversation, the phone would mute while you record, Other phone features might be to record the last conversation and save it if you decide to annotate it, otherwise it gets discarded. The recording of what the caller is saying while you are composing your annotation would be captured as well so that you would have a complete record of what was said and your annotations to it.

NOTE: The recording of a phone conversation between two parties may be subject to various legal/privacy issues which may limit the efficacy of this invention idea are not discussed in this disclosure.

Title: THE STAR IN THE SCHEMA

07/03/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051140              Status:Opened 
10/11/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
10/11/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
10/11/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806) 
Co-inventors:  Hoffman, V.M.

Some examples of Jython code developed to find these hidden star schemas:

from com.ibm.dwe.mbeans import *
from java.util import Properties

import sys

print ""
print "-- DB2 DataWarehouse Edition -- Scripting Support Demo "
print ""

print ""
print ""
print "---- 0 -------------------------------------------------------"
print "---- Connecting"

dbc=DatabaseConn("epmdmo","xxxxx","xxxxxx")
dbc.setJdbcPort(50012)
dbc.setJdbcDriver("com.ibm.db2.jcc.DB2Driver")
dbc.setJdbcHost("9.74.154.66")
#dbc.enableTrace()

print ""
print ""
print "---- 1 -------------------------------------------------------"
print "---- DatabaseInfo"
di=DatabaseInfo(dbc)

print ""
print "...User selects PSOFT Schema"
print ""

ss="PSOFT"
dsi=di.getSchemaInfo(ss)

print "---- 4 -------------------------------------------------------"
print "---- findFactTables"
dbc.enableTrace()
tl=dsi.findFactTables(10000, 0,0,0)

for tt in tl:

rows=di.getTableRows(tt)
size=di.getTableSize(tt)
ti=di.getTableInfo(tt)
fkeys=ti.getFKeyCnt()
    hkeys=ti.getHKeyCnt()
meass=ti.getMeasureCnt()

if rows>0 :
    print rows, "\t", size, "\t\t", fkeys, "\t", hkeys, "\t", meass, "\t", tt


sys.exit(0)

DB2 DataWarehouse Edition -- Scripting Support Demo

...User selects PSOFT Schema

---- findFactTables

rows      bytes       fkeys   hkeys  meass  schema.table
========  ==========  ======= =====  =====  ==================   
19370     2789280     0       14     4      PSOFT.PSAESTEPDEFN
24070     2382930     0       12     0      PSOFT.PSAESTMTDEFN
12257     1912092     0       7      2      PSOFT.PSAUTHITEM
54912     6809088     0       19     12     PSOFT.PSDBFIELD
74435     6178105     0       5      1      PSOFT.PSDBFLDLABL
...

...

print ""
print "...User selects PSOFT.PS_PAY_EARNINGS Table"
print ""

tt="PSOFT.PS_PAY_EARNINGS"
ti=di.getTableInfo(tt)
hkeys=ti.findHKeys()
print "FactTable: ", tt

for hk in hkeys:
    htl=ti.findHKeyTables(hk)

    print         "    ",hk
    print         "      - coltype: ", ti.getColumnType(hk)
    print         "      - uniques: ", ti.getUniqueCnt(hk)

    if ti.isColumnNumeric(hk):
    print "      - average: ", ti.getColumnAvg(hk)
    print "      - minimum: ", ti.getColumnMin(hk)
    print "      - maximum: ", ti.getColumnMax(hk)
    print "      - std dev: ", ti.getColumnStd(hk)
    print "      - statvar: ", ti.getColumnVar(hk)

for htt in htl:
  if di.getTableRows(htt)>1:
      print "        DimensionTable: ", htt

...User selects PSOFT.PS_PAY_EARNINGS Table

FactTable:  PSOFT.PS_PAY_EARNINGS       Column Measures
FactTable:  PSOFT.PS_PAY_EARNINGS       Column HKeys
     COMPANY
      - coltype:  CHARACTER
      - uniques:  34
     PAYGROUP
      - coltype:  CHARACTER
      - uniques:  79
     PAY_END_DT
      - coltype:  DATE
      - uniques:  246
     OFF_CYCLE
      - coltype:  CHARACTER
      - uniques:  2
     PAGE_NUM
      - coltype:  SMALLINT
      - uniques:  40
      - average:  9.00
      - minimum:  1
      - maximum:  1000
      - std dev:  28.79
      - statvar:  828.93
     LINE_NUM
      - coltype:  SMALLINT
      - uniques:  15
      - average:  3.00
      - minimum:  1
      - maximum:  15
      - std dev:  2.07
      - statvar:  4.28
     ADDL_NBR
      - coltype:  SMALLINT
      - uniques:  60
      - average:  0.00
      - minimum:  0
      - maximum:  59
      - std dev:  2.60
      - statvar:  6.77
     SEPCHK
      - coltype:  SMALLINT
      - uniques:  4
      - average:  0.00
      - minimum:  0
      - maximum:  9
      - std dev:  0.13
      - statvar:  0.01
     EMPLID
      - coltype:  CHARACTER
      - uniques:  1333
     EMPL_RCD
      - coltype:  SMALLINT
      - uniques:  4
      - average:  0.00
      - minimum:  0
      - maximum:  3

Customer Data Analysts interested in performing OLAP analysis on legacy or transactional databases often must first discover a meaningful star schema within the database schema. The discovery is made more difficult if not impossible because high performance databases often do not use referential or informational constraints to define key fields because of the performance drag associated with any type of constraints.

Today this analysis is done in a manual sense using sql scripts to extract table stats and then using the best guesses of a business analyst to find the core tables of a hidden star schema. The core idea is a method of discovering the hidden star schema using the data in the tables and naming heuristics used by database designers, to discover the core fact tables, viable foreign keys and the associated dimension tables referenced by these foreign keys.

Briefly, the method works as follows:

1) We determine the table sizes of all tables in the database schema and focus our search on all tables over a given arbitrary size.

Table size is determined by (table rows)*(avg column size)

We could use either table size, table row counts, table column counts or a combination of both as real fact tables often have many more rows than dimension tables for more columns than non-fact tables. These could be user selectable to reduce the number of tables for step 2.

2) For the tables selected above we score them based on number of possible primary and foreign key columns and number of measurement columns and focus on those tables with foreign keys over some minimum (minimum>2) dimension count.

We are looking for FACT tables so measurement columns are important.

We define a measurement field as a numeric datatype: smallint, integer, decimal, double

Other database vendors may have additional measurement fields such as number, float, ...
Database designers may construct user defined datatypes derived from base numeric datatypes and so these columns would be counted as well
The measurement column may have a prefix of AVG, MIN MAX, ...
measurement column may have a suffix of COUNT, CNT, AVG, MIN, MAX ...
measurement column may contain some identifiable string

We define a foreign key as one or more or all of the following attributes:

column datatype is INTEGER, SMALLINT, CHAR, DATE, TIME, VARCHAR, ...
column datatype is not DOUBLE, NUMBER, DECIMAL, FLOAT, LOB, CLOB,BLOB, DATETIME
column datatype conforms to database vendor standards for valid key constraints
user defined datatypes would be decomposed into base datatypes and if any component datatypes are not allowed foreign key datatypes then the user defined datatype is not a foreign key either.
column name has some identifiable prefix such as KEY or ID or other value
column name contains some identifiable string like DATE, ZIPCODE, STATE, ...
column name has ID or KEY suffix
column name appears in other tables of the same or related schema in the database

The method allows some freedom here in that datatypes may be included or excluded in the foreign key determination scoring based on the business analyst skills. In addition, other suffixes prefixes or embedded strings may be included or excluded.

In addition the scoring formula for each of these attributes may be adjusted based on business analyst experience. (As an example, Peoplesoft databases may work better with a more specific formula over the default formula)

The method allows for columns to be included in both measurement and key scores as an INTEGER column could be a foreign key to another table and at the same time be a measurement (ZIPCODE is one such example)

3) We score the identified foreign keys using the actual data in the corresponding FACT table and the database vendor key constraint rules.

a column is NOT a key if there are NULLS in the data for that column
a column is NOT a useful foreign key if a single value is used in the column (as an example the ZIPCODE is 12345 for all rows)
a column is NOT a useful foreign key for OLAP Cubes if there very few values

As an example, ZIPCODES around Austin in a table for US customers doesn't work well. In the case of a call-center database, it could mean the call center is in Austin and the ZIPCODES are from the operators handling calls and not the customers calling in

4) Next for those columns that pass step #3, we include the tables they are associated with looking for good DIMENSION tables.

A table is a good DIMENSION table if the key column contains no NULL values.
A table is a good DIMENSION table if every key value in the FACT table is in the DIMENSION table.
A table is a good DIMENSION table if the column row counts == unique value counts (uniqueness of key test, no duplicates)
A table is a good DIMENSION table if a group of columns taken as a key --> row counts == unique value counts

In a city, state table, the CITY key may not be unique but when combined with STATE and ZIPCODE is unique.

City,   State
-------  -----------
Albany, California
Albany, Georgia
Albany, Illinois
Albany Township, Illinois
Albany, Indiana
Albany, Iowa
Albany, Kentucky
Albany, Louisiana
Albany Township, Maine
Albany, Minnesota
Albany Township, Minnesota
Albany, Missouri
Albany Township, Nebraska
Albany, New Hampshire
Albany, New York (the state capital)
Albany, Ohio
Albany, Oklahoma
Albany, Oregon
Albany Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania
Albany Township, Bradford County, Pennsylvania
Albany, Tennessee
Albany, Texas
Albany, Vermont
Albany (village), Wisconsin
Albany (town), Green County, Wisconsin
Albany, Pepin County, Wisconsin
Albany County, New York
Albany County, Wyoming

Source of Albany info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albany

5) For each foreign key, we compare statistics between FACT and DIMENSION tables:

the column statistics are NOT a good distribution over the number of values in the associated DIMENSION column table.
the column statistics are skewed toward one value or range of values

lopsided bell curve, the column statistics are skewed away from the expected median (too many outliers...)

6) At this stage, we will have a list of FACT tables and for each FACT table a list of foreign keys and for each key a list of DIMENSION table candidates.

The tables will have passed the tests sufficiently so that key constraints could be applied via ALTER statements and they would succeed.

The user can then choose which FACT table + foreign key + DIMENSION table collection looks the most promising.

The user would then use a tool to establish the key constraints and from there use the OLAP vendor provided wizards to construct an OLAP cube from the identified star schema.

Title: CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING EMPLOYEE AND THE AUTOMATED CELL PHONE ITEM LOCATION REQUEST SERVICE

06/22/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051101              Status:Closed 
10/11/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
10/12/2005 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Smith, N.J.

The core idea is to provide a phone based service, easily accessible from your cell phone, where you can call and make an inquiry as to the whereabouts of a certain, singular item of interest. The call could either be a voice request or for those of us whose voices are in need of better articulation in the King's English, a text messaging request.

You could simply say or type "bread" or more specifically "Pepperidge Farm 9-Grain bread" and the service would respond in voice and / or via text with the most likely location or a message stating that: the product is no longer carried, alternatives are... or the item is out of stock or any other useful message.

This technology could be applied to supermarkets, and other types of retail stores like Home Depot building supplies, Best Buy electronics...

Further extensions could be as a web service where a list of items are provided and the response is a list of locations in the store where they may be found. Now shoppers could get a location map so that when they arrive they will be able to find their items immediately.

Stores will benefit because now they can datamine the queries and see what items people are looking for that are hard to find, not in stock, or not available in the store... They could run queries against other stores to compare inventories... (good and not so good idea for competition in retail espionage).

Another extension, would be to include prices in the query response so that a consumer could then see which store gives the better value for the list of items presented.

Title: THE END OF WORLD IS NEAR BUT YOUR KIDS WON'T KNOW IT IF THEY DON'T PICKUP THEIR CELL PHONE

06/08/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820051006              Status:Opened 
06/20/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
06/17/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
06/17/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

The core idea is to provide the parent with the means to temporarily shut down a cell phone for all incoming calls except those of the parent. Other variations might be changing the ringtone to a more irritating one to get the kids attention. Shutting down the cell phone to all incoming and outgoing calls except when its the parents phone.

The feature could be implemented as either a network feature provided by the cell phone company or a local software feature of the phone where the parents phone is considered the master and the childs phone the slave (hmm interesting choice of words). The parents phone would have certain rights and priveleges on the childs phone such as monitoring the phone log, phone directory... remotely. The parents could restrict the phone to working at select times during the day, can decide who the child can and can't talk to...

Admittedly, if the parent got too intrusive the kid will attempt tonp wa get thier own phone but then they must become responsible to paying the bill. Also the cell phone company could require a parent to cosign for the phone service and in effect keep the parent in the loop and insure that the parents have those rights and priveleges on the phone as before.

Other uses for this technology would be bosses trying to get in touch with employees who choose not to answer phones for various reasons.

Many parents today give their kids cell phones, with the purpose of keeping in touch with them. The kids on the other hand view the benefits of having a cell phone as a great new tool for freedom. They can call friends at anytime; get rides to anywhere; call home for help... They also learn that the cell phone caller id makes the cell phone the ideal device to tune out parents. This disclosure offers a means for parents to gain some control over this bad habit.

Title: BACK UP FROM THIS WEB PAGE

05/12/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050839              Status:Opened 
06/17/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
06/17/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
06/17/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

Websites often do one of two things when you click on a link:

display a new page
open a new window to display the new page

For users the backup button on the new window doesn't back you up to the window that opened this window.

The core idea is to provide an UP button on new windows that can be used to backup to close this window and backup to the original launching window.

An alternative solution would be to make the backup stack available across windows meaning that as you backup in a new window it will close it automatically and adjust your mouse pointer to the prior backup button.

Title: A ROWS BY ANY OTHER NAME...

03/23/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050537              Status:Opened 
05/13/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
05/13/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
05/13/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

Standard HTML markup provides a

construct that contains rows which contains columns. The most effective method of creating a table then is to write it out going from column to column in each row and then row by row until complete. However, there may be reasons to generate the table be writing each row of a column first and then moving on to the next column.

In this case, the developer must nest

tags. The outer table has only columns and the inner table has only rows which makes it difficult to properly layout the table cells.

The core idea is to allow the

tags and vice versa, or to specify the type of table in the table attributes or with a new

tag to contain

tag such as a for transposed table. The construct reduces the amount of html text sent to the client and may simplify some web page development code as well.

Title: SUNRISE, SUNSET SHOULD I IM MY FRIEND YET?

03/23/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050536              Status:Closed 
05/13/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
05/16/2005 Closed

People use IM frequently to talk to people in other parts of the world. However they are usually ignorant about what it is in that part of the world or what is going on there.

The core of this idea is to provide locale specific information in the dialog window either directly or available via a button or web-link which could show the date and time of the other persons locale and optionally the weather/news of whats going on in that locale. In this way, you might decide not to talk long because the time is too late. Another use would be in deciding who should call whom based on the off-peak time telephone time.

The IM client user could provide locale specific info as part of the user profile, or via the login screen where the user can select a locale profile if traveling or via the system settings of the client's computer. The locale specific info would include the timezone of the enduser which could then bemade available to any calling user so that they may see the time in that locale.

A more creative idea would be to display the locale timezone info as an IM color scheme change on the opened window so that morning locales would have a sunrise, daytime locales with the sun and clouds in the sky and evening locales would have a sunset or moon and stars.

Title: ==A COURSE OF INCREASING DIFFICULTY ==

02/16/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050240              Status:Opened 
03/21/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
03/21/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
03/21/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

The course planning document would contain what topics are to be shown and under what circumstances:

<course name="JMX MBeans 101">
<lesson name="Lesson 1 -- JMX Introduction">
    <page level=1>......page-url......l</page>
    <page level=2>......page-url......</page>
    <page level=3>......page-url......</page>
    ......
</lesson>
<lesson name="Lesson 1 -- JMX Introduction">
    <page level=1>......page-url......l</page>
    <page level=2>......page-url......</page>
    <page level=3>......page-url......</page>
    ......
</lesson>
<lesson name="Lesson 1 -- JMX Introduction">
    <page level=1>......page-url......l</page>
    <page level=2>......page-url......</page>
    <page level=3>......page-url......</page>
    ......
</lesson>

....

</course>

The teaching program would use this document to present the text of LEVEL 1 pages for each lesson, with links to the LEVEL 2 text for advanced students.

Once the student has done the first pass then the lessons are presented again this time with LEVEL 2 text and with reference to LEVEL 1 pages allowing all students to look back at what they learned and with reference to LEVEL 3 pages allowing advanced students to jump ahead for that topic.

The teaching program thus effectively combines past material with new material and with a provision for advanced students so they can go deeper into a given topic and yet still stay in sync with the other students.

The teaching program could also generate quizzes for each lesson and tests for each course using student responses while taking the course as part of the testing strategy allowing it to focus on the students strengths and weaknesses. Questions that the student had trouble with could be mixed back into the test mix along with other questions. Questions could borrow answers from other questions to fill in their multi-choice selections as an example.

Teaching is an art practiced by many but mastered by few. With the right blend of repetition and the teaching of new material a teacher can keep a student interested and connected to what was learned before.

How do we keep advanced learners and average learners on track? If the material is too complex then only the advanced learner learns, if its too simple then the advanced learner gets bored and the average learnerbenefits.

The core idea of this invention is to create a multi-level course with multi-tracks of learning. The multi-level allows the advanced learner to peek at components of the next higher track which an average learner wouldn't normally see until the current track is completed. So while the average learner goes from track 1 to 2 to 3, the advanced learner can straddle tracks 1-2 and move on to tracks 2-3 and then onto higher tracks.

Who decides what tracks to take? In general it would be the learner, as they tackle a topic they can chose to look at deeper material from the next track or not based on thier confidence and skill.

In this way a teacher can keep both kinds of learners on the same material without either getting bored or overwhelmed.

Title: PLAY A GAME AND SEE AN AD

02/16/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050239              Status:Closed 
03/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
03/07/2005 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Becker, C.H.

Online gaming communities are becoming a big phenomenom in todays internet connected world with global ramifications. Craig Becker, in a prior disclosure presented the problem of having games do real work with players gaining credits for analyzing some image or object from the real world while they are playing in the virtual world.

The core idea here is to allow product placement ads within a virtual world, controlled by the game sponsor to insure that they don't interfere with playing the game. As an example, a coke can on the ground in a surreal world. Or some sort of medieval coke sign hanging on a wall. The players in these games fit into a very specific marketting communitiy that could be worth a lot to a real world advertizing company.

One embodiment would be the visual images of products and another would be audible references to the product like some calling for a coca cola in a pub.

Another embodiment would be free time in the game if you allow an advertising bar at the top or bottom to stream ads like a ticker tape display.

The game sponsors could argue that the ads keep the rates lower, if you want no ads then pay a higher rate.

Title: PLAY A GAME AND HELP A CHARITY

02/16/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050238              Status:Closed 
03/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
03/07/2005 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Becker, C.H.

The core of this idea is provide players an option to donate CPU/player time to a charity such as the protein folding project or maybe some grid initiative.

The benefit to the player is that they could earn game credits from thier continuing donation.

The benefit to the game sponsor is that they could begin moving to a utility model charging people based on player time.

The benefit to the grid provider would be selling grid utility service in the form of game hosting to the game companies as they deal with larger and larger game communities.

Alternatively, a player could donate cpu cycle to a non-charitable enterprise (a Hollywood company that is rendering CGI, for instance) and earn game money while the game company earns real money.

The benefit to IBM is that they would hold this patent idea while Craig and Jim are out on the street begging for pennies because should have been thinking about work and not games.

In one embodiment, the player profile would have a selection whereby the player could donate 10% of his time to the charity. So if the player was online for 8 hours and chose to donate 10% then the game server would give him 80 credits and give the charity 48 minutes of CPU time. The game server could control when and where the charity gets to run its code for load balancing purposes.

In another embodiment, the grid utility could provide the charitable contribution service allowing the game sponsor to delegate the running of charitable code to grid utility servers. Or the grid utility could convert it to real dollars based on expenses and donate the money to a non-computing charity.

Basically player time could be converted to real dollars with the player now playing the game on a time used subscription basis.

Title: CASE OF THE EXPANDING PORTLET

02/14/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050226              Status:Opened 
03/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
03/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
03/06/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806) 
Co-inventors:  Brockway, B.J.

Portal websites are becoming a very popular method of providing information to endusers. However there is a screen real estate issue in that each portlet must share the screen with other portlets. The only way to get more page real estate for a portlet is to expend it to full hieght or to select another layout that enlarges that portlet.

The core idea of this invention is to provide a means whereby the portlet that gets the focus gets more of the webpage than the other portlets.

As an example, consider a webpage of 9 portlets laid out in a 3x3 TicTacToe grid, when the mouse is moved over a particular portlet or the portlet is clicked on then the webpage is refreshed with the portlet now occupying a larger portion of the screen and the other portlets while still present appear in a reduced format.

Web-based portal pages could use Javascript to detect mouse-overs and resize or change the layout of portlets and rich clients could programmatically detect the mouse over and resize accordingly. The Javascript code could also determine if a server side refresh is needed based on the portlet configuration.

Title: METHOD AND TOOL TO AUTOMATICALLY GENERATE BPEL CONTROL FLOWS

02/11/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050214              Status:Opened 
03/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
03/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
03/06/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806) 
Co-inventors:  Behnen, M.A.  Snodgrass, G.L.  Yoo, H.J.

The method of creating a BPEL conrol flow is reduced to the following key steps:

1) Scan all ETL dataflows to discover the input tables and output tables

2) Associate each dataflow with a node in a tree based on the inputs and outputs.

3) Starting with the root node, the tool creates the first BPEL step.

4) Moving to the next level of the tree, the tool creates BPEL steps for each node

5) Applying the Depth First Search algorithm, and find the depth of the node.

6) Nodes on the same depth level run in parallel and so are setup as parallel BPEL steps

7) Repeat step 5 thru 6 until all levels of the tree are handled.

The algorithm described above makes a basic assumption that all dataflows can only run after all required input tables have been updated. However, there are rare cases where a dataflow must run before one or more of its input tables are updated. This condition cannot be determined by the input/output table dependencies alone but instead must be adjusted by the business analyst using the BPEL Control Editor tool.

Modern businesses rely on Database technology to keep track of critical business information. This information is often spread across many database systems and needs to be moved about and consolidated daily to give business executives the key indicators of business health. In order to accomplish this daunting task, IT shops create dataflows to handle detailed business data extraction, transformation and movement (ETL) moving data from database to database and from table to table. Dataflows may be composed of database application programs, sql scripts or batch scripts all designed to handle a specific portion of business data. However a higher level flow, known as a control flow, is needed to manage the numerous ETL dataflows.

IT shops create control flows to properly marshall the order of execution of the ETL dataflows. The most recent ETL tools for managing medium to large database systems use BPEL as the control language of choice.

Developing a BPEL control flow from scratch using the latest ETL tools is a very tedious, error-prone and complex task. Business analysts intimately familiar with the meaning of specific business data and knowledgeable about the proper order of database update are needed to properly construct the control flow from the numerous dataflows.

It is this problem that we address in this disclosure.

The core idea is to create a tool and method to construct the BPEL control by automatically analyzing the numerous dataflows, discovering the input tables, output tables, staging tables and lookup tables, using this information to determine the best order of execution for each ETL dataflow.

The primary advantages are that now the BPEL control flow is built relatively error-free and can be managed by a less experienced business analyst. The tedium is eliminated and the complexity is reduced since table dependencies are for the most part taken out of the problem.

Title: WEB APPLICATION - DEPLOY THYSELF

02/03/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050171              Status:Published 
03/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
03/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Publish 
03/07/2005 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
03/11/2005 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         03/11/2005 Published  Pts:1 
Co-inventors:  Yao, A.Z.

Web applications are typically deployed as web archive (WAR) files with WEB.XML deployment descriptors which are read into to customize its install and configuration into the Web Application Server. There may come a time when the running web application would like to add resource references in a dynamic manner to its WEB.XML and redeploy itself automatically. Today there is no method in our runtime to do this.

The core idea is to provide a set of ConfigService application programming interfaces (APIs) to allow changes to be made to the WEB.XML file of a web application and to then allow it to be redeployed with the new WEB.XML file. This would mean allowing changes to be made to the WEB.XML under the InstalledApps directory or to the one stored in the web applications original WAR file.

The ConfigService APIs would work similar to the way they work when creating a DataSource where a session is created and changes are recorded there and would not be applied until the session reload is called. Today ConfigService APIs allow changes to the NODE.XML, SERVER.XML and SECURITY.XML files so we would like to extend it to handle WEB.XML of a given web application.

The basic difference is that the NODE.XML... files are used across all web applications where a WEB.XML is specifc to a given web application so edits to it would have to limited to the scope of the given web application.

One particular embodiment would be to update the WEB.XML within the WAR file and then to programmatically issue the commands to stop the web application, update the web application using the WAR that was just changed, save the changes to the master configuration and the start the web application. Some of these commands could be implemented within a *Java Managed Extension (JMX) MBean to stop, update and start the web application.

Title: WAREHOUSING ATTACHMENTS

02/03/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050170              Status:Closed 
03/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
03/07/2005 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Behnen, M.A.  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Adding attachments to email are a commonly used strategy to distribute documents, files and presentations. However and the list of receipents increases the email bandwidth gets overloaded.

The core idea is to simply archive all attachments to an attachment repository that uses on-demand access to retrieve a document via document lnks in the sent email.

A possible embodiment is as follows:

You decide to sent a note and attachment to a coworker using Lotus Notes. When you attach the document to the email, Lotus Notes asks a couple of questions on document content (or it could extract it from the document and provide you a dialog option to adjust the description). The attachment is placed in a teamroom with a link to the document added to the email. The list of receipents is compared to the teamroom list and any receipent who can't receive the document gets it as a true attachment.

Advantages:

we often send documents as attachments and then later think about placing it in a teamroom
teamroom document links are sometimes used but receipent access is never explicitly checked by the sender
we could add receipents to the teamroom list for this purpose or provide a new Lotus feature to make specific documents available to non-teamroom members

Title: STAY ATTACHED TO YOUR SERVER

02/03/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050169              Status:Closed 
06/20/2005 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

A key feature of email used by many people is the document attachment provision. Often people send very large files using email and the notes are often forwarded to other parties with the attendant transfer of files from server to client machine and from client machine back to server.

The manual method that people use today is to copy large files to teamrooms and to reference the teamroom copy.

The core idea is to hold copies of attachments on the server, pulling them down only when an enduser wants to open or view them but keeping a copy on the server in case the enduser decides to forward the document to another person.

For large files this could easily clog the server if left on the server too long, so a provision for file expiration would be established where once the email is opened the attachments are kept on the server for N days. If the enduser decided to forward an email within the time period the server copies would be used otherwise after the expiration period the endusers local copies would be uploaded and used.

Some variations could be deferred download to the enduser system of attachments in an already viewed email that haven't yet been opened. If the email were deleted before the expiration time then the corresponding server copies would be deleted (and consequently bandwidth is saved because download of unopened attachements was cancelled).

Title: PROTECTING IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS VIA SENDER PROVIDED DECRYPTION KEY

02/03/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050168              Status:Closed 
03/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
03/07/2005 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Sometimes the need arises to send an important document over the web that needs to be protected and that we need to know who is viewing it and when. In some cases, we may want to deny access or even destroy the document.

The core of the idea is to encrypt the document and deploy a special viewer (maybe an enhanced Adobe Acrobat Reader) which can decrypt the document but will first ask the sender for the password. The sender could either have an application running to respond to document viewing requests or route the request directly to the sender via a Dialog requesting access and the decryption password,

The key advantages are the sender can decide at viewing time whether to allow the receiver to look at the important document. This would protect against sending a document to a manager and the secretary opening the mail to view the document or a lawyer sending a document to a client or another lawyer, something in the case changes after it was sent prompting the sending lawyer to deny access or even to self destruct the document.

Title: METHOD OF CREATING A CUSTOM SERVICE EXTENSION AS A WEB APPLICATION

02/03/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050167              Status:Closed 
03/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
03/07/2005 Closed

Websphere Appl Server provides a means to install a Custom Service Extension either programmatically or via WS Admin Console. The problem is that you must develop a means to deploy your extension and then fill in the Custom Service Extension parameters to bind it with WAS. All this could be done with custom install/config script.

The core idea of this invention is to extend the idea of a web application deployment via WAR files with some functionality to identify it as a custom service extension and to then install and configure it and then reboot WAS.

Title: CREATING AND MAINTAINING AN EMAIL DOCUMENT CONTAINING ALL RESPONSES, EDITS AND INSERTIONS

01/24/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050098              Status:Closed 
03/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
03/07/2005 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Email is an indispensible tool in the business environment, employees use it for many reasons. Perhaps the most common use is in collaborating with other employees to find a solution to a problem. It starts when one employee has discovered a problem and decides to send an email to one or more people. The resulting cascade of emails can quickly become unmanageable.

Responders do many odd things when responding to an email:

1) send another email with a different subject line 2) send a response with a simple note 3) send a response with a note and some document links 4) send a response with a note and some attached documents 5) send a response with a note and some colorful insertions into the preceding emailed note 6) all of the above

The problem is to organize this cascade of varied responses into a single coherent document for all involved that is easy to read and can possibly be used to document the problem and record its solution in an effective manner.

The core idea of the invention is the creation of an XML schema that can handle email text and the varied responses outlined in question #1 and a browsing tool to organize the responses in a single coherent document.

The advantages are a reduction in the number of email entries in your list of emails and a possible reduction in the storage requirements of cascading email.

Title: USE OF IBM FUSE BLOWING TECHNOLOGY TO DIGITAL MEDIA PROTECTION

01/24/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050097              Status:Closed 
03/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
03/07/2005 Closed

Digital content in the form of DVD's CDs... need to be protected.

The core idea is to have a DVD player equipped with a unique memory circuit with blowable fuses. Protected DVDs would have a reference code and some time limit parameters copied into the DVD player memory. When the time limit is reached, a fuse is blown that disallows that particular DVD from being played. The memory can be made large enough to go way beyond the practical number of DVDs playable on a DVD player before it becomes obsolete or fails.

Title: BOUNDING BOX METHOD TO CONTROL ZOOM/PAN OF VIDEOCAM

01/10/2005 Opened as Discl AUS820050023              Status:Closed 
03/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
03/07/2005 Closed

When viewing baseball games and other sports events , the cameraman will zoom in and out based on screen activity. This is a manual process that could perhaps in certain circumstances be performed under computer control as in home video or with home video movies.

The core of the idea is to define a bounding box for a given view port to record. If changes occur across the boundary of the box then the video camera controller can decide whether to pan or zoom to capture the action. The camera tries to contain the action within the bounding box.

A related implementation would be in video players that can show high resolution screens. They could automatically determine where the action is and pan or zoom the view port around to show even if the movie doesn't fit the viewing screen. (No need for full-screen vs wide screen formats)

At the start of viewing a scene, the camera operator establishes a bounding box of activity to tape. The camera is then free to pan or zoom if activity crosses the boundary. The basic algorithm would be statistically based where when more the X% of the pixels on the boundary change then we conclude it is an active boundary. If two or more boundaries exceed the x% threshold then the camera zooms out. If all boundaries are static for some time then the camera zooms in until activity is found. Boundaries coule be 1 or more pixels thick.

Current cameras use image color or brightness changes or track skin color to direct the camera during pan/zoom operations. They are using activity to track activity, where I am proposing to use inactivity/stable to track activity by framing it within a bounding box.

References:

http://www.j3soft.com/webcam/evi-d31.htm

Title: GETTERS AND SETTERS OF THE WORLD UNITE

12/02/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042280              Status:Closed 
03/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
03/07/2005 Closed

Java Beans is a very popular design pattern for java classes. One portion of the Java beans design pattern , involves using a common naming convention which associates class attributes with getter and setter methods.

The core idea is to introduce a couple of keywords into Java that identify a given class attribute as a Java bean exposed attribute that would have associated getter and setter methods.

The advantage of this strategy is in its simplicity. Viewing the attributes of a class and you can see immediately that it has getter and setter methods. Editting the keyword out removes the getter and setter methods implicitly. The programmer or IDE tool doesn't have to explicitly generate them. This eliminates the possibility of the programmer providing a modified getter or setter that is not recognized by the calling system as in the JMX example where the MBean class is introspected and methods that don't conform to the getter/setter pattern are considered invocable methods and not attribute methods meaning you must use the .invoke(object,method,args,sigs)

The old way:

class MyClass {
    private String myName;
    private String myEmail;
    private String mySalary;

    MyClass(String n,String e, String s) { myName=n; myEmail=e; mySalary=s; }

    public String getMyName() { return myName; }
    public String getMyEmail() { return myEmail; }
    protected  String getMySalary() { return mySalary; }

    public void setMyName(String n) { myName=n; }
    public void setMyEmail(String e) { myEmail=e; }
    protected void setMySalary(String s) { mySalary=s; }

}

the new way:

class MyClass {
    public getset String myName;
    public getset String myEmail;
    protected getset String mySalary;

    MyClass(String n,String e, String s) { myName=n; myEmail=e; mySalary=s; }
}

The list of proposed keywords might be:

getter
setter
getset

The public modifier would be used to define the getter/setter access. As in the example for mySalary the protected modifier would be used for the getter/setter methods and the attribute itself would be defined as private.

Title: A MAN ASKED THE BUDDHA: WHAT ARE YOU? THE BUDDHA SAID: I AM AWAKE.

12/02/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042270              Status:Closed 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/07/2005 Closed

People need a certain amount of sleep each day. It doesn't matter when you sleep or if you take catnaps, the sum of sleep averages out to the same amount each day. Modern business practices take advantage of this biological fact by allowing employees to flex their work schedule around sleeping habits, and other things.

But what about the alarm clock, it doesn't flex in a complementary way.

Summary of Invention: Briefly describe the core idea of your invention (saving the details for questions #3 below). Describe the advantage(s) of using your invention instead of the known solutions described above. The core idea is to design an alarm clock that wakes you when you've had enough sleep. The alarm clock would be programmed with the amount of sleep you need on average each day. Upon going to bed, you might tap a button on the alarm to start the sleep timer, the alarm will then go off when you've slept for say 8 hours or whatever your average time is. Other variations are described in question #3.
Description: Describe how your invention works, and how it could be implemented, using text, diagrams and flow charts as appropriate.

Variation #1: The alarm clock has a SLEEP button that is pressed when you go to sleep, after X hours of sleeping the alarm goes off.

Variation #2: The alarm is programmed for your sleeping range that is when you usually go to bed and when you must get up. This range should be larger than your sleep duration. When you go to sleep , you would press the SLEEP button. After X hours the alarm will go off.

Variation #3: Using a light, pressure, motion sensor or some combination thereof, the alarm clock determines that you are on the bed, the lights are off and have begun sleeping. If you wake up turn on the light, or get out of bed, the sleep timer pauses until you get back in for sleep. If you are in danger of going past the sleeping range then the alarm can let you know that now its time to sleep.

Variation #4: The alarm clock can learn your sleeping patterns which may vary from day to day. If it wakes you up at the wrong time, you can press the corrective action button and shock the alarm clock into learning from its mistake. With a button for too short a time and another for too long a time. The alarm clock would be initialized with the programmed tme range for sleeping, ie earliest you might go to sleep, and latest you might wake up.

Title: TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR ORGANIZING EMAILED RESPONSES

11/29/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042250              Status:Opened 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
02/06/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806) 
Co-inventors:  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.  Dang, A.T.

The core idea of this invention is to continuously consolidate responses to a given email into one email document. So that rather than receiving several responses that clutter up your email queue, you would instead get a single consolidated response. The single response would list the email responses in a treelike table of contents within the email document. Upon opening the email you would see the table of contents with the latest responses highlighted, the responses would go from oldest to newest and would be organzied as to whether the person responded to the original or someone elses response.

One such embodiment, would be to tag the original email with either a reference code or a hash code generated from the subject line (or even from the body) of the email text. When a person responds to the email, the reference code can be determined and passed back to the senders mail server, who will use the code to consolidate the responses together.

This may entail a new feature in the email server whereby an email is no longer simply a transmitted document but an object whose state can be altered as in appending new responses to it and the email's read bit can be reactivated to signal to the enduser that the email has been amended with a new response.

An alternative embodiment would be an enhanced email client that can add the reference code to the subject line and retrieve it from the responders subject line and then use this reference code to locate the original email and append it to that email or create a response email with all the consolidated responses in it. The end result will be two emails the original sent email and its associated response email.

As email responses are being appended to the email document, the table of contents is being built using the email reference codes to determine where in the tree the email response should be placed.

The table of contents grouped entries and the email responses could be under control of twisties so that they are expanded only when clicked on or all sections could be expanded for someone wishing to read the email from start to finish.

An example consolidated email with table of contents:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

date:   2004-11-01
from:   james mcardle
to: hong hua, binh hua
subject: sample email from the new system

table of contents in response order

o  original email from mcardle at 2004-11-01
    o  response 1 from hong hua at 2004-11-02
        o response 1.1 from binh hua at 2004-11-03
    o  response 2 from binh hua at 2004-11-02
        o response 2.1 from mcardle at 2004-11-03
    o  response 3 from binh hua at 2004-11-04

body of email documents in time stamped order:

2004-11-01
    mcardle

2004-11-02
    hong hua
    binh hua

2004-11-03
    binh hua
    mcardle

2004-11-04 
    binh hua

end of email document

Title: ONE-TIME 8MM DIGITAL CASSETTE TAPES

11/23/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042232              Status:Closed 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/07/2005 Closed

Sometimes businesses trade information via digital tape that they do not want passed around or left on the tape once read.

The core idea is to set a magnet inside the digital tape casing that effectively erases the tape as it streams by. this allows the enduser to view the tape once with the magnet erasing the tape as its viewed. This provides a truly read once tape. Other embodiments below provide for tape reuse by resetting a rachetting mechanism.

An alternative embodiment could be a rachetting mechanism which would prevent the tape from being rewound once read. This allows the recording on the tape to be reused with someone who has the tools to reset the rachet and rewind the tape.

And yet another embodiment, would be a locking mechanism that becomes engaged to prevent rewind once the tape has passed a certain playback distance. It could be simply a roller that touches the winding reel and detects that a certain diameter of tape has been wound up so now its time to engage the rachet mechanism. This would allow rewinds upto a certain point before rewind was impossible.

And yet another embodiment could be a roller that touches the winding reel (smoothes tape winding too) and then engages a magnet so that after a certain playback point is reached the magnet is engaged to erase the tape on the second playback or on rewind depending on how it is implemented.

Title: HW METHOD TO REDUCE OVERHEAD IN MARKING COMPLETED ETHERNET PACKETS

11/22/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042229              Status:Opened 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
02/06/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806) 
Co-inventors:  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.  Dang, A.T.

Modern communication standards are based on packet format. Datastreams are divided into packets and transferred across some network medium (ATM/Ethernet…etc). Communication hardware has a limited amount of physical memory to hold the packets. The network device driver is responsible for keeping track of which packet have been processed by the hardware and for reusing that memory for new packets. During packet transmission, the goal of the network device driver is to keep the adapter transmit memory buffer full at all time to utilize maximum throughput.

In today’s design, as hardware consumes each packet, it will update the DONE bit(s) in the packet descriptors associated to that packet. The packet descriptor is memory that contains information about the packet. The packet descriptor memory can reside on either the network adapter or within system memory. The packets to be sent are placed in a FIFO (first in first out) queue. The network device driver walks the FIFO queue checking the DONE bit in each packet descriptor. The network device driver needs to read and then rewrite to reuse the packet descriptor for new packet. There is a noticeable performance penalty in accessing packet descriptor memory to check the DONE bit for each and every packet.

The core idea of this invention to use knowledge of hardware packet transmission rates to determine the last packet transmitted and to then jump ahead in the FIFO queue to that packet descriptor eliminating the need to check intermediate packet descriptors along the way.

There are two possible prediction methods that allow the software to determine how many packets had been consumed by the hardware in any given period of time. The software method is described in a separate disclosure and the hardware method is presented below:

Hardware Method:

The hardware will provide a counter register that keeps track of the number of bytes crossing the IO bus. This counter will reset itself to zero after the software has read its value. Based on the actual number of bytes crossing the IO bus and estimating how long it takes for the hardware to be consumed. The software can predict current DONE packet descriptors and advance the descriptor checking to that packet descriptor. This method eliminates the overhead associated with checking every packet descriptor for the DONE bit. All packet descriptors between the previous DONE and the current DONE packet descriptors will have the DONE bit set and won’t need further checking.

The factor of predicting how many packet descriptors that have been consumed by the hardware keeps fine tuned over time to adjust to the system environment change.

Title: SW METHOD TO REDUCE THE OVERHEAD IN MARKING COMPLETED ETHERNET PACKETS

11/22/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042228              Status:Opened 
01/31/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
01/31/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
01/31/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806) 
Co-inventors:  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.  Dang, A.T.

There are two possible prediction methods that allow the network device driver to determine how many packets had been consumed by the hardware in any given period of time. The hardware method is described in a separate disclosure and the software method is presented below:

Software Method

During hardware start up time, the software reads the system IO bus hardware to discover the bus speed and bus width. Based on IO bus capability, the software knows the maximum bandwidth of the IO bus as shown in figure 1. In any given time, the software can predict the amount of data that can be transferred across the IO bus and consumed by hardware. The software will advance the packet descriptor checking to the location in the FIFO queue where the last transmitted packet is located skipping checks on the intermediate packets.

This method eliminates the overhead associated with checking every packet descriptor for the DONE bit. All the packet descriptors between the previous DONE and the current DONE packet descriptors will have the DONE bit set and won’t need further checking.

Bus width (bit) Bus Speed (MHz) Max Bandwidth (Megabytes/sec) 32 33 133.2 32 66 266.4 64 33 266.4 64 66 532.8 64 133 1065.6 64 266 2131.2

Figure 1: Max bandwidth table

The factor of predicting how many packet descriptors that have been consumed by the hardware would be continuously fine tuned over time to adjust to the system environment changes.

Title: VENDING TERMINAL IN AN ELEVATOR FOR IMPULSIVE HOTEL GUESTS

11/19/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042224              Status:Opened 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
02/06/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806) 
Co-inventors:  Blandy, G.O.  Jones, S.T.  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Title: SUBCLASSING A JAVA PACKAGE

11/19/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042214              Status:Closed 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/07/2005 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Behnen, M.A.

Title: CONVERSION OF EMAILED BITMAPS TO JPEGS - SAVE SPACE

11/19/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042213              Status:Opened 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
02/06/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806) 
Co-inventors:  Behnen, M.A.

Title: CELL PHONE WITH TRACKPOINT - SOLUTION IN SEARCH OF A PROBLEM

11/19/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042212              Status:Opened 
02/07/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/07/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
02/07/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

Title: EMAIL RESPONSE CONSOLIDATION FEATURE

11/17/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042193              Status:Opened 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
02/06/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806) 
Co-inventors:  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Title: STACKING ON THE BOOKMARK TOOLBAR

11/11/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042127              Status:Closed 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/07/2005 Closed

Title: VENDING MACHINE EXCITEMENT WITH SPECIALTY BUTTONS

11/10/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042122              Status:Opened 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
02/06/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806) 
Co-inventors:  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Title: VENDING MACHINE DISPENSES YOUR FAVORITE FOOD VIA RFID TAG ID

11/10/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042121              Status:Opened 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
02/06/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806) 
Co-inventors:  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Title: VENDING MACHINE BLENDS PRODUCTS TOGETHER FOR SPECIALTY

       TEA/COFFEE/TOBACCO... 
11/10/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042120              Status:Closed 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/07/2005 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Title: NETWORKING A BLOCK OF VENDING MACHINES

11/10/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042119              Status:Opened 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
02/06/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806) 
Co-inventors:  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Title: DYNAMIC PRICING ON VENDING MACHINES

11/10/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042118              Status:Closed 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/07/2005 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Title: DISPENSING A MEASURED AMOUNT OF PRODUCT IN A VENDING MACHINE

11/10/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042117              Status:Closed 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/07/2005 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Title: METHOD TO LET CLIENT MANAGE JMX MBEAN STATE

11/09/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042102              Status:Opened 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
02/06/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

Title: METHOD TO CREATE MULTIPLE MBEANS FROM A FACTORY MBEAN

11/09/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042095              Status:Opened 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
02/06/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

Title: METHOD TO REFUND MONEY VIA VENDING MACHINE

11/09/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042094              Status:Closed 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/07/2005 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Title: PASSING PARAMETERS TO JMX VIA PROPERTIES OBJECT

11/09/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042093              Status:Opened 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
06/20/2005 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
06/20/2005 > 6 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

Title: METHOD / TOOL TO GENERATE JMX DYNAMIC MBEAN METADATA CLASSES

11/06/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042084              Status:Opened 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
02/06/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

Title: METHOD / TOOL TO CREATE MODEL MBEANS XML DOCUMENTS FROM JAVA SOURCE AND COMMENTS

11/06/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042083              Status:Opened 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
02/06/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

Title: SNACK MACHINE IN AN ELEVATOR COMBO

11/04/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042057              Status:Closed 
11/19/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
11/22/2004 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Blandy, G.O.  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Title: USE OF RFID TAGS TO SELECT ELEVATOR FLOOR AND CONTROL SECURITY

11/04/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042056              Status:Closed 
11/19/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
11/22/2004 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Blandy, G.O.  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Title: SPECIAL NULL OBJECTS IN JAVA TO PRESERVE DATATYPE FOR REFLECTION

11/04/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042055              Status:Opened 
02/06/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
02/06/2005 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
02/06/2005 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

Title: METHOD TO CANCEL FLOOR SELECTIONS AND POWER DOWN LIGHTS ON AN EMPTY ELEVATOR

11/04/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042054              Status:Closed 
11/19/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
11/22/2004 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Blandy, G.O.  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Title: METHOD FOR UNDOING ELEVATOR FLOOR SELECTIONS

11/04/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820042053              Status:Closed 
11/19/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
11/22/2004 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Blandy, G.O.  Hua, B.K.  Hua, H.L.

Title: CAR/OFFICE/HOME/HOTEL KEY WITH PROGRAMMABLE FEATURES (EMBEDDED USB DRIVE)

10/25/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041972              Status:Closed 
12/10/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
12/13/2004 Closed

Title: PROGRAMMABLE CAR RESTRICTIONS ON A USB DRIVE

10/25/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041971              Status:Closed 
12/10/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
12/13/2004 Closed

Title: SEAT SENSORS TO LIMIT PASSENGERS IN A TEENAGERS CAR

10/25/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041970              Status:Closed 
12/10/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
12/13/2004 Closed

Title: SECONDARY RADIO CHANNEL IN CAR FOR EMERGENCY VEHICLE USE

10/25/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041969              Status:Closed 
12/10/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
12/13/2004 Closed

Title: JMX CONVENIENCE METHOD TO CALL AN MBEAN METHOD VIA JMX MBEANSERVER

10/24/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041954              Status:Published 
12/10/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
12/10/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Publish 
12/13/2004 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
01/25/2005 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         01/25/2005 Published  Pts:1

Title: EMERGENCY SIREN SOUND MUTES OR PLAYS THRU CAR RADIO

10/24/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041953              Status:Closed 
12/10/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
12/13/2004 Closed

Title: RADIO / CD MUTING WHEN CAR IS TURNED ON OR IS IN MOTION

10/23/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041952              Status:Closed 
12/10/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
12/13/2004 Closed

Title: CALLING ONE NUMBER TO CALL A GROUP OF PEOPLE

10/23/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041951              Status:Closed 
12/10/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
12/13/2004 Closed

Title: DUAL LINE TELEPHONE USING SPEAKER/MIC AND HANDSET SEPARATELY

10/22/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041950              Status:Opened 
11/17/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
11/17/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
11/17/2004 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

Title: RFID AND THE MANAGED DOG DISH

09/30/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041794              Status:Closed 
11/18/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
11/18/2004 Closed

Title: CREATING A JMX BEAN CUSTOM SERVICE EXTENSION PLUGIN AGENT FOR WAS

09/30/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041792              Status:Opened 
11/17/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
11/17/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
11/17/2004 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

Title: ADDING ROTATION TO A TRACKPOINT

09/28/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041783              Status:Opened 
11/17/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
11/17/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
11/17/2004 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

Title: TELEVISION TELEPATHY (TV KNOWS WHAT STATION YOU WANT AND WHEN YOU WANT IT)

09/23/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041761              Status:Closed 
11/18/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
11/18/2004 Closed

Title: ONE-TIME VIDEO TAPE VIEWING

09/23/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041760              Status:Closed 
11/18/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
11/18/2004 Closed

Title: USER SELECTABLE WEB BROWSER HOME PAGES

09/23/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041759              Status:Closed 
09/25/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
09/25/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
09/28/2005 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Jones, S.T.

Title: USE OF PDA AS A PERSONAL COMPUTER USB MOUSE

09/23/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041758              Status:Closed 
11/18/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
11/18/2004 Closed

Title: GENERATE APPLICATION SPECIFIC XML PARSERS USING JAR FILES WITH PACKAGE PATHS THAT MATCH THE XML XPATHS

09/21/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041746              Status:Opened 
10/04/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
10/04/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
09/28/2005 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, TO BE FILED 
           AUS920050756US1 not filed as a docket. 
Co-inventors:  Liu, E.  Wang, N.

Title: VSLI MEMORY TEST PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE

09/09/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041660              Status:Closed 
11/18/2004 Closed

Title: METHOD OF EXPOSING A JAVA BEAN API AS A JMX MBEAN API

09/09/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041659              Status:Closed 
12/10/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
12/13/2004 Closed

Title: SECRET HANDSHAKE FOR YOUR SECURITY BADGE

09/09/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041658              Status:Opened 
11/19/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
11/19/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
11/19/2004 > 3 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

Title: TRY BLOCK WITH CONDITIONAL LOGIC TO CONTROL RETRY ATTEMPTS

08/28/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041556              Status:Published 
10/11/2004 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
01/25/2005 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         01/25/2005 Published  Pts:1

Title: TRY BLOCK WITH LOOP CONDITIONAL LOGIC TO CONTROL RETRY ATTEMPTS

08/28/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041555              Status:Published 
10/11/2004 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
01/25/2005 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         01/25/2005 Published  Pts:1

Title: IMPLICIT RETRY IN TRYCATCH BLOCKS UNLESS BREAK USED

08/28/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041553              Status:Published 
10/11/2004 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
01/25/2005 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         01/25/2005 Published  Pts:1

Title: DEFAULT FINALLY CLAUSE FOR LOOP CONSTRUCTS IN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

08/28/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041551              Status:Published 
10/11/2004 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
01/25/2005 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         01/25/2005 Published  Pts:1

Title: AUDIBLE ALARM WHEN TURNING WITHOUT SIGNALLING

08/28/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041550              Status:Closed 
09/27/2004 Closed

Title: BROWSER HOME PAGE CHANGES WITH NETWORK ACCESS

08/28/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041549              Status:Closed 
09/27/2004 Closed

Title: MULTI-HOME PAGE WEB BROWSER

08/28/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041548              Status:Closed 
09/25/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
09/25/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
09/22/2005 Closed

Title: MULTI USER CHATS WITH SUBSET OF USERS ON IM OR SAMETIME OR ICT

08/28/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041547              Status:Opened 
09/25/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
09/25/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
09/22/2005 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, TO BE FILED

Title: PDA MOVIES

08/19/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041488              Status:Closed 
08/30/2004 Closed

Title: SELECTIVE USE OF DND FOR SPECIFIC MEETINGS/APPTS/PEOPLE ON CELLPHONE ORGANIZERS

08/18/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041484              Status:Closed 
08/30/2004 Closed

Title: DUAL PAGE NOTE TAKING APPLICATION OR DEVICE

08/18/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041483              Status:Closed 
08/30/2004 Closed

Title: SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ONLINE COLLECTIVE DECISION MAKING

08/16/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041444              Status:Filed 
08/27/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
08/27/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
06/02/2005 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
07/26/2005 Filed as Docket AUS920050470US1   in US                     Pts:3

Title: WOULDN'T IT BE NICE IF ONE BUTTON FILLED IN THE PATENT FORM WITH YOUR DEFAULTS OR PREVIOUS PATENT SELECTIONS?

07/28/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041301              Status:Closed 
11/21/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
11/22/2004 Closed

Title: BUTTON TO SWITCH TO AN ALTERNATE WEB BROWSER

07/28/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041300              Status:Closed 
08/30/2004 Closed

Title: UNDO FUNCTION FOR UNZIPPED FILES

07/27/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041286              Status:Filed 
08/27/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
08/27/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
05/18/2005 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
09/22/2005 Filed as Docket AUS920050425US1   in US                     Pts:3

Title: INVISIBLE WATERMARKS AS DIGITAL SIGNATURES

07/27/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041285              Status:Published 
08/30/2004 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
09/24/2004 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         09/29/2004 Published  Pts:1

Title: STOLEN VEHICLE TRACKING USING PUBLIC WIRELESS NETWORK SYSTEM

07/02/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041129              Status:Closed 
09/10/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
09/10/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
01/17/2005 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Yan, S.  Rodriguez, H.  Jones, S.T.

Title: NEW PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE CONSTRUCT THE THREAD / WAIT BLOCK

06/28/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041072              Status:Closed 
08/30/2004 Closed

Title: HANDLING OF SECONDARY POPUPS OR POPBEHINDS WITHIN A BROWSE

06/28/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041071              Status:Opened 
08/27/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
08/27/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
05/18/2005 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, TO BE FILED 
05/18/2005 > 6 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

Title: WINDOW CLEANUP VIA DESKTOP ICON

06/28/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820041069              Status:Opened 
08/27/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
08/27/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
05/18/2005 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, TO BE FILED 
05/18/2005 > 6 mo. Overdue (MARK S WALKER/AUSTIN/IBM 012806)

Title: DISTRIBUTED APPROACH TO PRODUCT INSTALLATION

05/28/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820040942              Status:Closed 
06/28/2004 Closed

Title: TRACELOG XML LOGGING FORMAT USES

04/30/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820040766              Status:Published 
06/28/2004 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
09/29/2004 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         09/29/2004 Published  Pts:1

Title: METHOD FOR DETECTING OBJECT COLLISIONS IN A COMPUTER BASED GAME

04/29/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820040762              Status:Filed 
06/26/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
06/26/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
08/30/2004 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
04/14/2005 Filed as Docket AUS920040714US1   in US                     Pts:3

Title: PROXIMITY ORIENTED CELL PHONE ACTIVATION/DEACTIVATION VIA CIRCUIT, RFID TAG OR BAR CODE

04/27/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820040737              Status:Closed 
05/10/2005 Sent to Evaluator 
05/10/2005 Closed

Title: METHOD FOR RESTRICTING CALLS TO A CELL PHONE

04/27/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820040736              Status:Filed 
06/26/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
06/26/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
08/30/2004 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
04/14/2005 Filed as Docket AUS920040715US1   in US                     Pts:3

Title: CONTROL OF DOCUMENT CONTENT HAVING EXTRACTION PERMISSIVES

04/23/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820040724              Status:Filed 
06/26/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
06/26/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
05/09/2005 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
10/07/2005 Filed as Docket AUS920050404US1   in US                     Pts:3

Title: CAPTURING BIBLIOGRAPHIC ATTRIBUTION INTO DURING CUT/COPY/PASTE OPERATIONS

04/23/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820040721              Status:Filed 
06/26/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
06/26/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
05/09/2005 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
10/07/2005 Filed as Docket AUS920050403US1   in US                     Pts:3

Title: TRACELOG API AS A USEFUL METHOD FOR RECORDING ERRORS AND DOING DEBUG IN THE FIELD

04/02/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820040584              Status:Published 
06/28/2004 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
09/24/2004 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         09/24/2004 Published  Pts:1

Title: USE OF RETRY WITHIN A TRY/ CATCH BLOCK

04/02/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820040583              Status:Closed 
06/26/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
06/26/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
08/25/2004 Closed

Title: DOCUMENT CONTROLLED SELECT/CUT/COPY/PASTE PERMISSIONS

02/16/2004 Opened as Discl AUS820040292              Status:Published 
03/29/2004 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
04/06/2004 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         04/06/2004 Published  Pts:1

Title: METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PROGRAMMING PORTAL APPLICATIONS

11/07/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820032007              Status:Filed 
01/23/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
01/23/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
06/28/2004 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
11/18/2004 Filed as Docket AUS920040534US1   in US                     Pts:3 
06/28/2004 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
11/15/2005 Filed as Docket AUS920040534CN1   in CN                     Pts:0

Title: AN UNORDERED/FUZZY FILE PATH

11/03/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820031960              Status:Filed 
01/23/2004 Sent to Evaluator 
01/23/2004 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
06/16/2004 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
11/12/2004 Filed as Docket AUS920040497US1   in US                     Pts:3 
06/16/2004 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
11/10/2005 Filed as Docket AUS920040497CN1   in CN                     Pts:0

Title: COMPUTER CONTROLLED METHOD USING GENETIC ALGORITHMS TO PROVIDE NON-DETERMINISTIC SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS INVOLVING PHYSICAL RESTRAINTS

10/17/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820031884              Status:Filed 
10/24/2003 Sent to Evaluator 
10/24/2003 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
03/09/2005 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
10/20/2005 Filed as Docket AUS920050249US1   in US                     Pts:3

Title: REMOVAL OF SPAM MESSAGES FROM NEWSGROUPS

10/17/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820031883              Status:Closed 
10/27/2003 Closed

Title: USE OF A THESAURUS FOR GOOGLE STYLE SEARCHING

10/17/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820031882              Status:Closed 
10/27/2003 Closed

Title: PROVIDING A LOTUS NOTES SHAREABLE DIRECTORY TO BE REPLICATED ON THE LOTUS NOTES SERVER

10/09/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820031840              Status:Closed 
10/20/2003 Closed

Title: CONNECTING A CALENDAR APPTS TO PHONE CALL REMINDERS

10/09/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820031839              Status:Closed 
10/20/2003 Closed

Title: USING THE SQL COALESCE FUNCTION TO GET NLS MESSAGES IN THE NATIVE LOCALE OR IN ENGLISH IF NOT AVAILABLE

10/07/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820031818              Status:Published 
10/20/2003 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
04/07/2004 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         04/07/2004 Published  Pts:1 
Co-inventors:  Snodgrass, G.L.

Title: ADDING LABELS (OR TOOLTIPS) TO VERTICAL SCROLL BARS TO SPEED LOCATION OF CONTENT

09/26/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820031735              Status:Closed 
10/06/2003 Closed

Title: CLIPBOARD CONTENT AND DOCUMENT METADATA COLLECTION

09/26/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820031734              Status:Filed 
10/06/2003 Sent to Evaluator 
10/06/2003 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
11/24/2003 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
03/11/2004 Filed as Docket AUS920031066US1   in US                     Pts:3

Title: PACKAGING WEB PAGE CONTENT AS A JAR FILE

09/26/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820031725              Status:Closed 
10/06/2003 Closed

Title: ALPHANUMERIC PARAMETER SUBSTITUTION IN NLS MESSAGES

04/30/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820030786              Status:Published 
06/26/2003 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
11/21/2003 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         11/21/2003 Published  Pts:1

Title: USING TCPIP ADDRESS OF USERS MACHINE OR SEARCH HOME PAGE TO ORDER DOCUMENTS FROM A WEB SEARCH

04/24/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820030747              Status:Closed 
06/17/2003 Sent to Evaluator 
06/18/2003 Closed 
Co-inventors:  Behnen, M.A.

Title: TEST DATA GENERATION PROCESSOR / LANGUAGE

04/24/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820030746              Status:Published 
06/17/2003 Sent to Evaluator 
06/17/2003 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
06/25/2003 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         07/15/2003 Published  Pts:1

Title: METHOD, SYSTEMS AND MEDIA FOR HANDLING ERRORS IN SCRIPT FILES

03/04/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820030359              Status:Filed 
04/01/2003 Sent to Evaluator 
04/01/2003 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
01/21/2004 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
04/29/2004 Filed as Docket AUS920040037US1   in US                     Pts:3

Title: AN ALGORITHM AIDING IN SQL DIAGNOSIS

03/03/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820030339              Status:Published 
03/31/2003 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
06/25/2003 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         07/15/2003 Published  Pts:1

Title: SQL IGNORE ERROR FEATURE

02/17/2003 Opened as Discl AUS820030242              Status:Published 
02/24/2003 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH, N/A 
06/25/2003 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         07/15/2003 Published  Pts:1

Title: USE OF FOREGROUND COLOR FADING FOR SOFTWARE LICENSING

02/25/2002 Opened as Discl AUS820020275              Status:Closed 
06/10/2002 Closed

Title: IMPROVED SORT SCHEME FOR LOTUS NOTES

11/27/2001 Opened as Discl AUS820011689              Status:Closed 
06/10/2002 Closed

Title: SYNTAX FOR FILE LIST EXPANSION

11/27/2001 Opened as Discl AUS820011634              Status:Closed 
06/10/2002 Closed

Title: ALERT FLAGS FOR DATA CLEANING AND DATA ANALYSIS

11/07/2001 Opened as Discl AUS820011558              Status:Filed 
04/16/2003 Sent to Evaluator 
04/16/2003 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
04/17/2003 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
07/31/2003 Filed as Docket AUS920030382US1   in US                     Pts:3

Title: METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ENABLING NATIONAL LANGUAGE SUPPORT OF A DATABASE ENGINE

10/05/2001 Opened as Discl AUS820011426              Status:Filed 
10/14/2002 Sent to Evaluator 
10/14/2002 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
06/24/2003 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
08/21/2003 Filed as Docket AUS920030607US1   in US                     Pts:3

Title: PASSING PARAMETERS TO AN EXTERNAL COMMAND VIA THE COMMAND ENVIRONMENT

09/07/2001 Opened as Discl AUS820011293              Status:Filed 
09/13/2001 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, ABANDONED 
01/09/2002 Filed as Docket AUS920010927US1   in US                     Pts:3 
05/09/2005 Abandoned

Title: CREATION OF A CUSTOMIZED COMMAND ENVIRONMENT

09/07/2001 Opened as Discl AUS820011292              Status:Filed 
09/13/2001 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, ABANDONED 
01/09/2002 Filed as Docket AUS920010928US1   in US                     Pts:3 
09/13/2005 Abandoned

Title: COMMAND SCRIPT INSTRUMENTATION FOR LOGGING COMMAND EXECUTION AND THE PROTECTION OF SENSITIVE INFORMATION

09/07/2001 Opened as Discl AUS820011291              Status:Filed 
09/13/2001 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, ABANDONED 
12/05/2001 Filed as Docket AUS920010929US1   in US                     Pts:3 
06/16/2005 Abandoned

Title: CAPTURING COMMAND EXECUTION STATUS

09/07/2001 Opened as Discl AUS820011290              Status:Filed 
09/13/2001 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, ABANDONED 
12/05/2001 Filed as Docket AUS920010930US1   in US                     Pts:3 
10/27/2005 Abandoned

Title: ALGORITHM TO IMPROVE CUSTOMER SCORING IN DATA MINING APPLICATIONS

09/30/1999 Opened as Discl AUS819991297              Status:Closed 
05/15/2001 Sent to Evaluator 
05/15/2001 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
01/28/2002 Closed

Title: A NEW WAY OF VIEWING 3D DATA INTERACTIVELY IN 2D USING COLOR AND MOUSE SELECTION

09/01/1999 Opened as Discl AUS819991050              Status:Closed 
05/15/2001 Sent to Evaluator 
05/15/2001 Evaluated                                 Action:Search 
01/28/2002 Closed

Title: SEGMENT MIGRATION

12/16/1998 Opened as Discl AUS819981525              Status:Filed 
04/14/1999 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, GRANTED 
08/13/1999 Filed as Docket AUS919990186US1   in US                     Pts:3 
09/16/2003 Issued as Patent 6622126 in US 
Co-inventors:  Schall, M. 
04/14/1999 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, ABANDONED 
08/09/2000 Filed as Docket AUS919990186GB1   in GB                     Pts:0 
11/03/2003 Abandoned 
Co-inventors:  Schall, M. 
04/14/1999 Discl Review                              Action:FILE, PENDING 
06/20/2000 Filed as Docket AUS919990186CA1   in CA                     Pts:0 
Co-inventors:  Schall, M.

Title: COMMON SOURCE

09/20/1994 Opened as Discl AUS819940760              Status:Published 
09/23/1994 Sent to Evaluator 
10/26/1994 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH 
10/04/1995 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         12/01/1995 Published  Pts:1 
Co-inventors:  Harboe, R.W.  Bonebrake, V.A.  Snyder, J.N.

Title: A NEW CUA CONTROL: PUSHPAD FOR GREATER MOUSE PRODUCTIVITY

11/17/1993 Opened as Discl AUS819931010              Status:Published 
11/24/1993 Sent to Evaluator 
12/15/1993 Discl Review                              Action:PUBLISH 
03/25/1994 Mailed to Tech Discl Bulletin         08/01/1994 Published  Pts:1

Title: HILIGHTING TASK DEPENDENCIES ON A SCHEDULE

12/16/1992 Opened as Discl FIS819920740              Status:Closed 
12/21/1992 Sent to Evaluator 
05/28/1993 Closed

Title: SHOWING TASK RESOURCE ALLOCATIONS ON A SCHEDULE

12/16/1992 Opened as Discl FIS819920739              Status:Closed 
12/21/1992 Sent to Evaluator 
05/28/1993 Closed