JP2003016018A - Contents transmitting program and method - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To select whether contents addressed to myself are stored in a computer system or not. SOLUTION: Contents transmission software 13A, 13B,... receive inputs of addresses, designation of contents transmitted to the addresses, and demands uploading the contents from users, and upload them to a contents directory inside a server 7 located in a designated base URL. The contents transmission software 13A, 13B,..., which are e-mail to inputted addresses, make the e-mail containing short-cut commands to the uploaded contents generated in electronic mailers 17A, 17B,.... The electronic mailers 17A, 17B,... transmit generated e-mail in response to demands of the users. The addresses receive the e-mail and make the short-cut commands prepared in the received e-mail when wanted to know the details of the addressed contents.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a technique for transmitting contents to a desired destination using a communication network.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art There are various types of contents that a computer can handle, but the following description will be given taking the case where the contents are electronic mail as an example.

[0003] Conventionally, with the spread of computer systems such as personal computers and mobile phones, electronic mail has been widely used for various contacts and information notifications. A user sends and receives e-mail via a mail server installed on the Internet. The mail server receives the electronic mail from the transmission source, and transmits the received electronic mail to the destination computer system immediately after receiving it or in response to the inquiry from the destination.

[0004]

All electronic mail received by the mail server is transmitted to and stored in the destination computer system. Therefore, unless the destination user appropriately deletes the electronic mail stored in the computer system, the electronic mail is accumulated in the computer system and the storage capacity is wasted. This is noticeable when the data size of the e-mail is large, the attached documents with large data size are attached to the e-mail, or the storage capacity of the computer system is small such as a mobile phone. is there.

Further, some of the received electronic mails are unnecessary for the user. For example, it is e-mail whose contents are already known, chain mail, or the like.

However, according to the conventional method, all the electronic mails received by the mail server are transmitted to and stored in the destination computer system. Therefore, the time required to receive the e-mail may be unnecessarily long, and the storage capacity of the destination computer system may be wasted.

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to make it possible to select whether or not the contents addressed to oneself are stored in the computer system.

[0008]

A content transmission program according to the present invention is a program for transmitting a content to a desired destination using a communication network, and receives an input of the destination of the content designated by the user. And a program code for storing the content to be transmitted to the destination in a predetermined place on the communication network, and a means for requesting the stored content to generate an electronic mail to the destination. And a program code for executing the program.

This content transmission program stores the content to the destination inputted by the user in the predetermined location and requests the content (for example, a URL pointing to the content or a shortcut command to the URL). ) Is included in the e-mail, and the e-mail can be generated by the e-mailer. The user performs an operation for transmitting the generated e-mail to the computer system equipped with this content transmission program. As a result, the electronic mail is transmitted to the destination. The destination user can know the content of the content addressed to himself by the above means included in the received e-mail, and if the content is desired, the user can store the content in his computer system. All you have to do is perform the operation. That is,
With this content transmission program, the destination can select whether or not to store the content addressed to itself in the computer system.

A content transmitting method according to the present invention is a method for transmitting a content to a desired destination using a communication network, and a step of receiving an input of the destination of the content designated by a user, and transmitting to the destination. Storing the content to be stored at a predetermined location on the communication network, and sending an electronic mail including means for requesting the stored content to the input destination.

The computer program according to the present invention and the computer program for executing each step constituting the method according to the present invention can be installed or loaded into a computer through various media such as a disk type storage, a semiconductor memory and a communication network. You can

[0012]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows the overall configuration of a system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

User terminals 1A, 1B, ... And a content storage server (hereinafter abbreviated as “server”) 7 are connected to a communication network such as the Internet 3.

The user terminals 1A, 1B, ... Are computer systems used by users, such as personal computers, PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), and mobile phones. The user terminals 1A, 1B, ... Have contents transmission software 13A, 13B, ..., WWW browsers 15A, 15B ,.
B, ... And are mounted respectively.

Content transmission software 13A, 13B, ...
Is a means for accepting an input of a destination of content data (for example, email, text, video, still image, music, multimedia data, etc.), and a function of uploading the content to the input destination to a predetermined base URL. (Hereinafter, the uploaded content may be referred to as “Web content”). The "base URL" is prepared by the upload source user,
This is the URL of the content directory (which will be described later) in the server 7. The base URL is, for example,
When the user registers as a user in the server 7 (for example, when predetermined information is input), the server 7 notifies the user.

The content transmission software 13 is an e-mail to the destination of the uploaded content at a predetermined timing (for example, immediately after uploading the content), and a shortcut to a URL indicating the location of the content. It also has a function of causing the electronic mailers 17A, 17B, ... To create an electronic mail including a command (hereinafter, the electronic mail including the shortcut command is referred to as a "content notification mail").

The WWW browser 15 is a user terminal 1A,
When the above shortcut command is activated by a command from the user on the content notification mail displayed on the display screen of 1B, ..., The URL designated by the activated short command (that is, the URL indicating the Web content, hereinafter the content location URL) We in
b Content is requested from the server 7, and the content sent in response to the request is displayed. Further, the WWW browser 15 receives a request for saving the displayed Web content from the user, and when receiving the request, downloads the displayed Web content from the server 7 and stores it in the user terminal.

The server 7 prepares a content directory 9A, 9B, ... For storing content uploaded from the user terminals 1A, 1B, ... for each user (for example, as shown in the figure, the user "Mr. A"). Has A
The content directory 9A for Mr. B and the content directory 9B for Mr. B are prepared for the user "Mr. Also, the server 7 receives a request for Web content at the content location URL from the user terminal that has received the content notification mail, and responds to the request by the U terminal.
The Web content in the RL is provided to the user terminal.

In the following, the case where the user of the user terminal 1A is "Mr. A" and the user of the user terminal 1B is "Mr. B", and the user "Mr. A" transmits contents to the user "Mr. The flow in the embodiment will be described.

First, the content transmission software 13A is activated in response to a request from the user "A". The content transmission software 13A receives the designation of the content 100 to be transmitted to the user "Mr. B" and the input of the e-mail address of the user "Mr. B" who is the destination from the user "Mr. A". Then, the content transmission software 13A receives the designation of the URL (that is, the base URL) of the content directory 9A for Mr. A and the transmission request of the designated content from the user "Mr. A". When the content transmission software 13A receives the request, the user "B
The content addressed to "san" is entered as the base URL, that is, the contents directory 9 for Mr. A in the server 7.
Upload (that is, store) to A (step S
1).

Next, the content transmission software 13A
Activate the electronic mailer 17A, and use the email address of Mr. B entered above to enter the electronic mailer 17A
A content notification mail addressed to Mr. B is generated (that is, an e-mail addressed to Mr. B is generated that includes a shortcut command to a URL pointing to the location of the content 100 addressed to Mr. B).

The electronic mailer 17A displays the generated content notification mail on the user terminal 1A, and when a request to send the electronic mail is received from the user "A", the content notification mail addressed to B is sent to the user "B". To the electronic mail address of "(S2).

The electronic mailer 17B of the user terminal 1B displays the content notification mail received from the user terminal 1A on the display screen of the user terminal 1B. When the user "Mr. B" sees the displayed content notification mail and wants to know the content of the content 100 addressed to Mr. B, he / she activates the shortcut command included in the content notification mail (specifically, For example, the location U of the content described in the content notification email
One click on RL). The activated shortcut command activates the WWW browser 15B.
The WWW browser 15B accesses the content 100 addressed to Mr. B in the content location URL included in the shortcut command according to the command from the command (S3).

The WWW browser 15B is accessed by the U
The content of the content 100 addressed to Mr. B in the RL is notified to the user “Mr. B” via the user terminal 1B based on the data format of the content 100 (for example, B
If the content 100 addressed to Mr. is a music file, play music). When the WWW browser 15B receives a storage request for the content 100 from the user "Mr. B", the WWW browser 15B downloads the content 100 from the server 7 and stores it in the user terminal 1B (S4).

The above is the flow in the case where the user “Mr. A” transmits content to the user “Mr. B”.

In this flow, the content transmission software 13A allows the user "Mr. A" to input and store the base URL (that is, the location of the content directory 9A for Mr. A) in advance, and uploads a certain content. When we receive a request,
Even if the user "Mr. A" does not bother to input the base URL, it can be automatically uploaded to the content directory 9A for Mr. A.

Also, the user “Mr. A” (that is, the user who transmitted the content) can delete the uploaded content at any time. As a result, the user “Mr. A” mistakenly uploaded the content 100, or the uploaded content 10
When it is desired to edit 0, the uploaded content 100 is edited or deleted before being known to the user “Mr. B” (that is, the destination user), and the content of the uploaded content 100 is modified to the user “Mr. B”. Can be made unknown to you.

As described above, according to the above-described embodiment, the content to be transmitted to the destination is uploaded and stored in the server 7, and the content notification mail including the shortcut command to the uploaded content is transmitted to the destination. . The destination user can know the content of the content by activating the shortcut command, and if he / she wants the content, he / she can perform the operation of downloading the content and storing it in his / her user terminal. Therefore, what is necessarily stored in the user terminal that is the destination of the content is not the content itself having a relatively large data size, but the content notification mail having a relatively small data size. Therefore, even if a lot of contents are sent, it does not burden the user terminal. In other words, the content destination user can select whether or not to store the content addressed to him / herself in his / her user terminal. As a result, unnecessary content is not stored in the user terminal, and thus it is possible to prevent unnecessary waste of time for content reception and waste of the storage capacity of the user terminal of the destination user. It is possible.

The preferred embodiment of the present invention has been described above, but this is merely an example for explaining the present invention, and the scope of the present invention is not limited to this embodiment. The present invention can be implemented in various other forms.

For example, as a first another embodiment, the content transmission software 13A, 13B, ... Includes content attribute information such as the type, outline, data size, and importance of the content as well as the location URL of the content. May be identified and the attribute information thereof may be included in the content notification mail.

As a second alternative embodiment, the content transmission software 13A, 13B, ... May include a password for viewing the uploaded content in the content notification mail. In this case, the server 7 causes the destination user to input the password, and if the password is not correct, does not provide the content to the destination.

As a third alternative embodiment, the content storage server 7 may notify the user of the situation in the content directory in response to an inquiry from the user. The status of the notification is, for example, how many contents are stored in the content directory of the user, whether or not the content notification mail is accessed by the destination.

As a fourth alternative embodiment, contents are received from the user terminals 1A, 1B, ... On the Internet 1 and the contents are processed as they are, or the contents are subjected to predetermined processing. (For example, if the content is a text file, HTML
A content transfer server for transferring a file converted into a format file) to the server 7 may be provided.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an overall configuration of a system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

1A, 1B, ... User terminal 3 Internet 7 Content storage server 9A, 9B, ... Content directory 13A, 13B, ... Content transmission software 15A, 15B, ... WWW browser 17A, 17B, ... Electronic mailer

   ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continued front page    (72) Inventor Wataru Shoji             4-20-3 Ebisu, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo Ebisu             Garden Place Tower 13th floor Dreamte             Knologies Co., Ltd. F-term (reference) 5B082 HA05 HA08

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A computer program for realizing a method for transmitting contents to a desired destination using a communication network, the program code for receiving input of a destination of contents designated by a user. A program for generating an electronic mail to the destination, including a program code for storing the specified content in a predetermined location on the communication network, and means for requesting the stored content Content transmission program with code and. 2. A method for transmitting a content to a desired destination using a communication network, the method comprising: receiving an input of a destination of the content designated by a user; and transmitting the designated content to the communication network. A content transmission method comprising: storing the content in the above predetermined location; and transmitting an electronic mail including means for requesting the stored content to the destination.