METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR INCREASING THE NUMBER OF MEANINGFUL WEB DDRESSES
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to the World Wide Web, and particularly to a method and system for increasing the number of meaningful web addresses.
With the popularity of Internet has come a strong drive for businesses to launch websites to provide information about their products and services. By popularizing their websites, a lot of businesses thrive on being Internet portals in specific fields. These websites are also used as the front-ends of a full-scale e-commerce operation for selling products and services on-line. While long-established businesses have capitalized on their brand names to promote their websites, others have aggressively used advertisement channels to accomplish the same.
In such a rapidly growing and highly competitive field of using internet to achieve business growth, website names obviously play a critical role, with mnemonic (simpler, shorter and self-explanatory) names (such as, lawyers, pets or stocks) drawing a huge advantage of being easy-to-relate. Such websites have been purchased for millions of dollars in the Internet auction, and businesses now have to resort to complex, hard-to-relate and sometimes, confusing names for the websites, since the most of the words in the dictionary have already been used. The shortage of website names is particularly acute in ".com" global top-level domain (g-IΣD), which is preferred most by businesses.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention provides a method and system for making thousands of new letter combinations available for use as meaningful website names. This is accomplished by manipulating or "flipping" the original English word(s). For example, FlipAddress may be "flipped" to form a new word sserddApilF, and can be registered as a website name www.sserddApilF.com. The word sserddApilF is meaningless, and is hard-to-relate to, until recognized as the flip of FlipAddress. The present invention also provides a system for carrying out such pre-established manipulations or flippings of normal English word(s) to form new derived registerable letter combinations, unrelated to the subject matter of the websites to be accessed.
In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the said manipulations of English words is accomplished with the help of a computer screen button (also referred as the FlipAddress button). This button is linked to a JavaScript-based software program that flips the website name, and places it back in the screen's address window. In addition to the above exemplary manipulation of a website name, other transformations (such as, manipulation, interpolation and interjection of a website name or changing the global top-level domain extension) can also be performed by the FlipAddress button. FlipAddress functionality can be incorporated in the web browser in a variety of ways, such as, through a button (as described as the preferred embodiment), menu options, or a stand alone graphical interface. Moreover, a computer keyboard key can be coded with the help of a software program so as to access a specific flipaddress option directly. For example, hitting a key such as "Shift", 'Return", or "Backspace" can access a program that produces automatic flipping of a webaddress (specified in the address window), which is then accessed by the web browser. All such variations are considered within the intended scope and spirit of the present invention.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
FIG. 1 shows a typical web browser entry screen for navigating the Internet.
FIG. 2 shows a web browser screen with a FlipAddress button in the tool bar, which carries out the website name manipulations.
FIG. 3 lists some of the transformations offered through the FlipAddress button.
FIG. 4 shows a flowchart illustrating exemplary programmatic steps to add the
FlipAddress button onto a web browser.
FIG. 5 shows how FlipAddress button offers different multi-level options.
FIG. 6 shows program steps that are performed when FlipAddress button is used to manipulate a website name through multi-level options.
FIG. 7 shows a stand-alone Flip window that is independent of, but communicates with the web browser window.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
As shown in FIG. 1, a World Wide Web browser - henceforth referred as, web browser or web-browser entry screen - typically has an address window 11, which displays the webaddress or Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of the webpage that is being accessed or displayed. A user can choose the desired webaddress (for easy reference, FlipAddress in www.FlipAddress.com is henceforth referred as website name, where as, www.FlipAddress.com is called webaddress or URL) from an existing URL-inventory 12 by clicking on it, and then making a selection. A URL-inventory is a list of user's favorites webaddresses. Microsoft®'s Internet Explorer® provides such a URL-inventory in the form of favorites while America Online® 's Netscape® provides it in the form of bookmarks. A user can also manually type a webaddress (e.g., http://www.FlipAddress.com) in the address window 11, and hit the return or enter key on the keyboard in order to access that webaddress. The Go button 13 on Internet Explorer can also be used in place of return or enter key.
In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the manipulation of English words is accomplished with the help of a button 21 (Fig. 2) on a computer screen (henceforth referred as the FlipAddress button). This button is linked to a JavaScript-based software program that flips the website name, and places the flipped name back in the screen's address window 22. In addition to the above exemplary manipulation of a website name, other transformations (such as, manipulation, interpolation and interjection of website name or changing the domain extension) can also be performed by the FlipAddress button. A list of some such transformations is provided in FIG. 3. While the present invention has been described with reference to a preferred embodiment thereof, those skilled in the art can easily appreciate that there may be a number of such transformations (differing in form and/or ways) to manipulate the website names. There may also be different ways to accomplish these transformations. FlipAddress functionality can be incorporated in the web browser in a variety way such as, through a button (as described as the preferred embodiment) or menu options. Moreover, a computer keyboard key can be coded with the help of a software program so as to access a specific flipaddress option directly. For example, hitting "Shift" key may lead to automatic flipping of a webaddress (specified in the address window), which is then accessed by the
web browser. All such variations are considered within the intended scope and spirit of the present invention.
Moreover, instead of a web-browser-integrated tool bar button, a stand-alone window could be used to achieve the same FlipAddress functionality. Similar to a web-browser window (FIG. 2), this stand-alone window has a text box and FlipAddress button with options, as shown in FIG. 3. This stand-alone window, however, may not have other web- browser features such as, File, Edit, and View. A user could type webaddress either in the address window of a web-browser or in the textbox of this stand-alone window, and then select FlipAddress options from the stand-alone window. After manipulating the web address, the stand-alone window would interact with the web-browser (using the same technology - JavaScript), and would direct it to the manipulated web-address.
OPERATION OF INVENTION
In the preferred embodiment of the present invention, options offered by the FlipAddress button are controlled by a JavaScript-based computer program that is either pre-integrated with the web browser or is installed as an add-on application. As the flowchart in FIG. 4 illustrates, the program installs the button FlipAddress on a web browser by registering this button in the web browser registry, and linking it to the computer program that carries out the website name manipulations as per the options selected by a user. A registry is a hierarchically structured tree with multiple nodes, each of which is identified by a keyname. The predefined keys such as, HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, HKEY_CURRENT_USER, HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG, HKEY JSERS, HKEY_DYN_DATA and
HKJEY_LOCAL_MACHJSIE serve as entry points to the registry for application programs.
In particular, HDKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE allows registration of the JavaScript-based computer program as an extension to a web browser. The program first creates necessary string values such as, button text, icon and program path. It then sets the appropriate values to these string values e.g., program path string value would be the location of computer program
that carries out website name manipulations. Those skilled in the art would recognize that the string value declaration and values would depend on the specific web browser (such as, Internet Explorer® or Netscape®), its version/release and the computer platform (such as, UNTX or Windows 95). All these checks are made by the program in the beginning to ensure a proper installation and functioning of the FlipAddress button.
Once the FlipAddress button is installed on a web browser (in a preferred embodiment of the present invention) through this procedure, a user would type the desired webaddress in the address window 22, and select options(s) from the FlipAddress button 21. As shown in FIG. 5, a user can choose multiple transformations or options, which are executed at once in an order in which they are selected e.g., if a user chooses the options for flipping www.abcdef.com followed by interjection of a word (say, FlipAddress), it would result in www.fed-FlipAddress-cba.com. Similarly, if a user chooses to flip www.FlipAddress.com and then change global top-level domain name (gTLD) to .org, it would result in www.sserddApilF.com first, and then to www.sserddApilF.org. As shown in FIG. 5, these multilevel transformations are available through the options 51 provided by the FlipAddress button.
In the preferred embodiment of the present invention, the programmatic steps behind the functioning of the FlipAddress button are shown in the flowchart in FIG. 6. The program would first store the original webaddress (typed by a user in the address window 22). It would then set appropriate flags corresponding to each level of options selected by a user, and manipulate the website name (which is extracted from that webaddress) according to all options selected. The program would finally insert the manipulated website name into the full webaddress, place it in the address window 22 as the location reference, and instruct the web browser to access that webaddress.
OBJECTS AND ADVANTAGES
The main object of the present invention is to provide a method and system to create new website names through manipulations of normal English words. The advantages of this invention are:
a) It provides thousands of new letter combinations for use as website names. For example, sserddApilF is a meaningless word until it is recognized as a flip of FlipAddress. Thus, this invention establishes a logical link between otherwise meaningless words and meaningful English words and therefore, makes thousands of otherwise meaningless letter combinations available for registration and use as website names. b) Businesses can use these new letter combinations for website names to build additional Internet portals using these additional website names. c) The options offered by the FlipAddress button can serve as additional resources for a user to locate useful information on the Internet. For example, to obtain lawyer-related information, a user can explore the websites accessed through the different FlipAddress options, which manipulate the word Lawyers. Moreover, the FlipAddress button can be made intelligent so that if the software detected a user error or uncertainty, it could access a resident database or on-line data resources to prompt a user to suggest useful alternative FlipAddress options and corresponding websites. Furthermore, Flipaddress options or websites could route a user to corresponding websites whose actual names may be complex. This would enable businesses to link their websites to FlipAddress options without having to change their original website addresses. d) For portable wireless communication devices, the screen space has to be used conservatively. Flipaddress's ability to access only selective websites (those corresponding to FlipAddress options), and provide only targeted, specific information would be very important in such devices.