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Visual communications tool

Visual communications tool description/claims

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/053,235, filed on Feb. 7, 2005, which is a continuation-in-part of International Application No. PCT/US2003/024695, filed on Aug. 7, 2003 (attorney docket 50897.PCT), which in turn claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/401,806, filed on Aug. 7, 2002, the content of all of which is incorporated herein by reference. This application also claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/635,808, filed on Dec. 13, 2004 (attorney docket 54083), the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.

People in the fashion and lifestyle-driven industries often struggle to communicate their ideas with each other in an efficient and safe manner. The increase in the usage of electronic communication, such as, for example, electronic mail (e-mail) has somewhat helped their communication efforts. However, traditional e-mail is not catered to the fashion and lifestyle-driven industries where a lot of the information transmitted is visual information, such as pictures. This is because the application generating the pictures is separate from the e-mail application used for their transmission. Thus, the pictures are generally transmitted by the e-mail application in the form of an attachment.

The use of e-mails with attachments is undesirable for various reasons. First, any comment in the body of the e-mail about an attached image is separate from the attachment itself. This makes it difficult to maintain multiple comments received about the image correlated and organized with the image. Furthermore, people receiving an image attachment and responding with a comment on the image may not reattach the image to the responding e-mail, leaving it to the recipient to figure out which images go with which e-mails.

Second, some company networks do not allow employees to receive e-mails that contain attachments. Employees in such situations may have to utilize other mechanisms for receiving the attachments to which comments are desired.

Third, when changes are made to a presentation, it must generally be reattached to an e-mail and retransmitted to ensure that all recipient have the latest version of the presentation. During a development phase where there may be constant feedback and modification to the presentation, such retransmission of attachments puts a strain on a company's bandwidth.

Finally, there is currently no mechanism to prevent a person receiving a picture in the form of an attachment from reproducing and forwarding the attachment to others. Thus, the author of the picture runs a risk that this or her copyright rights for the picture may be violated by providing the picture in an attachment.

Current e-mail technology, even without attachments, also does not provide an efficient way to track comments about a given topic. A receiving person needs to make sure that the most recent e-mail about the topic is opened to make sure that he or she has the most recent comments. Also, when comments are transmitted concurrently by different people, the recipient generally has to open multiple e-mails to make sure that all of the comments are reviewed.

Traditional electronic mail, therefore, is difficult and frustrating to use for designers, suppliers, and retailers in the fashion and lifestyle-driven industries. Accordingly, what is desired is a visual communications tool catered to the fashion and lifestyle-driven industries where a majority of the information being communicated is visual information, and where there is constant feedback about the visual information that needs to be tracked and correlated to the visual information.

A visual communications (VC) tool creating visual arrangements and presenting the visual arrangements to others for feedback and comment in an efficient and secure manner.

According to one embodiment, the present invention is directed to a visual communications method that includes generating a visual arrangement including an image, and storing the visual arrangement in a computer data store. A comment is received on at least a portion of the visual arrangement over an electronic data communications medium, and the comment automatically correlated to the portion of the visual arrangement. The portion of the visual arrangement with the correlated comment is then displayed on a display.

According to another embodiment, the present invention is directed to a visual communications method that includes receiving a notification on a published visual arrangement including an image, responding to the notification with a comment on at least a portion of the visual arrangement, and transmitting the comment over an electronic data communications medium. The comment includes a reference to the portion of the visual arrangement to which the comment relates. The reference is used by a device receiving the comment to correlate the received comment to a corresponding portion of the visual arrangement stored in the device's local data store.

According to a further embodiment, the present invention is directed to a visual communications tool that includes a first display area displaying a visual arrangement including an image, and a second display area displaying textual information associated with the visual arrangement. The visual communications tool executes program instructions which allows the visual arrangement to be correlated to the textual information. The visual communications tool also executes program instructions which automatically displays the visual arrangement and the textual information in their respective display areas in response to a user command.

These and other features, aspects and advantages of the present invention will be more fully understood when considered with respect to the following detailed description, appended claims, and accompanying drawings. Of course, the actual scope of the invention is defined by the appended claims.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a visual communications system according to one embodiment of the invention;

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