CLOUD TABS
The presently disclosed techniques related to data transfer and synchronization between multiple electronic devices. The multiple electronic devices may be logged onto a user's account with a cloud computing service so that they may transfer data relating to websites that they have accessed to the cloud computing service so that such data may be synchronized amongst the multiple electronic devices. A tab screen on each electronic device may allow a user to view the other linked devices as well as the websites that they have accessed so that the user may select such websites if so desired.
The present application is related to U.S. application Ser. No. 61/595,114, filed on Feb. 5, 2012, the subject matter of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirely for all purposes.
BACKGROUNDThe present disclosure relates generally to electronic devices and cloud. computing, and more particularly, to techniques for synchronizing electronic devices using cloud computing.
This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present disclosure, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
In today's fast-paced society, it is very common for people to use several electronic devices to “stay connected” with their various responsibilities. For example, those that spend time at home or at the office often use a desktop or laptop computer to monitor e-mail, stay current on social websites, browse the Internet, and perform in various other tasks. However, such electronic devices are not particularly convenient when called away from the home or office, particularly for a relatively short amounts of time, such as lunch, business meetings, soccer practice, etc. During these periods, people often rely upon pocket-sized handheld devices, such as cellular smart phones, to stay connected. Additionally, people often turn to larger handheld devices, such as tablet computers, to stay connected when circumstances permit, since such devices strike a good balance between portability and a larger, easier to use format.
Although each of the aforementioned devices typically possess Internet capability, through the use of WiFi and/or cellular networks, such devices are typically used independently of one another. As a result, the data on one device is not synchronized with the data on any of the other devices unless the user purposely chooses to synchronize one device with another, typically by connecting the devices together and performing a specific synchronization routine. Because such synchronization routines require user action and are relatively time consuming, most users typically synchronize their devices relatively infrequently. Moreover, such synchronization routines only synchronize data between devices at the time the devices are connected, so any subsequent use of the devices is again performed independently in an unsynchronized manner.
The use of cloud computing services can facilitate the synchronization of data between a user's multiple devices. The term “cloud” is often used a generic reference to the Internet based upon cloud drawings that are used to represent the internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure that it represents. More recently, however, the term cloud has been used in conjunction with computing services that may be provided over the Internet at a cost to customers. For example, presently, at least Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox offer cloud computing services that host data over the Internet. Generally, users of these cloud computing services may store media and other data on the Internet so that they can access it from any of their multiple electronic devices, as opposed to storing such information onto the memory of any of their particular electronic devices. For example, a user may store music, photos, books, or videos on the cloud and access it from any of their multiple devices. Apple's iCloud®, for example, operates “invisibly” or automatically, so that when a user takes a photograph using their iPhone®, it is automatically sent to any other electronic devices linked to their iPhone through iCloud®, such as their iMac® or iPad®. Similarly, if a user edits a document in the Pages application on their iMac®, the same edit appears on the Pages application of their iPhone®.
However, despite the number of different cloud computing services available, none provide satisfactory synchronization of Internet browsing amongst multiple devices. Further, none provide any such synchronization techniques that may enhance a user's experience and facilitate more efficient use of the various devices.
SUMMARYA summary of certain embodiments disclosed herein is set forth below. It should be understood that these aspects are presented merely to provide the reader with a brief summary of these certain embodiments and that these aspects are not intended to limit the scope of this disclosure. Indeed, this disclosure may encompass a variety of aspects that may not be set forth below.
The present disclosure relates to various techniques that may be used to synchronize data among multiple electronic devices. For example, certain techniques facilitate the synchronization of data used during website browsing on multiple devices. These techniques may provide website information, such as URLs, between any linked devices, as well as identify which device is associated with such website information. This information may be provided to the user in the form of a screen or a drop-down tab that may be accessed on each of the user's devices. Furthermore, such information may include information relating to whether the item in the tab was in “reader” mode, information relating to magnification of the window that was opened in another device, backward and/or forward history, scroll position on the web page, and autocomplete information when entering an address into an address field on any of the linked devices.
Various refinements of the features noted above may be made in relation to various aspects of the present disclosure. Further features may also be incorporated in these various aspects as well. These refinements and additional features may exist individually or in any combination. For instance, various features discussed below in relation to one or more of the illustrated embodiments may be incorporated into any of the above-described aspects of the present disclosure alone or in any combination. The brief summary presented above is intended only to familiarize the reader with certain aspects and contexts of embodiments of the present disclosure without limitation to the claimed subject matter.
Various aspects of this disclosure may be better understood upon reading the following detailed description and upon reference to the drawings in which:
One or more specific embodiments of the present disclosure will be described below. These described embodiments are only examples of the presently disclosed techniques. Additionally, in an effort to provide a concise description of these embodiments, all features of an actual implementation may not be described in the specification. It should be appreciated that in the development of any such actual implementation, as in any engineering or design project, numerous implementation-specific decisions must be made to achieve the developers' specific goals, such as compliance with system-related and business-related constraints may vary from one implementation to another. Moreover, it should be appreciated that such a development effort might be complex and time consuming, but would nevertheless be a routine undertaking of design, fabrication, and manufacture for those of ordinary skill having the benefit of this disclosure.
When introducing elements of various embodiments of the present disclosure, the articles “a,” “an,” and “the” are intended to mean that there are one or more of the elements. The terms “comprising,” “including,” and “having” are intended to be inclusive and mean that there may be additional elements other than the listed elements. Additionally, it should be understood that references to “one embodiment” or “an embodiment” of the present disclosure are noted to be interpreted as excluding the existence of additional embodiments that also incorporate the recited features.
As will be discussed in detail below, the present disclosure relates to various techniques for transferring and synchronizing data amongst multiple different electronic devices. In particularly, the techniques relate to the sharing and synchronization of website information amongst the devices in a manner that is user friendly and convenient. The disclosure techniques allow a user to view and select websites that have been accessed by any of the devices. The techniques also allow a user to access a website in the same mode and/or same location as the website is currently being accessed or was previously being accessed by one of the other devices.
With the foregoing in mind, it is useful, to begin with a general description of suitable electronic devices that may employ the various data transferring and synchronizing techniques described below. In particular,
Turning first to
By way of example, the electronic device 10 may represent a block diagram of the notebook computer depicted in
In the electronic device 10 of
The display 12 may be a touch-screen liquid crystal display (LCD), for example, which may enable users to interact with a user interface of the electronic device 10. In some embodiments, the electronic display 12 may be a MultiTouch™ display that can detect multiple touches at once.
The input structures 16 of the electronic device 10 may enable a user to interact with the electronic device 10 (e.g., pressing a button to increase or decrease a volume level). The I/O ports 14 may enable electronic device 10 to interface with various other electronic devices, as may the expansion card 24 and/or the RF circuit 26. The expansion card 24 and/or the RF circuitry 26 may include, for example, interfaces for a personal area network (PAN), such as a Bluetooth network, for a local area network (LAN), such as an 802.11x Wi-Fi network, and/or for a wide area. network (WAN), such as a 3G or 4G cellular network. The power source 28 of the electronic device 10 may be any suitable source of power, such as a rechargeable lithium polymer (Li-poly) battery and/or an alternating current (AC) power converter.
As mentioned above, the electronic device 10 may take the form of a computer or other type of electronic device. Such computers may include computers that are generally portable (such as laptop, notebook, and tablet computers) as well as computers that are generally used in one place (such as conventional desktop computers, workstations and/or servers).
The handheld device 10A may include an enclosure 36 to protect interior components from physical damage and to shield them from electromagnetic interference. The enclosure 36 may surround the display 12, which may display indicator icons 38. The indicator icons 38 may indicate, among other things, a cellular signal strength, Bluetooth connection, and/or battery life. The I/O ports 14 may open through the enclosure 36 and may include, for example, a proprietary I/O port from Apple Inc. to connect to external devices.
User input structures 16, in combination with the display 12, may allow a user to control the handheld device 10A. For example, the input structures 16 may activate or deactivate the handheld device 10A, navigate a user interface to a home screen, navigate a user interface to a user-configurable application screen, activate a voice-recognition feature of the handheld device 10A, provide volume control, and toggle between vibrate and ring modes. The electronic device 10 may also be a tablet device 10B, as illustrated in
In certain embodiments, the electronic device 10 may take the form of a computer, such as a model of a MacBook®, MacBook® Pro, MacBook Air®, iMac®, Mac® mini, or Mac Pro® available from Apple Inc. By way of example, the electronic device 10, taking the form of a notebook computer 10C, is illustrated in
Various types of electronic devices 10, such as the handheld device 10A, the tablet device 10B, and the laptop computer 10C, may be linked together by a cloud computing service 40, as illustrated in
To link the devices 10A, 10B, and 10C together, the devices are typically registered under the same account for the cloud computing service 40. To begin this process, the handheld device 10A, for example, may be configured to display a screen 50 that includes an item 52 for selecting information relating to the cloud computing service 40. In this example, since the handheld device 10A is an iPhone® and since the cloud computing service is iCloud®, the item 52 is entitled “iCloud Tabs.” Prior to the devices 10A, 10B, and 10C being registered or logged onto a common account or the cloud computing service 40, the selection of a respective item 52A, 52B, or 52C for accessing information relating to the cloud computing service 40 may cause an initial screen or tab 54A, 54B, or 54C to be displayed on the respective device 10A, 10B, and 10C. In this example, the initial screen or tab 54A, 54B, and 54C displays a symbol of a cloud along with the statement “iCloud® auto deafly shows all the open tabs on your other devices” to explain what function the item 52A, 52B, and 52C is will perform once the devices are logged onto the user's iCloud® account.
Once a user has registered the devices 10A, 10B, and 10C with the user's iCloud® account, data may be transferred and synchronized between the devices 10A, 10B, and 10C. Although various specific types of data transfer and synchronization will be described below with respect to the various examples described with respect to the remaining figures, the data transfer and synchronization using iCloud® as the cloud computing service 40 may generally be accomplished using iCloud® document storage and/or iCloud® key value storage, as is understood by those of ordinary skill in the art. Furthermore, data synchronization may take place as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/349,519, filed on Jan. 12, 2012, and entitled “Data Synchronization,” which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety for all purposes.
As discussed above, a person may use several different types of electronic devices 10 during the course of a given day to “stay connected” depending largely upon where the person is and what the person is doing. In other words, if a person is at home or at the office, they may likely employ a less mobile electronic device, such as a desktop computer or laptop computer 10C, whereas if a person is lounging in their backyard or waiting at a gate in an airport, they may utilize a more portable device such as the tablet device 10B. Similarly, if someone is sitting in a meeting or running errands, they may likely choose to stay connected using a more mobile device, such as the handheld device 10A. Since users of any of these devices 10A, 10B, and 10C often stay connected by doing various types of web browsing, it would be useful and convenient if information relating to the web browsing performed on one device would be available on the user's other devices Should the user switch between devices during the course of their various activities.
One technique for providing a user with website information accessed on the various devices 10A, 10B, and 10C is illustrated in
For the websites accessed on the laptop computer 10C, the data stored on e server might take the following form:
The first entry (the long string of digits, characters, and dashes) is an identifier that uniquely identifies the device. The data also includes the URLs of the accessed websites. In other words, when the data relating to the websites accessed on the laptop computer 10C is uploaded to the cloud computing service 40, the data may take the above form. Similar data may be uploaded to reflect the websites accessed on the handheld device 10A and the tablet device 10B. Once the website data from the various devices 10A, 10B, and 10C has been uploaded to the cloud computing service 40, the data may be downloaded to the other devices so that all the devices 10A, 10B, and 10C are synchronized.
Of course, there may be circumstances where a user may desire not to upload certain data to the cloud computing service 40 and/or not to share or synchronize such data amongst the various data devices 10A, 10B, and 10C. One example of such s circumstance is illustrated in
During a website browsing session, a user may prefer to view information on the website in a “reader” mode. In the reader mode, the web browser typically strips a webpage down to a newspaper-style text on a blank white page and retains only simple text formatting and inline images. In the reader mode, the web browser may also automatically append pages together so that a user may read the whole article without making any navigational inputs. In the example illustrated in
As can be appreciated, this data identifies the device 10B (e.g., John Doe's iPad®, along with the URL website being visited, as well as an indication that the tablet 10B is in reader mode and located at page indicator 2. It should also be appreciated that the data may include current scroll position, magnification, form field contents, current video or audio playback position, as well as forward and/or backward history.
The data that is transferred to the cloud computing service 40 that may be used to synchronize the devices 10A, 10B, and 10C may also include information relating to the autocompletion of information that is entered into the address field of a web browser on the devices 10A, 10B, or 10C. As discussed with regard to the previous devices, the handheld 10A had accessed the CNN website. Hence, as illustrated in
In a typical cloud computing system, the cloud computing system “pushes” data to the various devices with which it is linked. However, depending upon the frequency of this type of data transmission, the amount of power consumption may become problematic, especially for battery powered devices. Hence, in the embodiments discussed herein, if the electronic device 10 is strictly an AC powered device, such as a desktop computer, it may operate in a manner in which is receives data periodically transmitted from the cloud computing service 40 and in which is periodically transmits data to the cloud computing service 40. Furthermore, data may be transmitted to and/or from the cloud computing service 40 when a new tab screen is opened, when an existing tab screen is closed, when a window containing multiple tab screens is closed, or when the user: navigates to a new website in an existing tab screen, selects a different tab screen in a window, enters or exits reader mode, scrolls through a webpage or pages through an article, makes an existing window active that was behind another window, reorders a tab within a window, enters information into a form field, and/or pauses playback of a video or audio track. Indeed, even battery-powered electronic devices 10 may operate in this manner during periods in which they are AC-powered.
However, when battery-powered electronic devices 10, such as the handheld device 10A, the tablet device 10B, and the laptop computer 10C, are operating in a battery-powered mode, they may selectively “pull” data from the cloud computing service 40 in order to save power. For example, such devices may pull data from the cloud computing service 40 in response to a web browser on the device being opened and/or in response to the user opening a tab screen. Depending upon the power saving requirements of the battery-powered electronic device, they may not pull any further data from the cloud computing service 40 until another web browsing session has begun or until another tab screen is opened. Alternatively, once the initial data pull has occurred, the device may periodically pull data from the cloud computing service 40 thereafter until the web browser is closed and/or until the tab screen is closed. Similarly, a battery-powered electronic device 10 may only push its data to the cloud computing service 40 upon the selection of a new website or when its web browser is closed.
The specific embodiments described above have been shown by way of example, and it should be understood that these embodiments may be susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms. It should be further understood that the claims are not intended to be limited to the particular forms disclosed, but rather to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of this disclosure.
Claims
1. A method of synchronizing data on a plurality of electronic devices, the method comprising:
- using a cloud computing service to:
- receive data relating to websites accessed by each of the plurality of electronic devices; and
- transmit the data to each respective electronic device from the other of the plurality of electronic devices so that each respective electronic device obtains data relating to the websites accessed by the other of the plurality of electronic devices.
Type: Application
Filed: Jun 12, 2017
Publication Date: Oct 5, 2017
Inventors: Paul R. KNIGHT (San Francisco, CA), Jeffrey S. MILLER (Mountain View, CA)
Application Number: 15/620,666