British Telecommunications Public Limited Company

Jeremy M Bowskill

Ian Barry Crabtree

Richard John Titmuss

Matthew J Polaine

John J O'Donoghue

Alexander Loffler

Jason Morphett

Alison J Willard

Andrew McGrath

Peter M Platt

Information sources are selected in accordance with a subject matter of interest to a user, where the subject matter of interest is identifiable by a plurality of sets of subject-related data, and each set has an indication of at least one context in which the set is of interest to the user. The state of the user is tracked, one or more contexts are identified from the tracked state, at least some sets of subject-related data are selected in accordance with a predetermined relationship between at least some of the identified contexts and said indication of context, a list of information sources is generated based on the selected sets of subject-related data, and the list is transmitted to a terminal associated with the user so as to allow the user to select an information source of interest and thereby to access information from the source.

Information provider

A method of changing a user profile involves the system suggesting a change which includes one or more selection choices representative of the suggested change. The user makes one or more selections which results in temporal modification of the user profile. The method further involves monitoring user action in respect of the temporal modification, and, in accordance with the user action satisfying predetermined criteria, permanently changing the user profile based on the user selections.

Method of updating interests

Each terminal of a computer network can monitor the activities of the other terminals or associated equipment such as a telephone and display these activities in visual and/or audible form. The display may be represented as a 'virtual world', and/or a generative music system such as 'Koan'. The nature of the activities performed by the terminal itself also control the display, for example giving greatest prominence to those terminals engaged in similar or related activities. A terminal may be configured to act as a specified user's &#x201c;base&#x201d; terminal, to display the activity of the specified user, by identifying whether the specified user's identity is being used on another terminal. The activity of this terminal can then be displayed on the &#x201c;base&#x201d; terminal. The base terminal can therefore indicate the absent user's availability, level of activity, etc. to colleagues working nearby.

Computer network indicating relatedness of attributes of monitored terminals

Growing community of inventors

Ipswich, United Kingdom

Jeremy M Bowskill