Sony Corporation

Hitachi, Ltd.

Computer Applications Co., Ltd.

Masaharu Murakami

Haruo Yoshida

Hiroshi Jinno

Shigeru Kashiwagi

Hidefumi Masuzaki

Mitsuhiro Hirabayashi

Atsushi Hatakeyama

Hiromichi Fujisawa

Masaaki Fujinawa

Kanji Kato

Hisamitsu Kawaguchi

Naoki Morimoto

Noriyuki Kaneoka

Mitsuo Ooyama

Mitsuru Akizawa

Masayoshi Ohno

Makoto Yamada

Kenichiro Aridome

Tsuyoshi Watanabe

Tsuyoshi Uehara

Yoshihiko Miyazawa

Tatsuya Murakami

Takashi Watanabe

Toshimichi Kishimoto

Kenichi Miki

Yoshio Mitsuoka

Tamon Masimo

Takeshi Horiuchi

Shiori Inoue

It is an object of the present invention to enable a buyer to collectively manage information related to a variety of commercial transactions performed by the buyer as well as to the settlements for these transactions. The calendar serversupplies a calendar screen to a buyer systemthat is used by the buyer. This calendar screen has electronic invoices addressed to the buyer, which are issued by the supplier system, and electronic deposit/withdrawal detailed statement of the buyer's deposit account, which are issued by a banking system, pasted in the spaces for the relevant dates. When the buyerselects an arbitrary invoice on this calendar screen and inputs his or her approval of this invoice, an account transfer telegraphic message for payment of this invoice is automatically sent to the banking system. The calendar servermanages the status of each invoice ('opened', 'payment request in progress', &#x201c;paid&#x201d;), and notifies the supplier systemand banking systemof this invoice status. The calendar serveralso supplements news such as advertisements which are sent by the supplier systemand banking system, and so forth, selects news following the buyer's consumption trends, and pastes this news in the spaces on the calendar screen which pertain to dates that slightly precede dates on which buyer consumption other forms without departing from the spirit of the present invention.

Method for managing buyer transactions and settlements using communication network between computers, and method for relaying information following buyer consumption trends to the buyer

A storage control apparatus includes a first logical volume in which data has been stored in a pool that includes at least one of one or a plurality of logical volumes based on a plurality of physical storage devices as a pool volume, and divides the first logical volume into at least two real areas. The storage control apparatus allocates the first logical volume to a second logical volume that is a virtual logical volume that has been divided into at least two virtual areas. The storage control apparatus executes a first data movement processing for moving all data of the first logical volume to at least one pool volume other than the first logical volume, and allocates a real area of a movement destination of the data to a virtual area of an allocated destination of a real area of a movement source of the data as substitute for the real area in the first data movement processing.

Storage apparatus to which thin provisioning is applied and including logical volumes divided into real or virtual areas

A playback apparatus which plays back video or music contents, includes: a playback unit playing back the video or music contents recorded on a recording medium; an output unit outputting the video or music contents played back in the playback unit; and a control unit controlling at least an operation of the playback unit, wherein in the video or music contents, a quick reference mark is set at multiple places, in response to user manipulation, the control unit finds a start of a sequence in accordance with the quick reference mark to control the operation of the playback unit to play back the video or music contents, in response to user manipulation for the quick reference, the control unit varies a priority that expresses a degree served for the quick reference, and for the mark having a low priority, the control unit accepts no user manipulation for quick reference.

Playback apparatus, playback method, program for playback method, and recording medium recorded with program for playback method thereon

A recording apparatus such as an optical disk and a file management method are disclosed by which wastefulness caused by free slots in an index file can be reduced. To each slot of a property entry of the index file, valid/invalid information representative of whether the slot is valid or invalid is set. Further, to the header of the property entry, a last valid slot number indicative of a last one of those slots which are set to valid with the valid/invalid information is set.

Recording apparatus, file management method, program for file management method, and recording medium having program for file management method recorded thereon

A recording apparatus includes a first recording control unit configured to control recording of first management information so that fragments of the first management information and fragments of data are alternately placed, each fragment of the first management information being used to read the corresponding data fragment; a second recording control unit configured to control recording of second management information after all of the data has been recorded, the second management information being used to read all of the data; and a rewrite control unit configured to control rewrite of the first management information or the data after all of the data has been recorded so that any fragment of the first management information is not used to read the corresponding data fragment.

Recording apparatus, recording method, program, recording medium, and data recording medium

The present invention relates to a recording apparatus, a recording method, a program of the recording method, and a recording medium having the program of the recording method recorded thereon. The invention can be applied to a portable record/playback apparatus for recording video and audio data on a random access recording medium or the like in order to record a multiplexed stream in such a manner that the position of an editable boundary can be detected more quickly than previously possible. According to the invention, positional information on the editable point is recorded on the recording medium

Recording apparatus, recording method, program of recording method, and recording medium having program of recording method recorded thereon

The present invention is applied to reproduction of typically a fragment movie file having a QT format. In accordance with the present invention, management information associated with each block following a first block of the fragment movie file is modified to information compatible with management information associated with the first block and real data of the file is reproduced on the basis of the modified management information.

File reproduction apparatus, file reproduction method, file reproduction method program and recording medium for recording file reproduction method program

The present invention relates to a file management technique using indexes, wherein retrieval results and conditions for retrieval are recorded and stored on an entry for a virtual folder on the index for efficient later use. By this feature, objects for retrieval can be refined by using the recorded retrieval results, so that the processing for retrieval can substantially be simplified.

File management device

A file managing apparatus is disclosed which is capable of restoring deleted files with ease. When a user gives an instruction to delete a file, a parent entry number for the fileis changed from '1' to '2' in a property list having the entry numberassociated with the file. Because the parent entry number that is set for the value &#x201c;2&#x201d; points to the entry of a recycle bin, the fileis placed in a virtually deleted state. Any virtually deleted file is later restored easily through simple processing.

File management device, file management method, file management method program, and recording medium the file management method program

A recording apparatus such as an optical disk and a file management method are disclosed by which, where an index file is formed from groups of data wherein extract information is collected for different types and one of the groups of data is used to collectively manage the other groups of data, a process relating to deletion or addition of extract information can be executed simply, easily, and with certainty. In each of slots of a property entry, information representing whether the slot is valid or invalid and information representative of a relationship to different slots to which extract information relating to the same file is allocated are recorded, and a combination of the slots in which the extract information of the one file is allocated is managed with the property entry.

Before each content file is recorded first to a recording medium, a flag indicating a recording state of a content file is generated corresponding to a physical area where an index file can be continuously recorded. An index file is generated which associates attribute information with the generated flag added thereto with real data of each content file, and the generated index file is recorded to the recording medium. Since fragmentation of the physical area where the index file is recorded is restrained to a minimum level, a high-speed reading operation is realized.

Recording apparatus and method for generating an index file for a content file

A recording apparatus according to the present invention, comprising a creating means for excerpting excerpt information from each of a plurality of files recorded on a record medium, correlating the plurality of excerpt information with entity data of the plurality of files, and creating an index file that stores the correlated data in a predetermined format, a record medium identification information storing means for storing identification information that identifies the record medium in the predetermined format to the index file, and a recording means for recording the index file to the record medium.

Recording apparatus, recording method, and program, and recording medium

A recording apparatus and a file management method are disclosed which can be applied typically to an optical disk apparatus and make it possible to grasp a hierarchical structure readily and register or delete extract information simply and easily. Reference information pointing to slots of a higher hierarchy, a lower hierarchy and the same hierarchy is set, and a flag is set to delete or register extract information without varying the reference information.

Recording apparatus, file management method, program for file management method, recording medium having program for file management method recorded thereon

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Masaharu Murakami