The Escher Group, Ltd.

Sandor Ludmann

Andrew V Sutherland

Michael Richard Klugerman

Donal O'Neill

Eli Zukovsky

A technique dynamically places resources within a graphical user interface (GUI). According to the novel technique, a resource (e.g., an image of the resource) of the GUI is assigned a filename (e.g., by a graphic designer) having position information encoded therein. For example, a resource with coordinates of 50 pixels in the 'X' direction ('50X') and 50 pixels in the &#x201c;Y&#x201d; direction (&#x201c;50Y&#x201d;) may be represented with a corresponding filename: &#x201c;resourcename_50&#xd7;50.jpg.&#x201d; Software code that displays the GUI (e.g., maintained by a software developer) may then dynamically interpret the filename to parse out the position information (e.g., 50X and 50Y). The software code then places the resource in a position within the GUI according to the position information. Subsequently, changing the position information encoded within the filename (e.g., by the graphic designer) changes the position of the resource in the GUI (e.g., renaming the resource to &#x201c;resourcename_100&#xd7;50.jpg&#x201d; replaces the resource at 100X and 50Y).

Dynamically placing resources within a graphical user interface

A peer-to-peer storage system includes a storage coordinator that centrally manages distributed storage resources in accordance with system policies administered through a central administrative console. The storage resources, or 'nodes,' are otherwise unused portions of storage media, e.g., hard disks, that are included in the devices such as personal computers, workstations, laptops, file servers, and so forth, that are connected to a corporate computer network, and are thus otherwise available only individually to the respective devices. The storage coordinator assigns the nodes to various 'replication groups' and allocates the storage resources on each of the nodes in a given group to maintaining dynamically replicated versions of the group files. The storage nodes in a given group perform dynamic file replication and synchronization operations by communicating directly, that is, peer-to-peer, using a message-based protocol. The storage coordinator also manages distributed searches of file content on the network by selecting one node from each group to search through the associated group files. The selected nodes report the search results back to the storage coordinator, which organizes the results and provides them to the user. Thereafter, in response to a request for various files by the user, the storage coordinator instructs the nodes that are near neighbors of the user to provide the requested files. The storage coordinator thus ensures that the amount of the network bandwidth consumed by the search operation is minimized.

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Winchester, MA, United States of America

Sandor Ludmann