Information is available online from a huge variety of public sources, such as really simple syndication (RSS) feeds, social network (e.g. Facebook®, Myspace®) feeds, microblog (e.g., Twitter®) feeds, news websites, blog websites, podcasts and many other types of websites and online sources. For example, RSS is used to publish frequently updated information, such as news, blogs, and the like. Users may subscribe to one or more RSS feeds related to one or more subjects, and may use an RSS reader to continually receive the latest information on the subject collected from one or more online sources, such as news sites, blogs, microblogs and social networks. Additionally, social networks and microblog services may have their own feeds of information posted by users. Further, search engine websites and other websites that are publicly available provide access to recent news, blog entries, videos, images, discussions, real-time updates to social network pages, microblogs, and the like. Finally, there are “expert” or content directories available which list sources and pointers to topic-oriented information, which have been authored by humans and/or machine generated.
On the other hand, companies and other enterprises often have their own private intranets, internal libraries, internal databases, and the like. For example, an enterprise may provide a portal used by employees for accessing the enterprise's intranet to stay informed of news and developments within the company, and otherwise make productive use of the enterprise's intranet. Further many enterprises have network-accessible libraries that can enable employees (and sometimes members of the public) to access business and technical research resources, white papers, eBooks, print books, industry reports, company information, conference proceedings, journals and the like. Additionally, many enterprises have internal databases that contain a wealth of information that can be of use to company employees for various different purposes. However, because access to a large portion of enterprise information is typically private or otherwise limited to preserve security and confidentiality, a user generally has to conduct separate searches of public sources and enterprise sources when researching a subject.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds