Some internet walkabouts brought me to Google Patents and in particularly to this EBay Patent. Looks like EBay patented DOM manipulation with JavaScript back in 2005.
Does it mean that we all can be sued by EBay for dynamic web page changes on our sites?
By the way - thumbnail display next to item description was also patented by EBay (Patent number: 6058417 in 1998).
Now I am wondering what’s not yet been patented 
?
Could it be that after this EBay Patent and paying 29.5mln they are afraid and patent absolutely everything just to defend themselves against claims?
If anybody who dealt with such matters can elaborate here please.
Imagine that EBay does not exist. Phuh …
Imagine you have an idea of EBay in your head.
Imagine you are web developer in XYZ country (XYZ != USA).
What will you do to see your imagination working?
Recently I have been sitting in front of the computer chatting to family about movie session times and ordering tickets.
Finally we decided not to go. I closed browser after I selected our favorite seats. In a few minutes family finally decided to go.
After I reopened browser I found that seats are not available any more.
I do not trust in such coincidences - so I returned back selected 10 tickets and marked first row.
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In 5 minutes I marked all session seats as taken.
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I could not beleive my eyes.
Anybody can put a big online business on its knees and I will not even bother to tell you how.
If you started thinking on your own online booking system - you are clearly on inventor's way.
Be aware that your solution will tell us if you are 'optimist' or 'pessimist' too 
That's a hard one to solve. You're basically just locking the seat, like you would lock a piece of content you are editing, so you can't get to the end and get a conflict.
The only way I can think of solving a problem like this is to set a maximum number of seats someone can reserve. But even then, you need to be sure that you know who you are dealing with, so you need authentication.
If you had been made to login to this site, it would have known about the 10 seats you had previously reserved and allowed you to re-take them.
But if you want an anonymous ordering system for something like seats at a cinema, concert or on a plane, you are going to have problems. I believe the same thing happens when you book over the phone; your seats are reserved until you either book them or cancel the order.
With the live ticketing systems (Ticketek/Ticketmaster), they only hold your seats for 8 minutes and then if the transaction isn't completed they release them. This is also used to deal with multiple "views" to the ticketing system, via the web, phone and counter/kiosk.
You could also mark the seats as empty, reserved or confirmed. When someone is in the process of ordering tickets then the seats are marked as reserved. When the user completes the transaction seats are marked as confirmed. So, if another visitor is selecting seats at the same time then they will be able to see that the seats are reserver but not confirmed. So, they can wait for a few minutes to see if they were confirmed or not.
It is a typical concurrency control task.
Optimistic way
Option 1
- do not show reserved seats which were not payed yet at all. Yes, there is a risk of saying to your customer – ‘Sorry, these seats were sold.’ And show cinema plan again to select other seats.
Option 2
- as Sertan said, mark reserved seats with different colour from sold ones. If you are not lazy developer you can load times left before lock release for each seat. Use JS and dynamically change and display it on cursor over seat event. If you are not only not lazy but cool - use technique pioneered by 37Signals and called Yellow Fade Technique (YFT) – slowly change colours from ‘reserved colour’ to ‘available colour’ as lock time goes by and display exact time left on mouse over seat event. Customer can buy seats even if they are shown as reserved (we are optimistic here - all available until it has been sold)
Pessimistic way
Mark reserved seats with different colour but this time does not allow buying them until released. All applicable as above – time to release can be shown, fading for simplicity. This approach makes system vulnerable to dummies who may keep all seats in a constant lock. Greg’s idea of login not before payment but before seats selection can eliminate this problem partially. You are right if you need to login anyway why not to do it before - gives a lot more space for developers to customise process to suit particular customer needs.
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In overall I, as a customer, also would like:
- to see when seats I marked reserved will be released – big count down timer.
- to have an ability to have favourite seats setting associated with my account to be able to select cinema/movie/day/session BUT where my favourite seats are available.
In current version I have to go forward and backward many times to find them. This is mostly for families with kids or picky adults.
Obviously this second requirement could be specific to me but I consider myself as a guy with reasonable and weighted demands
May be their marketing research did not consider it as a ‘must have’ feature.
On Yellow Fade Technique (YFT)
You can look at it by free registering for Yellow Fade Technique (YFT) list. It works when you add items to your list.
It is interesting that they use it to highlight appearance and do not use it to highlight disappearance of elements.
To remove a list entry you use completely different interface with ‘x’ icons next to records.
Another observation is fading on appearance is a bit too quick for my eye.
Logical extension of this technique for disappearance, from my point of view. will be:[list=1]
[*]Remove content
[*]Fade gradually from yellow to white
[*]Remove space allocated for that element.
To get back to the original topic?
[quote]Does it mean that we all can be sued by EBay for dynamic web page changes on our sites?[/quote]
I think you'll find the eBay patent is for a very specific manner of doing this. As for whether they sue, they don't really have a history of suing everyone who does something similar to what they are doing. Court is expensive.
[quote]By the way - thumbnail display next to item description was also patented by EBay (Patent number: 6058417 in 1998).
Now I am wondering what's not yet been patented ?
Could it be that after losing patent war in 2003 to MercExchange and paying 29.5mln they are afraid and patent absolutely everything just to defend themselves against claims?[/quote]
Probably not. eBay, like a lot of companies, patent a lot of things as a matter of course. Also, the MercExchange thing STILL isn't finished.
Two major reasons for patenting something are as follows:
- it is something you can license or sell to someone (read: $$$)
- if you do it before some other person does then you don't have little two-bit companies that don't even innovate getting a patent and then hitting you up in court.
I think there are two different motivations:
- big companies driving factors are to defend themselves from claims. Defending from competitors is also a reason but I think if a 'mammoth' will launch a new service it will be hard to compete as they already implemented it. It takes time and competitors already behind. If you are small and will improve some things in your own similar product they will just use what you invented (minor things). If they will see some more - they will just buy you. You are right - they will not go to court as there is no danger.
- small companies as they can not launch product on a big scale defend themselves from mammoths forcing them to buy business/license or walk away.
As for Patent number: 7233973
I read it in fact before posting. One interactive box appears on a page and replaced by another box as user submits first one. All happens without page reload.
There are samples but no specifics. I agree they will not prosecute others until there is a business impact (but formally they can do it). Agree this has defensive motive.
Invention #1
Code Name - Credentialator ®
Problem - many sites require registration and all have different criteria’s, some have your preferred user name taken forcing you to use something else (less memorable for you)
Current solution:
- have a file available online (YahooMail notepad note) containing all your credentials - URL-username-password
- every time you forget credentials you use recovery option (assuming your remember secret answer) and pray that email will arrive within 24 hours
Proposed solution - browser plugin with ability right click on a page and retrieve username/password for site automatically.
Web API to allow sites caring about user’s convenience automatically add your credentials to your Credentialator profile automatically on registration. It could be 2 buttons - 'Register' for everyone and 'Register & Credentialate me' for this system users. Same can be done by participating web sites to retrieve credentials - small button 'Use Credentialator' near username/password controls in this case you can use it to get data for login avoiding right click. It means that participating sites will not force users to install plugin to add/retrieve credentials. Same was done by Delicious ® - we can see many pages now with link/button - 'Add to del.icio.us' (very smart indeed)
COMMENT: I do not like plug-ins. My experience with del.icio.us plug-in - I did not have anything on right click after plug-in install but I did have additional toolbar.
I was installing it for right click ability to bookmark and I do like main screen in a browser to be as big as possible (read no toolbars). So I uninstalled it.
That's interesting, but why not use a centralised service like OpenID or Six Apart's TypeKey?
Thank you for pointing - I did not see it before.
I guess the only difference is that they expect web sites to support OpenID. I did not find Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail in a list of accepted this interface sites. Otherwise I would have heard about OpenID before.
I was talking about having such ability for ANY site straight from the beginning. Yes, it requires your registration first on that site. Yes, it requires you to tell system which username/password to use on THIS site. But afterwards system will if not auto fill but popup with credentials as soon as you visited site to tell you login details. OpenID web site have a template of letter instead you as a consumer should send to web site you use with offer to implement OpenID. They are optimists.
Once I wrote to YahooMail asking to add simple tool similar to RuleWizard in Outlook with the only function to put email from certain recipients to certain folders on arrival. I was sick of doing it manually. Sort of John to Work, Sally to Leisure type of thing. That message was passed to appropriate department and I have never heard even 'No thank you' message back.
Del.icio.us is a great service but I do not use it. In my IE7 plug-in install did not work with right click and I did not want to have additional toolbar with single button 'Tag It' because it eats screen space. I am a normal consumer and this is my reason. Same will be with OpenID - great idea but because I can not use it everywhere I will not use it too.
Yep, that makes sense.
In that case, why not use an application? I can’t think of one offhand for Windows but a popular one for the Mac is 1Password. http://1passwd.com/
Of course, it means that your credentials are not being stored someplace central, but then that also means your credentials are not being stored someplace central I am a little concerned by the idea of all my form stuff being sent out from one place. What if the system is compromised or goes down?
(I’m just devil’s advocating here)
Your arguments are perfectly fine with me.
On system going down - I am not expecting this system to completely turn off my brains remembering usernames/passwords but as a helper.
On system security - this is where knowledge will have to be applied and there are many aspects from storing encrypted data in database rather than plain text to making unbreakable site.
For example, you can have 5 different passwords on 50 different sites.
You will associate a word with each password. For example password '24x7_bEEr_Df' will be associated with word 'Duff'.
As soon as you visited site system (plug-in) will show you your username - 'ivk' and password 'Duff' so you know that you will need to type '24x7_bEEr_Df' instead.
Our brain remembers some things much better than others and this can be used even if its application here is relatively unobvious.
If I would be a science fictionist, I will see it as an application running on USB flash with fingerprint scan integrated into flash.
In this case it will be as mobile as secure but lots of other implementation questions will arise. Example - how to link application and browser?
Looks like you will have to open application from flash, search site to find credentials.
I am sure somebody will think - what if I woke up in a coffin in a Sahara desert without flash ?
If you woke up in a coffin in the desert without your flash drive, I'm sure that your Web passwords would be lower in your list of worries.
Applying web experience to things
I like hot tea and quite often I have to use microwave oven to reheat it.
I found a new Murphy Law:
“Microwave oven always stops with cup handle facing back of it”
It led me to an idea …
Let’s say you put something into oven and pressed 40 sec. Object may will not fully rotate to original position but oven processor will just make that work for you at a fraction of 1-2 sec, microprocessor will stop heating in 40 sec and just rotate object to original position it was put in.
If you press stop manually - fair enough - we assume you know what you do and stop rotating and heating straight away.
For me it is the same as saying ‘Your input was incorrect’ while validating users input when it was not entered at all instead of ‘Please enter …’.
Being human with humans - at least when it does not require anything except smart code inside (which is also the case with microwave ovens BTW)
How nice it would be … or post without pictures
How nice it would be to have a functionality in BLOG's software I will call 'Booksify' - tiny button which will make a printable BLOG version with table of contents, index, chapters - simply a book with cover and everything.
If to develop this idea further this 'booksify' thing may give you an option to include only certain categories (as some BLOGs fortunately categorised) or will simply walk you through and allow to add remove posts. It may also be smart enough to leave only meaningfull images (many authors 'greenspunning'(*)) or at least give you a choice what to keep.
I know what you will say - BLOG is constantly updated by author and new comments are published all the time.
I will answer you:
- I will subscribe and follow
- Most of the time I am at certain blog not to read comments but author (I simply have no time to read comments because I write them )
I do not like to read from screen and assume many more people are like me.
How many times I discovered a treasure (very interesting BLOG) and have to copy/paste to Word, insert page numbers, remove tables to expand margins (to save rain forests by saving paper my customer is paying for - joking) to be able to read it later.
I know how to do it all with one button click but …
- it has to be set of standards open for companies or individuals who want their blogs to have such functionality
OR
- included by BLOG vendor as a part of their product (guys like SixApart)
[color="#8B0000"]* ‘greenspunning’ - original approach used by ‘greenspunning’ to decorate text with meaningless photographs. BTW I like it but think stupid to waste time to print them.
There are actually a couple of tools that can do this already, although some of them are geared more towards an application used to also print-on-demand a book for pay. Here are two I found:
http://www.blurb.com/ - BookSmart apparently has a function that will suck in a blog’s content.
http://www.blurb.com/ - This is geared specifically to LiveJournals.
Even though I came to conclusion that everything you think you invented either already exists or has just been invented by somebody else …
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Other conclusions I made:
- competition always exists in explicit or implicit form
[*]market size valuation is important (it also means that you do something people really need)
[*]execution matters more than idea (execution - team, design, marketing, pricing, support)