Re: [ga] Some Wild-Card Questions

["John Berryhill Ph.D. J.D." <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Drip... drip.... drip.....

Didn't like the last one?

That's okay.

There's more.

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United States Patent  6,009,459
Belfiore ,   et al.  December 28, 1999

Intelligent automatic searching for resources in a distributed environment


Inventors:  Belfiore; Joseph D. (Redmond, WA); Nakajima; Satoshi (Bellevue,
WA); Chew; Chee H. (Redmond, WA)

We claim:

1. In a computer system having an output device, an input device and a
connection to enable communication with a plurality of web sites, a method
comprising:

(a) providing a user interface element on the output device adapted for a
user to specify text that identifies a uniform resource locator (URL) of a
given web site holding media to gain access to the given web site;

(b) in response to text that is specified via the user interface element,
determining that the text is not a URL;

(c) in response to determining that the text is not a URL, examining the text
and based on a determined meaning of the content of the text determining at
least one of a plurality of search engines to search for a web site related
to the text, passing at least a portion of the text to a determined search
engine; and

(d) in response to passing at least a portion of the text to the determined
search engine, receiving media back from a web site that the determined
search engine located using the text passed to the determined search engine.