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1 System and Methods for Online Generation of a Personal Legacy

2 Inventors:
3 Samuel W. Beal
4
5FIELD OF THE INVENTION
6This invention relates to online generation of personal legacy histories or stories through
7the use of computer-generated formats, interactive computer programs, interactive voice-
8activated systems, and human-assisted embedding of various user input formats.
9BACKGROUND
10 Currently, personal legacy histories or stories are created by written techniques or
11 by voice recording or multimedia recording. In the case of recording techniques,
12 a human “expert” must transcribe the recording into a written or text format in
13 order to preserve the legacy in a digital format, in a DVD or online. These
14 approaches take a large amount of time and expertise, and as such are infrequently
15 used by most people. Online direct-entry approaches typically take the form of
16 weblogs “i.e. blogs” which provide an online equivalent to a word processing
17 application. The user is still responsible for all of the content creation and
18 organization of his personal legacy story.
19SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
20The invention is a system for facilitating the creation of a personal legacy story or set of
21stories in a format suitable for Internet access. The methods use databases that contain
22user-specific information, databases that contain content-specific guidelines and an
23application that creates an interactive interview with the user. The application includes
24rule-based intelligence to select methodologies from the content database based on user
25input. The application includes options for human intervention (either the user or a 3rd
26party) to embed alternative content, such as voice, image or multi-media data.

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1User Database
2When a user registers at the login website for the system, a relational database is created
3and populated with user-specific information including contact information, site-id-name,
4password, beneficiaries and their contact information, inheritance options, etc. As the
5user creates stories and “tags”, additional story-specific entries are populated. User web
6pages are stored on a web host sub-directory, a scheme commonly available.
7Content Database
8A database of legacy topics and topic-specific questions is used to create an online
9“interview” with the user. This database will evolve over time as new content is added.
10The database is heavily tagged to permit automatic selection of new questions based on
11user responses during the interview. Many relational database technologies may be used
12such as MySQL or XML.
13Customer Interaction and First Output of the Application
14When a user starts the application, a form suggesting a range of top-level question topics
15is presented. These categories include by are not restricted to:
16 Early Childhood: place of birth,
17 Growing up, home-life, siblings, grandparents
18 School from kindergarten to college
19 Early adulthood: first job, marriage, and children
20 Mature adult, career accomplishments, grandchildren, and retirement
21After the user selects a subsequent set of questions related to that topic is presented. For
22example when the topic Early Adulthood is selected questions like the following may be
23presented to the user:
24 How did you get your first job – who helped you and how?
25 Did you have a mentor – how did he(she) influence your career
26 Describe your first house, first wife, first child, first arrest
27The responds to each question with IGNORE, RESPOND | with a set of allowed entries,
28or TAG (with a set of allowed values).
29RESPOND Entry Methods. The user can enter his response though a keyboard. This is
30the typical entry method. The user may also respond with a voice recording using the
31microphone attached to the PC/Internet access device. The user may respond by calling a

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1supplied phone number and having his voice recorded. Voice inputs are associated with a
2“tag” that is placed in the text when the user selects his RESPOND method. The tag
3contains ID information that is stored in the User Database and used to associate recorded
4voice or voice-to-text data.
5Tags may be inserted by the users (from a collection supplied by the application) or by a
63rd party reviewer or by automatic insertion by the application.
7The collection includes but is not limited to:
8 Edit-tag
9 Voice-tag
10 Photo-tag
11 Web-tag
12Edit-tag. A dialog-box icon provides a text entry “pop-up window” or “form” that can
13contain requests for elaboration or clarification or simplification of a section of the First
14Output draft. Separate icons may exist for the different types of Dialog-Box.
15Voice-tag. A voice-tag allows a voice recording from a microphone attached to the
16computer. A unique ID is automatically associated to a timed recording of the user’s
17voice. Audio content will be inserted at the tag location, either in digital audio format
18(.mp3) or as auto-generated text following a voice-to-text conversion process.
19Phone-tag. A phone-tag allows a voice recording from a standard telephone. Initiating the
20call can be a manual or automatic process. A unique ID is automatically associated with a
21timed recording of the user’s voice. Audio content will be inserted at the tag location,
22either in digital audio format (.mp3) or as auto-generated text following a voice-to-text
23conversion process.
24Photo-tag . A photo-tag is a link to a digital image. The link can be a fully qualified file
25name referencing an image available on an accessible server, or a unique reference ID
26stored in a user database that can be assigned to an image file at a future point in time.
27Web-tag. A web-app tag is a link to an external web application or webpage that adds
28relevant information to the story. For example a Google Map of a specific geographical
29location, the homepage of the user’s university, hometown, etc.
30Scan-tag. A scan-tag is a link to an image web-app.

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1Output of the Publish Application

2At the user’s digression, the results of the interview process can be “published” to create
3an html webpage. Unresolved TAGs requiring further user action will be highlighted. The
4user can browse the document, respond to TAGS, cancel TAGs or instantiate new TAGs
5as he sees fit. The “publish” function can be repeated as often as necessary. Tag
6responses are “instantiated” by the Applicaton during the “publish” process.
7The user responses to the First Inputs to the Application are compiled into formatted
8paragraphs with headings either supplied by the user, or automatically generated from
9defaults (based on the topic) and links.

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1DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION (Drawings)

2Figure 1. Web Application with computer interface
3The user interacts with the application server using an Internet connected terminal such
4as a PC (100) or laptop (101). User specific databases and Application specific (content)
5databases reside on the web server (102) along with generated user-specific web pages.
6

100 101

102

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1Figure 2. Online Interview Initiation

2The user interacts with the system using a client application (200) running in a standard
3browser, such Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc. The client application could be
4implemented with Javascript or an XML application that communicates with a server-
5side application (202). The Content database (203) supplies Topics and Questions, which
6are displayed to the user (201) and updated as the user responds. User responses are
7stored as database object in the User Database (204) and as HTML WebPages in the
8user’s website directory (205).
9
10
11
12
13 User (client) side Server side
14
15
Topic: Early Adult
16 User
17 205 Website
18 Q1. What was your job?
s
19 Q2. When did you buy your
20 first home?
21 Q3. When did you get 203 204
22 married?
23 Q4. Res Ipsa Loquitor
24
25 User Interview Screen Content User
26 Displayed on User’s Database Database
27 Internet access device
28
29 201
30
31
32
33
34
35 202
200
36
37 Client Application on Server Application
38 User’s Internet Access Device on web server.
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46

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204

206

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1Figure 3. Response Tags

2The Server Application in Figure 2 (202) creates a user response viewed as a webpage
3(300). This page can be viewed and annotated by the user or a 3rd party using a set of
4“tags” provided by the Client-Server system. For instance a Photo-tag (301), Phone-tag
5(302), Edit-tag (303) or Voice-Tag (304) may be attached to a paragraph or line of text as
6shown in Figure 3. Additional tags or user-defined tags may also be available.
7The tags will links to events or data as defined in the specification. As the tags are
8processed, the user page will be updated and the tagging process can be repeated until the
9user is satisfied with the result.
10
11
12
13 User Response with embedded tags 300

301
Photo-Tag
ID
Qualified reference name

302
Phone-Tag
ID
Description

303 Edit-Tag
Title

Voice-Tag
304
ID
Description

2 “A System and Methods for Online Generation of a Personal Legacy”

3 Samuel W. Beal