Weather information delivery systems and methods providing planning functionality and navigational tools

US7185044B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• The Weather Channel, LLC · US

Inventors

• Mark Ryan · Birmingham, GB
• Jody Fennell · Marietta, US
• Joe Pearson · Kennesaw, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Jan 19, 2001
• Grant date: Feb 27, 2007
• Expiry date: Oct 30, 2023

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06Q30/02
• WIPO field: IT methods for management
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

A weather system available through the Internet provides for clean and consistent global navigation, brings content close to the consumer, and allows consumers to plan their lives based on the weather. The weather system provides consumers with multiple methods of navigating through the site, including: geographical, categorical/activity-based, localized/contextual, and temporal. These navigation methods are not mutually exclusive but instead are tightly nested to allow consumers to navigate seamlessly through the site, switching from one method to the next. On a local weather page, the information is organized in a hub-and-spoke fashion so that consumers can navigate to interrelated information. The weather system can quickly give consumers the local weather at any location, but also empowers consumers to plan their lives based on the weather. The weather system parses weather information and other data into a database and uses a combination of presentation beans, data beans, and advertisement beans to build pages that are delivered to the consumers. Business logic is incorporated into the beans to allow the system to select content and displays based on the consumer, the consumer…