Microsoft Corporation was today granted a Patent for a new Social Networking Tool by the US Patent & Trademark Office.
The social networking tool, is described for use with a display. In an embodiment, the display is permanently located in an enterprise office and facilitates social interaction between users some of whom are remote of the display and at least one of whom is physically local to the display. In an embodiment messages comprising content are received from remote users and the content displayed.
One display region for each remote user is displayed concurrently and content received from any particular remote user is only displayed in the display region for that remote user. In an embodiment a user local to the display is able to send a message to a remote user by selecting the appropriate display region. In another embodiment a user local to the display is able to change the position of the display regions on the display and may also annotate the display.
Details at US Patent & Trademark Office website.
Thanks to my MVP collegue Ankur Mittal for the tip.
