A METHOD FOR PROVIDING DIGITAL MEDIA CONTENT TO MULTIPLE COMPUTING DEVICES USING A PORTABLE FRAMEWORK

摘要

A lightweight framework (a 'web agent') provides an execution container for "blades" which carry out tasks associated with digital media content, such as browsing a digital content catalogue, playing digital media content on the device, analysing a user's existing digital media collection, accessing social networking functions and so forth. A "blade" is a component or module designed to operate on a computing device within the environment provided (usually by a web agent running) on that device in order to perform a specific task or tasks for a client application on that device. It is device or platform independent. By abstracting the device or platform-specific aspects and providing a consistent application programming interface (API) to those "blades", the web agent both reduces maintenance overheads and ensures that individual blades are able to efficiently utilise the varied capabilities of a specific device to the greatest extent possible.