1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information distribution. More particularly, the invention relates to the usage of media with content for the distribution of remotely updateable information.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The distribution of multimedia content and other data has traditionally been achieved by using media, such as the floppy disk, magnetic tape or compact disc (CD), containing information supplied by the content provider. Typically, the media are pre-recorded with information from the content provider and, after being sent to the end user, the end user views the information by reading the media. The information is meant to be static for the end user, that is, after the information is pre-recorded onto the media, the information is not changed or updated by the content provider. Such change or update would be impractical, as it would require the end user to return the media to the content provider for updating.
For instance, a mail-order retail content provider might pre-record a sales catalog onto a CD and send the CD to a consumer. The consumer would then access the CD and shop for items in the retailer's catalog. If the retailer were to update the catalog in any way (e.g., error connection, price update, cancelled inventory, etc.) the consumer's CD would be out of date. For write-once media used for content distribution, such as standard CD and DVD, distributed information cannot be updated. The retailer would have to send the consumer a new CD with the new catalog information.
In the case of re-writable media (e.g., floppy disks, CD-RW, key-chain RAM, etc.), the update process is possible. The end user would return the re-writable media to the content provider and the content provider would over-write the old information with new information. However, due to economic constraints, information-containing media are typically distributed in large quantities. It would be impractical, if not impossible, for content providers to update their distributed re-writable media in this manner.
With the advent of the Internet and computer networking, data can be “downloaded”; that is, transferred from one computer to another computer over the network. The Internet and related browser applications simplified this process by allowing content to be served anywhere, anytime, by using HTTP (Hyper-Text Transport Protocol). In the early development and use of HTTP, most of the content on the Internet was “static” in that it was not based on a constantly updated information source, such as connected to live database. With the increased use of scripting and web-based database access/query technologies such CFML (Cold Fusion Markup Language), ASP (Active Server Pages), Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language) PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor), and Java Servlets, the content served from one computer to another over the network can be “live” or “dynamic” in the sense that it can be updated in real-time via a database or other application program on the server. In this way, the end user potentially gets a new or different experience each time they are served content from a particular computer. For instance, a website with the weather forecast might change from hour-to-hour or minute-to-minute. Such information would not be useful if pre-recorded on a fixed media.
Therefore, what is needed is a method and system for continually distributing updateable content to an end user using media that contains static information, without requiring the content provider to re-write the media or to provide updated media to the end user.