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US006883176B1
(12) United States Patent ao) Patent No.: us 6,883,176 Bi
Grooters (45) Date of Patent: Apr. 19,2005
5,835,717 A 11/1998 Karlton et al 395/200.47
5,859,978 A 1/1999 Sonderegger et al. .. 395/200.56
5,905,248 A 5/1999 Russell et al 235/462
5,986,650 A * 11/1999 Ellis et al 725/40
6,199,136 Bl * 3/2001 Shteyn 710/305
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Ehrmantraut, Michael et al. "The Personal Electronic Program Guide—Towards the Pre-selection ol Individual TV Programs" Nov. 1996, Proceedings ol the filth international conlerence on Information and knowledge management.* Takagi, T et al. "Conceptual matching and its applications to selection ol TV program and BGMs" Oct. 1999, Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 1999. IEEE SMC'99 Conlerence Proceedings, vol: 3, pp. 269-273.*
* cited by examiner
Primary Examiner—Anthony Knight
Assistant Examiner—-Thomas Pham
(74) Attorney, Agent, or Firm—-Jeffrey A. Proehl
(57) ABSTRACT
Information stored in a database ol an electronic program guide is utilized to launch or terminate execution ol one or more applications based upon the electronic program guide information. An application to be controlled is associated with an event and registered in a registry database. The event is determined in one embodiment by the electronic program guide. As information is received by an information handling system, the event information is monitored to determine whether the event has occurred. Upon the occurrence ol the event, such as when the present time is a predetermined time, the associated application is launched or terminated according to the determined event.
18 Claims, 4 Drawing Sheets
