For years, whenever someone asked me what my father did, I would answer “computer scientist.” If pressed for more information, I would sheepishly mumble “I don’t really understand it” and something about a non-disclosure agreement.

But now, for the highly curious (and patient), the answer is now publically available. If you have any interest in comp sci, linguistics, or how to make del.icio.us more intelligent, you may wanna check it out. For the less curious, the press release below is worth reading if only for the entertainment value of my middle-aged father pretending to write as me, his college-aged daughter.

My highly obscure dad, Alan S. Rojer, has spent recent years wandering in the wilderness of computer science and linguistics. He begs me for online promotion to help rehabilitate his status as a citizen of the infoverse.

One of his patent applications, Web Bookmark Manager (App. no. 20070043745), was recently published by the PTO and he wants the world to know. Less for the particularities of the bookmark manager than for the implicit demonstration of methodologies he’ll be hawking eventually. So anyone interested in programming methods, knowledge engineering, or bookmark management, have a look:

Even better, grab the pdf.

Truly masochistic geeks could also try his older published applications, but don’t blame me if your eyes glaze over. Mine do. But if you’re so inclined, go here, and search for rojer in inventor name:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html

He claims, not very convincingly, that products will be released this year. He has said that every year since 2002 or so.