Information processing system, service providing apparatus and method, information processing apparatus and method, recording medium, and program

Abstract

The present invention is related to an information processing system that simultaneously shares content data in private virtual spaces. A home server is arranged at a user's home. A portable user terminal can access the home server and a virtual home DB server supplies the layout information about virtual home to the portable user terminal. An authentication server executes authentication processing on the portable user terminal. An inter-user-terminal communication relay server executes the processing associated with the communication between a plurality of users. A user information holding server stores the personal data of each user and the content data, which are shared with other users. This system thus realizes realtime communication via the Internet.

1 . An information processing device, comprising:
 means for initiating a communication program to call a party in response to user selection of an icon corresponding to the communication program;   means for displaying a called party list including pre-registered parties, a communication with a called party being initiated upon user selection, as the called party, of one of the pre-registered parties from the called party list, the means for displaying also displaying a user search area to receive user identifying information;   means for searching for the called party based on user identification information received in the user search area; and   means for displaying a communication area shared with the called party and for displaying a message input area to receive a user message before the user message is displayed in the communication area.