Patent Application
20050288991
The invention relates to collecting preference information, and especially collecting preference information in user equipment based on the user's digital content consuming habits.
Due to the evolution of information technology, the amount of information available to people has become vast. The information explosion means that the number of items in only one information category, such as music, movies, books, news, web pages, has become so large that a single person cannot possibly view them all in order to select the relevant ones. For example, the list of music service providers in the Internet is growing, as well as downloadable music and videos.
In order to help their customer's find interesting items, many commercial sites on the Internet provide their users with recommendations. Typically these recommendations are generated on the basis of the user's preference information, records of the purchased item(s) and the utilization of collaborative filtering. The service provider on the commercial site receives the user's preference information when the users explicitly rate, for example, music or books that they like. In collaborative filtering, the users' ratings are aggregated and when a user rates or buys something, the collaborative filter on the commercial site checks for other people who liked or bought the same item and what other items those people also liked or bought and then returns these items as recommendations to the user. One problem with these explicit ratings is that users seldom change ratings because it is laborious and therefore the explicit ratings are static profiles not reflecting the current, relevant likes and dislikes of the user—even when the ratings are updated by the commercial site every time the user buys something. Another problem is that the user has to perform the rating separately for each commercial site he uses.
A certain kind of “automatic rating feature”, called tracking, is provided by presentation applications, such as Microsoft's Media Player or Apple's iTunes, running in computers for playing music and video. The presentation applications typically keep track of when you last played a song, what year the song was released, how many times each song has been played, when it was imported to the song library, etc. One of the problems associated with the above arrangement is that tracking is tied to a particular presentation application (i.e. Media Player or iTunes), each of which stores the tracked information in a proprietary format, and if a user changes the presentation application, the previously tracked information cannot be used by the new application. Another problem is that the tracking is tied to the corresponding personal computer that tracks the music played by the computer. However, music is more and more often listened from a portable digital player, which can be synchronized with the computer's music library. The portable players do not track played music.
An object of the present invention is to track how digital content is presented in user equipment and to form, presentation application independently, user preference information based on the user's consuming habits of the digital content. The object of the invention is achieved by a method, software application, user equipment and a system which are characterized by what is stated in the independent claims. The preferred embodiments of the invention are disclosed in the dependent claims.
The invention is based on the idea of realizing the problem and solving it by adding a presentation application independent tracker to the user equipment, the tracker being arranged to log the user's consuming habits of digital content on the basis of the information the tracker receives, depending on the embodiment, either from a modified presentation application, from a plug-in for the presentation application or from a codec converting presentation application calls to a format understood by the operating system of the user equipment. An advantage of the invention is that while the user is consuming digital content, his consumer habits will be collected in the background implicitly and thus formed preference information is based on his actual usage of digital contents without requiring the user's explicit rating actions. Other advantages are that the preference information is both service provider independent and presentation application independent, therefore enabling different presentation applications and/or service providers to utilize the same collected presentation information.
In the following the invention will be described in greater detail by means of preferred embodiments with reference to the attached drawings, in which
The present invention is applicable to be used with any user equipment device that can be used for presenting, for example playing or depicting, digital content. With digital content is meant anything represented in digital format. Examples of digital content are songs, speeches, videos, talking books, documents, movies, games, images, etc. Especially well the present invention is applicable to mobile terminals, which may be digital players or multimedia content mobile terminals allowing not only communication by calling or messaging but also playing music, playing games and/or photographing. The systems, protocols and apparatuses for presenting digital content develop rapidly. Such development may require extra changes to the invention. Therefore, all words and expressions should be interpreted broadly and they are intended to illustrate, not restrict the invention.
In the following, the invention will be described in more detail with examples in which a wireless mobile terminal is used as an example of user equipment according to the invention and playing music is used as an example of presenting digital content without restricting the invention to such user equipments and digital contents. The user equipment may also be a non-mobile apparatus, such as a personal computer.
The exemplary system 1 illustrated in
The mobile terminal 1-1 contains a “software stack”, which comprises a preference client PrC 1-11 between an operating system OS 1-12 and the presentation application PrA 1-13 needed for playing music. In one embodiment of the invention, the software stack also comprises a plug-in (not shown in
The preference client 1-11 is a software application that may run in the background on a mobile terminal while the user is listening to music there. The term “software application” also covers a library of function calls on Linux or Windows or corresponding operating system. The preference client can be called preference collector since it collects preference information, i.e. creates and updates the ratings data file RF 1-15, as will be described below in more detail with
The personal computer 1-2 also contains a preference client 1-21 PrC′ and memory Mem 1-24 for storing downloaded or copied music, etc. The preference client 1-21 in the personal computer may be similar to the one in the mobile terminal or comprise different functionality, as will be described below in more detail. The personal computer 1-2 can be seen as another type of user equipment.
The preference server 1-4 is a server component, such as software, that receives ratings data files, in whole or in part, that the preference clients have collected and which are sent from the mobile terminal either directly or via the personal computer. The preference server 1-4 processes the ratings data files into one or more databases 1-42 containing preference information and may then provide recommendations back to mobile terminals and/or provide reports of how music is being consumed to other servers. The database may be a relational database, such as an open source SQL relational database, for example. The preference information is preferably stored in file format easily accessed by users, such as XML format. The recommendations are typically based on collected data patterns and statistics on the consumption of music. The preference server 1-4 may reside on the mobile terminal, a web server (as disclosed in
The ratings data file contains rating records in a presentation application independent format.
A rating record is preferably created for a song by the preference client when the user terminal becomes aware of the song, for example when a song is downloaded to the user terminal. The preference client may also be arranged to scan discs or memory cards inserted into the user equipment, and on the basis of the scanned information, to create rating records when necessary.
In the following,
In all
The phrase “information to be logged” used below means user input which is used for creating and updating rating records. For example, inputs like “show playing list” or “pause” or “release pause” may not be used for creating and updating rating records.
In the first exemplary embodiment, in response to the user input 1, the presentation application PrA calls, in point A, the operating system by sending call 2. The call contains identification information indicating the digital content the call relates to. The codec receives the call and activates by 2′, in point X, required operating system services for fulfilling the call. Furthermore, the codec checks, in point X, whether or not the call 2 contains information to be logged, and if it does, the codec transforms the information, in point X, to a presentation application independent format. Then the codec forwards, in point X, the information as a function call 3 to the preference client PrC, which then logs, in point Z, user's music listening habits, as will be described later.
In the second alternative, illustrated in
In the second alternative, in response to the user input 1, the presentation application PrA notifies, in point A′, the plug-in by sending notification 4. The notification contains identification information indicating the digital content the call relates to. The plug-in detects the notification and checks, in point Y, whether or not the notification 2 contains information to be logged, and if it does, the plug-in transforms, in point Y, the information to a presentation application independent format. Then the plug-in forwards, in point Y, the information as a function call 3 to the preference client PrC, which then logs, in point Z, user's music listening habits, as will be described later. The presentation application PrA also calls, in point A′, the operating system by sending call 2. The call is received by the codec, which activates by 2′, in point B, the required operating system services for fulfilling the call. Thus, the basic functionality of the presentation application is not amended by the plug-in.
The third alternative (not shown) differs from the second one only in that instead of the presentation application plug-in, the presentation application itself is modified to perform the functionality described above with point Y. In other words, points A and Y are combined and no plug-in is required.
In the fourth alternative, illustrated in
In the fifth alternative (not shown), the presentation application sends the call 2 (including identification information) to the preference client, which is arranged to transfer the call into a metadata format, either before deciding whether or not it contains information to be tracked or during logging.
Yet in another alternative (not shown), based on combinations of the second and fourth or fifth alternatives, the presentation application is modified to notify the plug-in when music is being played, and the plug-in informs the preference client using preferably the metadata format.
Another way to implement above alternatives is to have a function for each input to be logged, in which implementation the preference client notices the information to be logged on the basis of the function received and the identification information inside the function.
It is obvious to one skilled in the art that the features described in the above with different alternatives may be combined separately to form yet another alternative. For example, the codec or the plug-in may not check the content of the call 2 but send all information to the preference client, which then performs the checking.
Referring to
If the user did not start to play a song (step 406), the preference client checks, in step 408, whether or not the playing of the song ended, either because the song ended or because the user ended the playing of the song. If the answer is yes, the preference client updates, in step 409, the rating record with the collected playing information. If the song is still playing (step 408), information is added, in step 410, to the collected playing information. The information may be that the user lowered the volume, for example.
Steps 403 to 410 illustrate how the preference client logs the user's music listening habits, and they form a “basic preference client” of the invention which has to be implemented in the mobile terminal. Additional features to the preference client are described below.
The preference client may be arranged to check, in response to receiving information on user input, whether or not the user input contains information to be logged, and to perform the steps of 403 to 410 only if the user input contains information to be logged. This situation is illustrated above with
The collected information is at least what music is played and how often it is played. The preference client may also collect information how loudly a song is played, when it is played, where it is played, what the user was doing when the song was played and/or whether or not the song was skipped over, for example. What information can be collected depends on the characteristics of the mobile terminal. For example, the mobile terminal may know its location and/or have motion sensors for determining whether the user is staying still, running or walking. Since the mobile telephones allows different user profiles, the preference client may be arranged to collect and update the rating records according to the user profile-specifically or take the user profile used when music was listened to as a piece of information to be collected.
When the rating record is updated, the preference client uses different, predetermined calculation rules to calculate the rating for this specific song. For example, if the user habitually listens to song A very loudly, but skips over his former favorite song B, it implies that the user likes song A but does not like song B as much as earlier and the rating of A stays very high whereas the rating of song B decreases. At the simplest, it is only calculated how many times a song is played, and preferably the date when the song was last time played, is also taken into account, and in these embodiments of the invention in step 407 the number is increased and steps 408 to 410 are replaced by ignoring the user input or by simply leaving them out. However, typically the rating is a floating-point number between zero and one so that the larger number indicates that the user likes the song more. The exact calculation rules are irrelevant to the present invention and therefore need not be discussed here.
The information on volume, the time of day and day of the week can be used when generating play list(s) and recommendations. For example, if the user goes to the gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10-11 and listens to AC/DC very loudly then the preference client may be used to recommend Marilynn Manson on Monday nights so that the user can be ready for the gym on Tuesday morning.
Since the preference client is capable of receiving information on played music from various presentation applications, the preference client is preferably implemented to collect information from all presentation applications in the user equipment, including FM radios, etc, and update the ratings data file regardless of the presentation application used. The preference client may also be configured to maintain the ratings data files presentation application-specifically in addition to the above described common ratings data file or instead of the common ratings data file.
The preference client may have, as an additional feature, an explicit rating option allowing the user to modify explicitly the ratings data file either from the mobile terminal and/or via the personal computer and/or via the preference server. This additional feature is illustrated in
The preference client may, as an additional feature, transmit information with the preference server, either directly or indirectly via the personal computer. This additional feature may have an optional filtering feature, according to which the content of the ratings data file is filtered and the filtered content is sent to the preference server. This optional feature allows the user to control what information is sent to the Internet. What is filtered may be defined by the user rating record specifically, user profile-specifically or as a common filtering feature. The user profile-specific filtering feature definitions may be stored in the mobile terminal memory as part of the user profile definitions, for example. The common filtering feature definitions may be stored in the mobile terminal memory either separately or as part of the ratings data file, for example. The filtering may be performed by some other application geared toward privacy and/or the user equipment may negotiate with the preference server in order to offer more information than the information content according to original filtering settings. The filtered ratings data file content may be genre(s) liked/disliked, artist(s) liked/disliked, songs liked/disliked, the user's ratings of the songs, types of ratings and/or other metadata, such as playing times, average volume, purchase info, PII (personal identifiable information), etc. Examples of the PII are the user's name, address and phone number.
The information exchange is described in
If the filtering option is not implemented, then point 6-3 is skipped over.
The preference information according to the invention provides better understanding of the consumer's actual preferences and enables music service providers to differentiate themselves and to increase sales because they can provide customers with better recommendations and enhanced personalization.
Shop retailers can download the preference information from the database in the preference server via the Internet and since it is based on the actual usage of music reflecting true references, the shop retailers may, on the basis of the information, minimize restocking of potentially unpopular music, while maximizing restocking of potentially popular one.
Original content providers can utilize the downloaded preference information from the database in the preference server when they create ads. They can also forward the information to the studios and artists so that they can take the information into account by updating the upcoming releases, for example.
The additional features according to the invention are optional and some of them may be implemented in the personal computer and some in the mobile terminal and/or both may have the same additional features and/or the preference client in the personal computer may even be implemented to perform only one or more additional feature without the features of the above-described basic preference client. Furthermore, it is obvious to one skilled in the art that the rating information collected according to the present invention can also be utilized according to prior art. For example, the personal computer may synchronize the rating information received from the mobile terminal with the rating information in the personal computer by an application, such as SyncML defined currently by OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) for universal synchronization of remote data and personal information across multiple networks, platforms and devices. On the basis of the collected rating information, playing lists may be formed, the Internet searched and related digital content that may be to the interest of the user suggested.
The embodiments or parts of the embodiments described above may be freely combined in order to create new embodiments of the invention. The most simplified embodiment of the invention is implemented with the basic preference client and rating records having the content identifier and the preference.
User equipment and a software application implementing the functionality according to one embodiment of the present invention not only comprise means required for presenting digital content, but also means for logging how the user is consuming the digital content in a presentation application independent form. In addition, the user equipment, the software application, another type of user equipment, a further software application and/or a server component may comprise means for one or more other functionalities described above. No hardware changes are required. User equipment and servers comprise processors and memory that can be utilized in the functions of the invention. All changes required for implementing the invention can be made as additional or updated software routines and/or by adding application-specific integrated circuit(s) (ASIC).
It will be obvious to a person skilled in the art that, as the technology advances, the inventive concept can be implemented in various ways. The invention and its embodiments are not limited to the examples described above but may vary within the scope of the claims.
