Patent Application
20090049211
It has been disclosed in U.S. patent Ser. No. 11/613,960 (YAH1P039/Y01804US01, “the '960 application”), filed Dec. 20, 2006, to configure a “pipe specification” to “wire together” component pipes to process syndication data feeds. More particularly, a process has been disclosed in the '960 application by which one may effect the remixing of syndication data feeds and, furthermore, to create syndication feed data “mashups” to combine content from more than one source, including at least one syndication data feed, into an integrated experience. As described in the '960 application, each module is characterized by at least one of a group consisting of an input node and an output node, wherein the input node, if present, is configured to input a syndication data feed and the output node, which is generally present, is configured to output a syndication data feed. At least one of the modules is a module configured to retrieve a source syndication data feed. The wires are configured to provide a syndication data feed provided from an output node of a module to an input node of another module.
In accordance with an aspect, a method is complementary to processing a pipe specification. The pipe specification is characterized by at least one constituent pipe, each constituent pipe being characterized by at least one of a group consisting of an input node and an output node. The input node, if present, is configured to input a syndication data feed and the output node, if present, is configured to output a syndication data feed. At least one of the constituent pipes includes a module configured to retrieve a source syndication data feed. The wires are configured to connect each of at least some of the output nodes to at least one input node, including to provide a syndication data feed provided from an output node of a constituent pipe to an input node of another constituent pipe.
An amount of time to process the pipe specification is estimated, including an amount of time to retrieve syndication data feeds specified in the pipe specification. Based at least in part on the estimated amount of time, supplemental content is determined to present to a user while the pipe specification is being actually processed.
The execution of a pipe may involve accessing many different web services, many, most or all of which are outside the control of the pipe provider. Thus, the execution of a pipe may take a relatively long time to return its results. Due in part to the abstract nature of a pipe specification, it typically would not be apparent from the pipe specification itself what will be the amount of time to return the results. In fact, the pipe specification itself may not even have enough information on its face to make a determination of what will be the amount of time.
The inventors have realized a desirability to present supplemental material to a user of a pipe specification, while the pipe specification is executing to retrieve and process various specified syndication data feeds and/or web services. The inventors have further realized a desirability to provide supplemental material that is appropriate to a nominal expected retrieval and processing time and/or is appropriate to a nominal expected content of the processed feeds.
We now discuss, relative to
At 204, metadata corresponding to the pipe specification is processed to estimate the time to process the pipe specification. For example, the metadata corresponding to the pipe specification may be stored in the pipe specification storage 108 in correspondence with the pipe specifications. Later, we describe several examples of processing the metadata corresponding to the pipe specification. At 206, based at least in part on the estimated amount of time, supplemental content is determined to present to the user while the pipe specification is being processed. We also later describe several examples of determining the supplemental content. At 208, the supplemental content is caused to be presented. At 210, the result of processing the pipe specification is caused to be presented.
In the
We now describe some examples of processing metadata corresponding to the pipe specification. As we have discussed, a pipe specification may be comprised of a plurality of component pipe specifications, each of which may themselves be comprised of a plurality of component pipe specifications, and so on in a recursive manner. In accordance with a relatively simplistic example, the processed metadata may include simply the number of web service calls that result from processing the pipe specification, and the processing may be as simple as, for example, multiplying the number of web service calls by an estimated “average” amount of time per service call.
In accordance with other examples, the metadata to be processed and the processing itself may be informed by data representing actual processing times for previous executions of the pipe specification or, at least, in part by previous executions of component pipe specifications of the pipe specification. Thus, for example, where such metadata is available, processing time based on previous executions of component pipe specifications of the pipe specification may be used. The metadata may include information about the previous executions other than the processing time to more appropriately match the previous actual execution(s) with a current execution for which a processing time is to be estimated. For example, the additional information may include information about time of day of the previous execution or other information that may used to more closely match characteristics of the previous execution with the current execution that may affect the processing time.
On the other hand, for those component specifications for which such metadata is not available, the processing time for those component pipe specifications may be estimated in other ways, such as based on the number of web service calls. These estimations can be appropriately blended to determine an overall processing time estimate corresponding to the pipe specification.
For example,
Taking component specification 402 as an example, processing time metadata may be available for component specification 404 of component specification, but not for component specification 406 nor, for example, for the portions of component specification 402 not within component specification 404 and 406. Thus, for example, the processing time may be estimated using the processing time metadata for component specification 404, blended with an estimate for the other portions of component specification 402 determined using other methods.
We now discuss some examples of determining the supplemental content to be presented to the user while the selected pipe specification is being processed. In some examples, the supplemental content to be presented to the user may be determined by the pipes specification service or under the request or control of the pipe specification service. In other examples, such as some situations in which the pipe specification may be selected via an intermediate service such as a web page (e.g., via a badging station, as disclosed in the '960 application) or such as a feed reader (as also disclosed in the '960 application), the supplemental content to be presented to the user may be determined by the intermediate service or under the request or control of the intermediate service.
For example, the supplemental content may be determined at least in part by processing syndication data that has been returned as a result of previous executions of the pipe specification or by processing metadata that has been generated based on such previously-returned syndication data. For example, advertisement supplemental content determined in this manner may be likely related to the content of the current execution of the pipe specification. The supplemental content may be determined based on metadata associated with pipe specification, such as tags or categories that have been ascribed to the pipe specification (which may include, for example, tags or categories that have been ascribed to constituent pipes), such as manually by users or automatically. In other examples, the supplemental content may be determined to be, in general, not related to the pipe specification other than being appropriate to the estimated time to process the pipe specification (e.g., a video whose presentation time is appropriate to the estimated time to process the pipe specification).
Thus far, we have discussed presenting supplemental material that is appropriate to a nominal expected retrieval and processing time and/or is appropriate to a nominal expected content of the processed syndication data feeds. The execution of a pipe may be more generally characterized as a “retrieve and process” operation. That is, the pipe execution processing makes “calls” to other services (e.g., via available API's) to retrieve, mix and match from multiple data sources (which, in a specific example, are syndication data feeds). The nominal expected retrieval and processing time and/or nominal expected content may be estimated based on metadata corresponding to a “retrieve and process” specification.
We have thus described providing supplemental material that is appropriate to a nominal expected retrieval and processing time and/or is appropriate to a nominal expected content of the processed specifications for mixing and matching data resulting from various web service calls.
Embodiments of the present invention may be employed in any of a wide variety of computing contexts to provide supplemental material that is appropriate to a nominal expected retrieval and processing time and/or is appropriate to a nominal expected content of the processed specifications for mixing and matching data resulting from various web service calls s. For example, as illustrated in
According to various embodiments, applications may be executed locally, remotely or a combination of both. The remote aspect is illustrated in
The various aspects of the invention may also be practiced in a wide variety of network environments (represented by network 512) including, for example, TCP/IP-based networks, telecommunications networks, wireless networks, etc. In addition, the computer program instructions with which embodiments of the invention are implemented may be stored in any type of computer-readable media, and may be executed according to a variety of computing models including, for example, on a stand-alone computing device, or according to a distributed computing model in which various of the functionalities described herein may be effected or employed at different locations.
