Patent Application
20090077059
The invention relates generally to computer data processing, and particularly to an improved metric display having links to qualitative information.
Internet users commonly access information in two distinct ways. One way accesses continuously updated quantitative information in metric displays. The second way accesses displayed quantitative and qualitative information related to key words or phrases using search engines.
Metrics of various types are displayed in dashboards and scoreboards, but can be displayed in any visual or other form of presentation including tabular, chart, graphics, and sound presentation. These metric displays are miniature web browser windows that display a set of constantly updated quantitative information. A common example is a window displaying a constantly updated stock ticker or sports score. The metric display may include one or more links to windows with related information.
Search engines, also known as web crawlers, search the entire web or a subset of the web to produce a ranked list of ‘hits.’ For example, a subset of the web can be anew information service. These hits can be easily customized based on qualitative information provided by key words or phrases. For example, http://news.google.com has an option to customize the page where the user can define keywords, and the web page will rank news stories containing the desired key words higher than those that do not contain the key words.
Current metric displays rely on updates to quantitative inputs that come only from the program providing the metrics, and there is no linkage between qualitative or quantitative information from non-programmatic sources such as news stories. In other words, there is no link showing the potential effect on a quantitative metric from the results of a qualitative event.
But a user viewing a metric must also be sensitive to how the figures displayed are influenced by potential or actual events and that the metric value will change eventually based on those events. For example, a metric that is influenced by the price of oil or a labor strike will be affected by news related to those two areas. Therefore, a need exists to integrate the capabilities of search engines with metric reporting capabilities.
The improved metric display links to qualitative information, and indicates if the qualitative information may affect the current or future value of a quantitative metric. The improved metric display has a quantitative metric, one or more links to ranked qualitative information related to the metric by key words or phrases, and an indicator of the qualitative information's potential effect on the current or future value of the quantitative metric.
The principles of the present invention are applicable to a variety of computer hardware and software configurations. The term “computer hardware” or “hardware,” as used herein, refers to any machine or apparatus that is capable of accepting, performing logic operations on, storing, or displaying data, and includes without limitation processors and memory; the term “computer software” or “software,” refers to any set of instructions operable to cause computer hardware to perform an operation. A “computer,” as that term is used herein, includes without limitation any useful combination of hardware and software, and a “computer program” or “program” includes without limitation any software operable to cause computer hardware to accept, perform logic operations on, store, or display data. A computer program may, and often is, comprised of a plurality of smaller programming units, including without limitation subroutines, modules, functions, methods, and procedures. Thus, the functions of the present invention may be distributed among a plurality of computers and computer programs. The invention is described best, though, as a single computer program that configures and enables one or more general-purpose computers to implement the novel aspects of the invention. For illustrative purposes, the inventive computer program will be referred to as the “enhanced metric display.”
Additionally, the enhanced metric display is described below with reference to an exemplary network of hardware devices, as depicted in
Enhanced metric display 200 typically is stored in a memory, represented schematically as memory 220 in
If the user desires to change keywords (320), the user adds or removes search and sort criteria (322) and saves the changes to preference file 240 (324). For example, the user may set qualitative keywords related to the selected metric and the ranking logic for the web crawler which searches based on criteria set in preference file 240. Search criteria includes such things as key words and preferred new sources. If the user desires to make other changes (326), the user selects or enters the changes (328) and saves the changes to preference file 240 (330). Examples of other changes the user may make are to set user preferences such as a number of news item hits to display, a refresh rate, whether to allow automatic keyword or metric updates based on browser history, how current news items must be for inclusion, preferred news sources, and so forth. If at step 314, 320 or 326, the user does not desire to make a change, the process continues to the next choice. If at step 332, the user does not desire to make additional changes, setup component 300 ends (334).
Persons skilled in the art will recognize that user input can be entered manually, user input can be can chosen from a list, and user input can be automatically generated based on web browser history. Additionally, one or more of the three foregoing methods can be combined. For example, if the ranked news story includes a combination of the terms “increased, dropped, and/or price” a current effect flag will be marked. If the news story contains a combination of the terms “expect, predict, increase, and/or price” then the future effect flag will be marked. The difference between whether a story affects the current price or future prices may often be a matter of verb tense.
Persons skilled in the art will realize that the improved metric display can be further extended to extract qualitative information to apply algorithms to display the extracted qualitative information in the end user's metric display. Moreover, both quantitative as well as qualitative information can be searched. For example, the numeric 10%, the written “ten percent,” and the audible “ten percent” (recorded speech or digitally created speech) are all accessible for search.
A preferred form of the invention has been shown in the drawings and described above, but variations in the preferred form will be apparent to those skilled in the art. The preceding description is for illustration purposes only, and the invention should not be construed as limited to the specific form shown and described. The scope of the invention should be limited only by the language of the following claims.
