Patent Application
20070033224
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system and in particular to a method and apparatus for processing data. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to constructing and managing data for Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points.
2. Description of the Related Art
The World Wide Web, also referred to as the “Web” has become a readily available and extensive source of information to computer users. However, the explosive growth of the Web and the volume of information available have complicated the task of locating desired information. Users spend increasing amounts of time either performing keyword-based searches on one or more available search engines or traversing links via portal sites in search of the information desired by the users. Additionally, search engine and portal providers commonly only have limited information for use in presenting first-order search results or top-level navigation links. Often, the limited information may be restricted simple keywords provided to the search. At best, a Website might provide site-specific personalization/preferences settings. Once created, these preferences are only available at that Website. Moreover, these preference settings may not capture the full range of interests of the user. Thus, users must still perform manual filtering through search results or navigate through layers of content.
As a practical matter, a content provider has difficulty in foreseeing, at a sufficiently granular level, the potential interests of an individual user. Although a content provider can ask about preferences or interests, the content provider cannot anticipate the nearly unlimited range of interests a group of users might have. Moreover, saving and managing such a large amount of user-interest data is impractical for most Web servers.
The aspects of present invention provide a method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for constructing and managing a Set of Hierarchical Interest Points. A content provider or an analyzer provides data associated with content from a content provider to a management system. The management system creates the Set of Hierarchical Interest Points based on the data. The of Hierarchical Interest Points modifies content presented to a user.
The novel features believed characteristic of the invention are set forth in the appended claims. The invention itself, however, as well as an illustrative mode of use, further objectives and advantages thereof, will best be understood by reference to the following detailed description of an illustrative embodiment when read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
With reference now to the figures,
In the depicted example, server 104 is connects to network 102 along with storage unit 106. In addition, clients 108, 110, and 112 connect to network 102. These clients 108, 110, and 112 may be, for example, personal computers or network computers. In the depicted example, server 104 provides data, such as boot files, operating system images, and applications to clients 108-112. In these examples the data also may include hierarchical interest points that are managed using processes of the present invention. Clients 108, 110, and 112 are clients to server 104. Network data processing system 100 may include additional servers, clients, and other devices not shown.
In the depicted example, network data processing system 100 is the Internet with network 102 representing a worldwide collection of networks and gateways that use the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite of protocols to communicate with one another. At the heart of the Internet is a backbone of high-speed data communication lines between major nodes or host computers, consisting of thousands of commercial, government, educational and other computer systems that route data and messages. Of course, network data processing system 100 also may be implemented as a number of different types of networks, such as for example, an intranet, a local area network (LAN), or a wide area network (WAN).
Referring to
Peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus bridge 214 connects to I/O bus 212 provides an interface to PCI local bus 216. A number of modems may connect to PCI local bus 216. Typical PCI bus implementations will support four PCI expansion slots or add-in connectors. Communications links to clients 108-112 in
Additional PCI bus bridges 222 and 224 provide interfaces for additional PCI local buses 226 and 228, from which additional modems or network adapters may be supported. In this manner, data processing system 200 allows connections to multiple network computers. A memory-mapped graphics adapter 270 and hard disk 232 may also connect to I/O bus 212 as depicted, either directly or indirectly.
Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the hardware depicted in
The data processing system depicted in
With reference now to
An operating system runs on processor 302 and coordinates and provides control of various components within data processing system 300 in
Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the hardware in
As another example, data processing system 300 may be a stand-alone system configured to be bootable without relying on some type of network communication interfaces. As a further example, data processing system 300 may be a personal digital assistant (PDA) device, which is configured with ROM and/or flash ROM in order to provide non-volatile memory for storing operating system files and/or user-generated data.
The depicted example in
The present invention provides a method, apparatus, and computer instructions for constructing and managing a Set of Hierarchical Interest Points. A content provider or an analyzer provides data associated with content from a content provider to a management system. The management system creates the Set of Hierarchical Interest Points based on the data. The Set of Hierarchical Interest Points modifies content presented to a user.
In the illustrative embodiment shown in
To accomplish this goal, a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points (SoHIP) manager 416 analyzes data 412 associated with content accessed by the user via browser 418. Data 412 may be gathered in a number of ways, three of which are shown in
In another illustrative embodiment, browser 418 sends a request for information to content provider 402. Content provider 402 does not automatically generate data useful to Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416, but does utilize a service 408 that does automatically generate data useful to Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416. In this case, Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points service 408 generates Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data 412 based on a number of factors and metrics, as described further in relation to
In a third illustrative embodiment, browser 418 sends a request for information to content provider 404. In this illustrative embodiment, content provider 404 does not automatically generate data useful to Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416 and does not utilize a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points service 408. Alternatively, content provider 404 or the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points service does not provide sufficient data. In this case, a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points analyzer 410 may be provided as a plug-in program in the client data processing system, or as a service accessed by the client data processing system. The Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points analyzer 410 examines the information requested by the client browser and returned by content provider 404. Thus, the returned information may be any information transmitted from a content provider to a client. The information is analyzed according to a number of factors and metrics, as described further in relation to
In addition, Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points analyzer 410 may actively explore a website managed by content provider 404, much in the same way that a Webcrawler can explore a Website. After exploring the content provider's Website, the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points analyzer again analyzes the gathered information according to a number of factors and metrics, as described further in relation to
In addition, a content provider may provide the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points analyzer 410 and Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416. With a user's permission, even if tacit, a plug-in program may update browser 418 such that a content provider or a service provider can automatically generate Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data and manage Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data for the user. In this case, the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points service may be provided to the user silently such that the user need not be involved with the process of creating and managing Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points.
Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data 412 may include any number of types of data, possibly depending on what capabilities the manufacturer imparts to Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416 and depending on user preferences. In these illustrative examples, a common characteristic shared by Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data is that Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416 may use Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data to automatically determine a user's interests and present information to the user that is more likely to be of interest to the user. Examples of Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data include a timestamp of when a Website is first entered, tracked time spent in a Website, the depth to which a user explores a site, the number of links within a Website are selected, the number of times a site is visited in a particular time period, the number of times similar search criteria are entered into a search engine, header information contained in an HTML document, keywords present in an HTML document, file names, features present in a picture, video or music, the number of times a file or type of file is downloaded, and countless other potential types of data.
In addition to Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data 412, which is automatically gathered, Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416 may also use user-defined preferences 414, such as user-defined preferences or user-supplied data, as part of the data used to create and manage Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points. A user may provide user-defined preferences 414 via a plug-in program to browser 418. In this case, the user is provided with a user interface, such as the one shown in
Further, Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416 interacts with browser 418 so that Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager may automatically gather data regarding the behavior and interests of a user of browser 418. For example, Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416 can track how long a user spends at a Website, how many links within a Website a user selects, what kind of information a user enters in various on-line forms, or other kinds of information a browser could gather from the behavior of a user.
In use, once Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416 gathers Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data 412, has been provided with user-defined preferences 414, or gathers some information from browser 418, Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416 automatically creates and manages Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points (Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points). Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416 uses one or more Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points to modify what content a browser displays to a user via browser 418.
For example, the user is interested in sports. From Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data 412, user-defined preferences 414, or user behavior via browser 418, Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416 creates a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points that indicates that the user is particularly interested in American football, and is specifically interested in the Denver Broncos®, and the college football teams from Colorado State University®, Texas A&M®, Alabama University®, as shown in
Furthermore, Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416 may be provided with the capability of parsing information at a predetermined granularity. For example, the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points described above regarding American football may be further detailed such that when a user visits a Website associated with the Denver Broncos®, the user is preferentially presented with player statistics. At a higher level of granularity, the user may be preferentially presented with statistics related to a particular player, such as the number of yards rushed, or may be preferentially presented with a particular statistic related to each player, such as the amount of time a player has been on the team.
Should the user desire to view content related to other teams, the user may still view this additional content. Thus, in the illustrative embodiment, Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416 does not prevent or restrict a user from accessing other content available at a Website. In fact, as a user visits additional Websites, Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager continues to update the users Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points or Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points. Thus, when if the user visits a Website related to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish® and stops visiting Websites related to Colorado State University®, then Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416 may begin to preferentially present information to the user regarding the former team and cease to preferentially present information regarding the latter team.
Initially, the process gathers Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data useful to a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager (step 500). Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data may be gathered in the manner described in relation to
The process then provides all gathered Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data to a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager (step 502). The Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager may be Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager 416 described in relation to
Metrics allow the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager to control integration of Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data into one or more Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points (Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points). Metrics allow a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager to both use Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data to construct a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points, and also to weight Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data such that a browser more prominently features information of greater interest to the user than similar information in a similar information category. Metrics may include the active time spent at a Website,. or time actually spent perusing data; the depth that a site is explored; the number of times a site is visited; the number of times similar search criteria are used in a search engine; user-defined policies and preferences, and other metrics.
From the above examples, metrics are similar to Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data. However, the difference between metrics and Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data is that data are raw pieces of information, whereas metrics specify how raw pieces of information are to be used. For example, Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data might specify that a user has visited the Website for the Denver Broncos® twenty times in the last five days. A corresponding metric specifies that any Website that has been visited more than fifteen times in five days contains information that has a high interest value to the user. The Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager correlates the metric and the data, determines that the Website is of high interest value to the user, and modifies presentation of content from the Website accordingly. For example, the Website may feature prominently when displayed or a hot button may appear in the browser that, when pressed, takes the user to the website. Similarly, a metric may specify that if a Website has not been visited in thirty days, that the Website is of lower interest value to the user, and presentation of content from the Website will be modified accordingly. Thus, metrics may be automatically and dynamically updated as a user browses the Internet.
The interest value of a Website or of a particular type of content may be weighted using a numerical value in the illustrative embodiments. For example, an interest value may vary between −10 and 10. Content or Websites with an interest value of −10 designate content or Websites that a user wishes to avoid. Content or Websites with an interest value of 10 designate content or Websites in which a user is most interested. In addition, the interest value of a Website may be strictly keyword-based. In either case, a user may designate the interest value of any particular Website, content, or type of content, or metrics may determine automatically the interest value of any particular Website in the manner described above.
Turning back to
As described in relation to
A service provider may also transmit Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points metadata separately, place Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points metadata in other areas of an HTML document, or transmit Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points metadata in other data packets or in other forms. However provided, a content provider provides Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points metadata in a format the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager may readily use. Thus, for example, if a user browses a predetermined number of links in a Website or if the user grants a content provider permission by selecting a particular link, then the content provider will transmit Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points metadata to the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager. The Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points metadata will indicate that the Website or a particular type of information present in the Website is of a predetermined interest value.
In addition, perhaps simultaneously, the process may query the content provider service for Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data (step 602). In step, 602, the content provider may use a separate service to provide Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data to the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points. Thereafter, the process returns to step 502 of
In this case, when a client browser accesses a Website, the content provider also routs the content request to a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points provider. In turn, based on metrics specified by the content provider, by the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager, or by the user, the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points provider transmits Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data to the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager. Alternatively, a client browser may directly query a content provider operating a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points service for Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data. Thus, Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data is not automatically transmitted to the client, but rather only at the request of the client. In yet another example, a client browser may directly query a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points provider service. In this case, the service provider monitors the client's Web-browsing behavior and provides Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data to the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager accordingly. Thus, the content provider, a third party provider, or a user on a client data processing system may manage the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points provider.
In addition, perhaps simultaneously, a client, a content provider, or a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points provider may operate or manage a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points analyzer. The Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points analyzer monitors the activity of a client browser and receives content the browser accesses (step 604). The Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points analyzer then analyzes the content according to metrics, as described in relation to
GUI 700 is in the form of a dialog window commonly found on personal computers and workstations. GUI 700 presents Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points 702 and Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points 706 as tree-based lists. Checkboxes 702A through 702J effect manual selection and deselection of interests and subinterests in Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points 702. Typically, checkboxes toggle in response to mouseclicks while a cursor is positioned over the checkbox. An XML document, such as that shown in
Additionally, GUIs such as that shown in
Although GUI 700 provides a convenient technique for managing Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points, alternative mechanisms may be used to manipulate Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points. These include text editors and XML editors. In addition, Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points may be generated and presented automatically, as described above.
The illustrative embodiment shown in
A user may modify Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points 706. For example, a user may toggle checked boxes, as described above, thereby manually designating that the particular topic is no longer of interest. The user may also modify Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points 706 in other ways, such as by designating that a particular type of content is only of interest if the content has been posted for less than a predetermined time. Thus, for example, in the sub-category of “Breaking News” 706H, the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager further modifies Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points 706H such that only content that has been posted for less than an hour is of interest. Another way to manually modify Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points 706 is to manually add a broad category via dialog box 704. The Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager may be programmed to add corresponding subcategories automatically after the broad category has been added. In addition, hot buttons may modify automatically generated Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points 706, such as “Accept Automatic” button 708 and “Modify Automatic” 710. The “Accept Automatic” button 708, when actuated, will transmit a command to the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager to accept all automatically generated Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points. The “Modify Automatic” button 710, when actuated, will transmit a command to cause a new dialog box to appear that will allow a user to specify advanced settings, such as the timestamp described with respect to “Breaking News” category 706H. In addition, the GUI may present information regarding why a particular Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points or Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points interest was added so that the user may better understand how to modify the overall performance of a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points. Thus, a variety of different means to modify an automatically generated Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points may be provided.
Furthermore, the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager may use both user-defined Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points 702 and automatically generated Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points 706 at the same time. In an illustrative embodiment the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points manager combines all Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points, such as Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points 702 and Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points 706., when searching for content or modifying content presented to the user. Categories are added at each level, if necessary, though not duplicated. Thus, if Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points 702 and 706 are combined, one Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points will have a “Sports” broad category, under which will be “Football”, “Professional” from Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points 702 and “Amateur” from Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points 706.
In addition, GUI 700 may be further modified to show all combined Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points. Thus, GUI 700 may display a combined tree to a user. Furthermore GUI 700 may be modified to show Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points in a variety of formats. Thus, GUI 700 may show Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points in a nested format, a folder format, a map-link format, or a variety of other formats.
As described above, a Set of Hierarchical Interest Points may refine a user's searches for Web content and also modify content presented to a user. The Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data structure shown in
The illustrative Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data structure shown in
Thus, “toplevel” or broad interests include “sports” and “entertainment.” Continuing down the hierarchy, interest nodes further refine the user's interests within each of the broad interests. Within the “sports” interest, three interests are defined: “football,” “basketball,” and “baseball.” Keywords attributes provide a mechanism for the user to specify terminology that may be used to describe the particular interest. Thus, the user's interest “football” may, alternatively be described as “American football.” The user's interest in football is further refined by the three interests nodes having the values “CU,” “OSU,” and “A&M,” respectively. Keywords associate the terminology “‘University of Colorado”’ and “Buffalos” with the corresponding interests. Similarly, keyword values “‘The Ohio State University”’ and “Buckeyes,” and keywords values “‘Texas A&M university”’, and “Aggies” are associated with the corresponding interest.
In the Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points data structure shown in
The above Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points are described in relation to presenting web-based content in a Web browser. However, the method of generating Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points described above may be used in other data processing environments, as well. For example, user-defined or automatically generated Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points may modify the presentation of large networks of data processing systems. Similarly, user-defined or automatically generated Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points may modify presentation of a file system on an individual data processing system. In another example, presentation of local system components, such as a device manager or file manager, may be modified using Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points. For audio content, lyrics, performance data, or instrumentation may be analyzed and used as metrics in a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points. In addition, Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points may modify the presentation of email, blogs, discussion boards, and videos. In addition, a Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points may be used in conjunction with an indexing system to use links from created indices. Thus, Web pages having preferred links may be created using Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points. Thus, the mechanism of the present invention may be applied to many different methods and systems for presenting information to a user.
Thus, with the mechanism of the present invention, a user need not manually specify all of a user's preferences. Sets of Hierarchical Interest Points will be generated simply by use of the browser. In addition, the mechanism of the present invention allows a user to exclude information that is not of interest and to preferentially present information that is of interest. Thus, the time required to perform a search for information is reduced.
The invention can take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment or an embodiment containing both hardware and software elements. In a preferred embodiment, the invention is implemented in software, which includes but is not limited to firmware, resident software, microcode, etc.
Furthermore, the invention can take the form of a computer program product accessible from a computer-usable or computer-readable medium providing program code for use by or in connection with a computer or any instruction execution system. For the purposes of this description, a computer-usable or computer readable medium can be any apparatus that can contain, store, communicate, propagate, or transport the program for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, or device.
The medium can be an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system (or apparatus or device) or a propagation medium. Examples of a computer-readable medium include a semiconductor or solid state memory, magnetic tape, a removable computer diskette, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), a rigid magnetic disk and an optical disk. Current examples of optical disks include compact disk—read only memory (CD-ROM), compact disk—read/write (CD-R/W) and DVD.
A data processing system suitable for storing and/or executing program code will include at least one processor coupled directly or indirectly to memory elements through a system bus. The memory elements can include local memory employed during actual execution of the program code, bulk storage, and cache memories which provide temporary storage of at least some program code in order to reduce the number of times code must be retrieved from bulk storage during execution.
Input/output or I/O devices (including but not limited to keyboards, displays, pointing devices, etc.) can be coupled to the system either directly or through intervening I/O controllers.
Network adapters may also be coupled to the system to enable the data processing system to become coupled to other data processing systems or remote printers or storage devices through intervening private or public networks. Modems, cable modem and Ethernet cards are just a few of the currently available types of network adapters.
The description of the present invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description, and is not intended to be exhaustive or limited to the invention in the form disclosed. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art. The embodiment was chosen and described in order to best explain the principles of the invention, the practical application, and to enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand the invention for various embodiments with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated.
