Method and system for assessing relevant properties of work contexts for use by information services
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Abstract
An information retrieval system for automatically retrieving information related to the context of an active task being manipulated by a user. The system observes the operation of the active task and user interactions, and utilizes predetermined criteria to generate context representation of the active task that are relevant to the context of the active task. The information retrieval system then processes the context representation to generate queries or search terms for conducting an information search. The information retrieval system determines the relevance of a word to the context by utilizing an adaptive weighting system. The information retrieval system assigns varying weights to different attributes of a word and calculates an accumulated weight of the word by accumulating all weights assigned to the word. The attributes may include word size, style, location of the word, etc. The system then ranks the importance of words based on their respective accumulated weight, and chooses words that rank within a predetermined number from the top to form search terms to conduct an information search using various data sources.
82 Citations
29 Claims
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1-9. -9. (canceled)
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10. A method for obtaining representative text items from a plurality of text items in an active task, comprising the steps of:
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(a) identifying attributes for each of the plurality of text items; and
(b) excluding text items having at least one of the attributes consisting of;
containing less than n letters or characters, wherein n is a tunable number, unless the text items are part of an exception list or part of recognized constituent items;
containing all numbers, unless the text items are part of an exception list or part of recognized constituent items;
part of a stop list;
part of a stop list including text items corresponding to a specific user;
part of a stop list including text items corresponding to an information source; and
part of a link to retrieve a file or a web page.
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11. A machine-readable medium bearing instructions for obtaining representative text items from a plurality of text items in an active task, the instructions upon execution by a data processing system causing the data processing system to perform the steps of:
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(a) identifying attributes for each of the plurality of text items; and
(b) excluding text items having at least one of the attributes consisting of;
containing less than n letters or characters, wherein n is a tunable number, unless the text items are part of an exception list or part of recognized constituent items;
containing all numbers, unless the text items are part of an exception list or part of recognized constituent items;
part of a stop list;
part of a stop list including text items corresponding to a specific user;
part of a stop list including text items corresponding to an information source; and
part of a link to retrieve a file or a web page.
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12-26. -26. (canceled)
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27. A method for obtaining representative text items based on a plurality of text items of an active task, comprising the steps of:
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(a) determining properties of the active task;
(b) identifying attributes for each of the plurality of text items; and
(c) based on the properties of the active task, excluding text items by applying at least one exclusion rule. - View Dependent Claims (28, 29)
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Specification