System and method for dynamically tracking user interests based on personal information

• US 20060230012A1
• Filed: 03/30/2005
• Published: 10/12/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Edlund, Stefan Bengt, Lessler, Justin Thomas, Krishna, Vikas, Ruvolo, Joann, Kraenzel, Carl J.
• Granted Patent: US 8,838,588 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/337 Profile generation, learning or modification

Abstract

Described are a dynamic interest profile (DIP) system and method for dynamically tracking interests of a user based on personal information. The DIP system obtains electronic documents of the user from a document stream and processes the documents to obtain certain information therefrom. Based on the information obtained from the documents, the DIP system identifies terms, people, documents, and collections that are of importance to the user. These items of importance become part of a dynamic interest profile of the user. The dynamic interest profiles persist in a database. The DIP system also provides an application program interface (API) for accessing DIPs in the database. Application programs can employ this API to customize program behavior to the particular interests of the user executing those programs.

Claims

1. A method for tracking interests of a user based on personal information, the method comprising:

monitoring a stream of documents to obtain a plurality of electronic documents of the user;

processing the plurality of electronic documents to obtain information therefrom;

determining at least one person of importance to the user and one term of importance to the user based on the information obtained from the plurality of electronic documents; and

generating an interest profile of the user that includes each person and each term of importance.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining from this information at least one item of emerging importance to the user.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of electronic documents includes a combination of email messages and word processing documents.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of processing includes parsing each electronic document to identify terms and people mentioned in that electronic document.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining a document of importance to the user based on at least one term of importance to the user and on at least one person of importance to the user.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining a collection of importance to the user based on at least one term of importance to the user and on at least one person of importance to the user.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of determining includes calculating an importance score for a term in the electronic documents based on at least one of a strength of association of the term with the user, a strength of association of the term with subjects of documents, a discriminative quality of the term for identifying contents of a folder, and a relevance of the term to the user.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of determining includes calculating an importance score for a person mentioned in the electronic documents based on at least one of a longevity of association between the person and the user, when the user most recently interacted with the person, a number of bidirectional interactions with the person, a measure of exclusive interactions with the person, and a frequency of interactions with the person.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of determining includes calculating an importance score for a document in the electronic documents based on at least one of a frequency of access by the user to the document, an importance of an author of the document, an importance of each person receiving the document, an importance of terms in a subject of the document, an importance of terms in a body of the document.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of determining includes calculating an importance score for a collection of electronic documents based on at least one of a frequency of access by the user to the collection, a frequency of change by the user of electronic documents in the collection, and an importance of documents in the collection.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

updating incremental feature vectors based on the information obtained from the plurality of electronic documents;

storing the incremental feature vectors in a dynamic interest profile (DIP) database;

periodically performing an importance calculation using the incremental feature vectors, to update the interest profile of the user; and

storing the importance feature vectors in the DIP database.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

storing the interest profile of the user in a dynamic interest profile (DIP) database;

providing an application program interface (API) for accessing the interest profile of the user in the DIP database; and

receiving a query issued from an application program using the API to obtain the interest profile from the DIP database; and

responding to the query by supplying an importance score vector having information computed to be of importance to the user.

13. A system for tracking interests of a user based on personal information, the system comprising:

a text processor parsing through text in a plurality of electronic documents to produce tokens;

a document processor determining at least one person of importance to a given user and one term of importance to that user based on tokens produced by text processor and generating a dynamic interest profile of that user that includes each determined person and term of importance.

14. The system of claim 13, further comprising a processing agent monitoring a stream of documents to obtain the plurality of electronic documents.

15. The system of claim 13, wherein the text processor includes a translator for converting the electronic documents into dynamic interest profile documents.

16. The system of claim 13, further comprising a document queue associated with each user of the system for storing dynamic interest profile documents converted from the electronic documents of that user.

17. The system of claim 13, further comprising a database for storing dynamic interest profiles of users.

18. The system of claim 13, wherein the document processor includes a calculator for computing an importance score for at least one of a term, a person, a document, and a collection.

19. A computer program product for use with a computer system, the computer program product comprising a computer useable medium having embodied therein program code comprising:

program code for monitoring a stream of documents to obtain a plurality of electronic documents of a user;

program code for processing the plurality of electronic documents to obtain information therefrom;

program code for determining at least one person of importance to the user and one term of importance to the user based on the information obtained from the plurality of electronic documents; and

program code for generating an interest profile of the user that includes each person and each term of importance.

20. The computer data signal of claim 19, further comprising program code for determining from this information at least one item of emerging importance to the user.

21. A computer data signal embodied in a carrier wave for use with a computer system having a display and capable of generating a user interface through which a user may interact with the computer system, the computer data signal comprising:

program code for monitoring a stream of documents to obtain a plurality of electronic documents of a user;

program code for processing the plurality of electronic documents to obtain information therefrom;

program code for determining at least one person of importance to the user and one term of importance to the user based on the information obtained from the plurality of electronic documents; and

program code for generating an interest profile of the user that includes each person and each term of importance.

22. The computer data signal of claim 21, further comprising program code for determining from this information at least one item of emerging importance to the user.