Live graphical preview with text summaries

• US 20060230055A1
• Filed: 03/31/2005
• Published: 10/12/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 03/31/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Marcjan, Cezary, Kott, Ryszard K.
• Granted Patent: US 7,680,810 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Abstract

The subject invention provides a unique system and method that facilitates creating a summary page of content associated with disparate sources of data. For example, a user can select one or more regions of one or more disparate web pages for which he/she desires updated information over a length of time. The selected regions can be identified and then marked for monitoring via a web crawler. The web crawler can analyze the relevant web pages, and in particular, only the selected regions to determine if any of the corresponding content have changed. Changes to other non-selected content can be ignored. The desired changes can be extracted and included on the summary page to mitigate the number of times a user must revisit individual web pages to see what if any changes have occurred since the previous visit.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates creating live summaries of selected content across one or more disparate sources of data comprising:

an input component that receives at least one selected portion of content from at least one source from a user;

an update component that monitors and analyzes the at least one selected portion of content to determine whether at least one of a current state or a cached state of the content is different from a previous state of the content; and

a display site that dynamically receives at east a part of the selected portion of content when the current state of the content is different from the previous state of the content.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a mapping component that maps the selected portion of content to at least one region in a physical structure of the source to facilitate identifying the selected portion of content to monitor.

3. The system of claim 1, the update component comprises at least one web crawler that periodically analyzes the selected portion of content on the at least one web page.

4. The system of claim 1, the update component ignores non-selected content on the at least one source.

5. The system of claim 1, the update component determines that a current state of the content is different from a previous state of the content when a threshold is satisfied.

6. The system of claim 5, the threshold comprises a minimum character difference.

7. The system of claim 1, the display site comprises at least one of a file or page, whereby the display site is scalable depending on a viewable surface of a display screen.

8. The system of claim 1, further comprising a data feed component that communicates the current state of the content in accordance with the selected portions of content to the display site from the respective source.

9. A method that facilitates creating live summaries of selected content across one or more disparate sources of data comprising:

receiving at least one selected portion of content from at least one source from a user;

monitoring and analyzing the at least one selected portion of content to determine whether at least one of a current or cached state of the content is different from a previous state of the content; and

dynamically displaying on at least one summary page at least a part of the selected portion of content when the current state of the content is different from the previous state of the content.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising mapping the selected portion of content to at least one region in a physical structure of the source to facilitate identifying the selected portion of content to monitor.

11. The method of claim 9, further comprising ignoring any non-selected portions of content.

12. The method of claim 9, further comprising employing a threshold to determine whether the current or cached state of the content is different from the previous state of the content.

13. The method of claim 12, the threshold comprises a minimum character difference.

14. The method of claim 12, further comprising feeding the current state of the content to the at least one summary page for each monitored source to facilitate mitigating revisiting each of the monitored sources on an individual basis.

15. The method of claim 9, further comprising scaling the at least one summary page to display the current state of the select content to provide optimal context to the user in accordance with a viewable surface of a display screen.

16. The method of claim 9, further comprising accessing the summary page via a plurality of at least one of access locations and computing devices.

17. A system that facilitates creating live summaries of selected content across one or more disparate sources of data comprising:

means for receiving at least one selected portion of content from at least one source from a user;

means for monitoring and analyzing the at least one selected portion of content to determine whether at least one of a current or cached state of the content is different from a previous state of the content; and

means for dynamically displaying on at least one summary page at least a part of the selected portion of content when the current or cached state of the content is different from the previous state of the content.

18. The system of claim 17, further comprising means for mapping the selected portion of content to at least one region in a physical structure of the source to facilitate identifying the selected portion of content to monitor.

19. The system of claim 17, further comprising means for determining that the current or cached state of the content is different from the previous state of the content when a threshold is satisfied.

20. The system of claim 17, further comprising means for feeding the current state of the content to the at least one summary page for each monitored source to facilitate mitigating revisiting each of the monitored sources on an individual basis.