Method for gathering and summarizing internet information

• US 20080040347A1
• Filed: 08/29/2007
• Published: 02/14/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/21/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Jim Treadwell, Joel Reed, Mark Elmore, Nagiza Samatova, Thomas Potok
• Original Assignee: Jim Treadwell, Joel Reed, Mark Elmore, Nagiza Samatova, Thomas Potok
• Inventors: Elmore, Mark, Treadwell, Jim, Potok, Thomas, Samatova, Nagiza, Reed, Joel
• Granted Patent: US 7,693,903 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/6
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/258 Data format conversion from or to a database
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/353 into predefined classes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/88 Mark-up to mark-up conversion conversion for visualization in web browsing G06F16/9577
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99936 Pattern matching access
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99953 Recoverability

Abstract

A computer method of gathering and summarizing large amounts of information comprises collecting information from a plurality of information sources (14, 51) according to respective maps (52) of the information sources (14), converting the collected information from a storage format to XML-language documents (26, 53) and storing the XML-language documents in a storage medium, searching for documents (55) according to a search query (13) having at least one term and identifying the documents (26) found in the search, and displaying the documents as nodes (33) of a tree structure (32) having links (34) and nodes (33) so as to indicate similarity of the documents to each other.

Claims

1. A computer method of gathering and summarizing information, the method comprising:

collecting documents from a plurality of information sources and storing the documents in a storage format;

wherein the documents comprise metadata and text that are to be retrieved;

converting the documents from the storage format to XML-language documents and storing the XML-language documents in a storage medium;

searching for documents according to a search query having at least one term and identifying the documents found in the search; and

displaying the documents so as to indicate similarity of the documents to each other according to a clustering algorithm.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said information is collected and stored according to a search ontology providing a map of each respective information source and a time interval between search updates from the plurality of information sources which comprise Internet web sites.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the method is carried out by a software agent computer program.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the software agent computer program is originated in the JAVA computer language.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein said software agent computer program resides in a computer also operating an agent hosting program;

and wherein the software agent computer program is a client program in relation to the agent hosting program.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the method is carried out by a plurality of software agent programs residing on a corresponding plurality of computers having agent-hosting programs, said software agent programs communicating with each other through the agent hosting programs.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising comparing a similarity of a plurality of documents by calculating a similarity function for the plurality of documents.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the documents are displayed as nodes of a tree structure having links and nodes in which similarity of documents is indicated by proximity of nodes to each other and by a length of links connecting the nodes to a common vertex.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the documents are displayed in a hierarchical folder organization.

11. The method of claim 2, wherein the information sources are a plurality of Internet web sites.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the storage medium is a computer memory.

8. (canceled)

13-18. -18. (canceled)