Contextual syndication platform

• US 20080098026A1
• Filed: 10/19/2006
• Published: 04/24/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 10/19/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Kraft, Reiner, Norton, Gray, Maghoul, Farzin
• Granted Patent: US 7,962,465 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/30 of unstructured textual data document management systems G06F16/93
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes

Abstract

Techniques are disclosed for automatically annotating a document to offer, to a viewer, a choice of operations that a user can take relative to identified entities to which the document refers, where the choice of operations offered in relation to each such entity is appropriate to and based on the types of that entity. In one embodiment of the invention, for each “interesting” entity within a document, a mechanism automatically determines one or more types for that entity. The mechanism automatically annotates the document so that an application will present entity-type-specific data (including operation choices) that is generated by modules that are mapped to the types of the entities within the document. The annotations comprise metadata that indicates types of each “interesting” entity. The entity-type-specific data may be presented along with the rest of the document. A user need not navigate to a different document prior to viewing the data.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving a set of terms that correspond to entities;

based at least in part on the set of terms, automatically identifying one or more entities to which a document refers; and

for each particular entity of the one or more entities, performing steps comprising;

based at least in part on a set of entity-to-type mappings, automatically determining one or more types of the particular entity; and

based at least in part on the one or more types of the particular entity, generating, for the document, metadata that indicates the one or more types of the particular entity.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

based at least in part on the metadata, generating script which, when executed by an application, causes the application to present, to a user, one or more items that are based on the one or more types of an entity of the one or more entities.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the script, when executed by the application, causes the application to overlay at least a portion of the document with an interface that contains the one or more items.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein generating the script further comprises:

determining one or more modules that are mapped to the one or more types of said entity of the one or more entities; and

generating the script based on functionality that is specified by the one or more modules.

5. The method of claim 2, wherein the one or more items include one or more user-selectable options which, when selected by the user, cause associated operations to be performed relative to an entity of the one or more entities.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining, based on the metadata, that at least one type of an entity of the one or more entities is a place type; and

in response to determining that said at least one type is a place type, generating script which, when executed by an application, causes the application to present, to a user, a map that shows an area surrounding a location that is represented by said entity of the one or more entities.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining, based on the metadata, that at least one type of an entity of the one or more entities is an e-mail address type; and

in response to determining that said at least one type is an e-mail address type, generating script which, when executed by an application, causes the application to present, to a user, an option for adding, to a list of e-mail addresses, a particular e-mail address that is represented by said entity of the one or more entities.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving said document over a network at a web service.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein said entity-to-type mappings represent one or more mappings between one or more entities and one or more types within a type hierarchy in which some types are sub-types of other types.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

inserting said metadata into a copy of said document.

13. A computer-readable medium that stores instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method of claim 1.

14. A computer-readable medium that stores instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method of claim 2.

15. A computer-readable medium that stores instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method of claim 3.

16. A computer-readable medium that stores instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method of claim 4.

17. A computer-readable medium that stores instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method of claim 5.

18. A computer-readable medium that stores instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method of claim 6.

19. A computer-readable medium that stores instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method of claim 7.

20. A computer-readable medium that stores instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method of claim 8.

21. A computer-readable medium that stores instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method of claim 9.

22. A computer-readable medium that stores instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method of claim 10.

11. A method comprising:

automatically determining, based at least in part on metadata that is associated with a document, one or more entity types for a particular entity to which the document pertains;

automatically determining, based on a set of entity type-to-module mappings, one or more modules that are mapped to the one or more entity types; and

presenting, to a user, with at least a part of the document, content that is automatically generated based on the one or more modules.

23. A computer-readable medium that stores instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method of claim 11.

12. A method comprising:

receiving one or more query terms;

automatically determining, for one or more particular query terms of said query terms, one or more entity types of said one or more particular query terms;

determining, based on a set of entity type-to-module mappings, one or more modules that are mapped to the one or more entity types; and

presenting, to a user, content that is automatically generated based on the one or more modules;

wherein the content includes one or more user-selectable actions that may be performed relative to entities that are represented by said particular query terms.

24. A computer-readable medium that stores instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method of claim 12.