Methods and systems for providing a customizable guide for navigating a corpus of content

• US 20080104521A1
• Filed: 10/30/2006
• Published: 05/01/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 10/30/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Slack Technologies LLC (Salesforce.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Kumar, Ravi, Tomkins, Andrew, Novak, Jasmine, Dubinko, Micah, Raghavan, Prabhakar, Magnani, Joseph
• Granted Patent: US 8,914,729 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/744
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/00 Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0484 for the control of specific functions or operations, e.g. selecting or manipulating an object, an image or a displayed text element, setting a parameter value or selecting a range
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/612 for unicast

Abstract

Methods and systems are described for navigating a corpus of content items stored in one or more information repositories within a distributed communications system. The content items may include video feeds, audio feeds, television broadcasts, website, a web log or the like. Using any browser application, the user views content items presented in an interactive scroll display. Modules are included for filtering, sorting and sampling content to ensure delivery of relevant high-quality content to the user. A feedback mechanism is also included for refining relevance filtering, sorting and sampling processes.

Claims

1. A method of providing a customizable guide for navigating content within a distributed communications system, the method comprising:

accessing content;

applying zero or more culling parameters to the corpus of content to identify relevant content for one or more users;

receiving one or more sorting criteria specified for one or more users associated with the one or more users;

sorting the relevant content according to the one or more sorting criteria; and

rendering a customizable guide to present the sorted content to an end-user.

2. The method of claim 1, comprising:

applying one or more sampling schemes to the sorted content, wherein the rendering is executed to sample and thereby present the sorted content in accordance with the sampling scheme.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the applying one or more sampling schemes comprises popularity, burstiness of data transmission, interestingness, or a combination thereof.

4. The method of claim 1, comprising:

enabling a user to adjust at least one of the culling parameters or the sorting criteria.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the accessing comprises accessing at least one of software, video, graphics, text, or audio.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the applying zero or more culling parameters comprises identifying relevant content based on copyright law considerations, geographical areas to distribute content, television programming, local laws and customs, user interface compatibility, purchaser demand for type of content, user profiles, or a combination thereof.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the sorting comprises sorting the relevant content according to creation date, modification date, length, content rating, user rating, genre, number of downloads, or a combination thereof.

8. A system for providing a customizable guide for navigating a corpus of content within a distributed communications system, comprising:

a culling module, wherein the culling module applies one or more culling parameters to the corpus of content to identify relevant content for one or more users;

a sorter that implements one or more sorting criteria to sort the relevant content, wherein the sorter receives input from one or more users associated with the one or more users, said input specifying one or more sorting criteria; and

a rendering engine configured to render a customizable guide to present the sorted content to an end-user.

9. The system of claim 8, comprising:

a sampling module that applies one or more sampling schemes to the sorted content, wherein the rendering module presents the sorted content in accordance with the sampling scheme.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein sampling schemes comprise popularity, burstiness of data transmission, interestingness;

or a combination thereof.

11. The system of claim 8, comprising:

a feedback module that receives user input.

12. The system of claim 8, wherein the corpus of content includes at least one of software, video, graphics, text, or audio.

13. The system of claim 8, wherein the culling parameters comprise copyright law considerations, geographical areas to distribute content, television programming, local laws and customs, user interface compatibility, purchaser demand for type of content, user profiles, or a combination thereof.

14. The system of claim 8, wherein the sorting categories comprise creation date, modification date, length, content rating, user rating, genre, number of downloads, or a combination thereof.

15. A computer program product comprising a computer useable medium having computer readable program code functions embedded in said medium for causing a computer to provide a customizable guide for navigating a corpus of content within a distributed communications system, the computer program product comprising:

a first computer readable program code function that causes the computer to apply one or more culling parameters to the corpus of content to identify relevant content for one or more users;

a second computer readable program code function that causes the computer to receive one or more sorting criteria from one or more users associated with the one or more users;

a third computer readable program code function that causes the computer to implement the one or more sorting criteria to sort the relevant content; and

a fourth computer readable program code function that causes the computer to render a customizable guide to present the sorted content to an end-user.

16. The computer program product according to claim 15, comprising:

a fifth computer readable program code function that causes the computer to applying one or more sampling schemes to the sorted content, wherein the fourth computer readable program code function is executed to sample and thereby present the sorted content in accordance with the sampling scheme.

17. The computer program product of claim 16, wherein sampling schemes comprise popularity, burstiness of data transmission, interestingness;

or a combination thereof.

18. The computer program product of claim 15, comprising:

a fifth computer readable program code function that causes the computer to receive user input for adjusting at least one of the culling parameters or the sorting criteria.

19. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the culling parameters comprise copyright law considerations, geographical areas to distribute content, television programming, local laws and customs, user interface compatibility, purchaser demand for type of content, user profiles, or a combination thereof.

20. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the sorting categories comprise creation date, modification date, length, content rating, user rating, genre, number of downloads, or a combination thereof.