Summarization of attached, linked or related materials

• US 20080282159A1
• Filed: 05/11/2007
• Published: 11/13/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/11/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Vanderwende, Lucretia H., Mukherjee, Rajatish, Gamon, Michael
• Granted Patent: US 8,209,617 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/700
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/345 Summarisation for human users
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]

Abstract

A summarization system and method. The summarization method includes utilizing a first body of information to obtain a second body of information, which is identified (by a hyperlink, an attachment identifier, a reference, etc.) in the first body of information. A summary of the obtained second body of information is then computed. The computed summary can be displayed to a user and/or stored for later use.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

utilizing a first body of information to obtain a second body of information, which is identified in the first body of information;

computing a focused summary of the second body of information; and

outputting the computed summary.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein utilizing the first body of information to obtain the second body of information comprises finding an identifier to the second body of information in the first body of information.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein computing the focused summary of the second body of information comprises:

computing a focus of at least a portion of the first body of information; and

computing the focused summary as a function of the computed focus.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the first body of information is a web page with an embedded hyperlink to the second body of information.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the first body of information is in a same form as the second body of information.

6. The method of claim 1 where the first body of information is in a different form than the second body of information.

7. A method comprising:

utilizing a first body of information to obtain a second body of information, which is identified in the first body of information;

computing a summary of the second body of information; and

outputting the computed summary,

wherein the first body of information comprises at least one message and the second body of information comprises an attachment to the at least one message.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the at least one message is an electronic mail message.

9. The method of claim 7 wherein computing a summary of the second body of information comprises computing a focused summary by:

computing a focus of at least a portion of the at least one message; and

computing the focused summary of the attachment as a function of the computed focus.

10. The method of claim 7 wherein the first body of information is a message thread comprising a plurality of messages that includes the at least one message, and the second body of information is the attachment to the at least one message of the plurality of messages in the message thread.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the message thread is an electronic mail message thread.

12. The method of claim 10 wherein computing a summary of the second body of information comprises computing a focused summary by:

computing a focus based on at least some of the plurality of messages in the message thread; and

computing the focused summary of the attachment as a function of the computed focus.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein computing a focus based on at least some of the plurality of messages comprises:

determining, from the message thread, an oldest message that is related to the message to which the second body of information is attached; and

utilizing the oldest related message, the message to which the second body of information is attached and all intervening messages in the message thread to compute the focus.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein the message to which the second body of information is attached is a newest message in the thread of messages.

15. A user interface comprising:

a first section configured to display at least a portion of a first body of information; and

a second section configured to display a summary of a second body of information,

wherein the second body of information is related to the first body of information.

16. The user interface of claim 15 wherein the first body of information comprises an electronic mail message and the second body of information comprises an attachment to the electronic mail message.

17. The user interface of claim 15 wherein the second section is further configured to display a focused summary of the second body of information.

18. The user interface of claim 15 wherein the focused summary is based on a focus computed from at least a part of the first body of information.

19. The user interface of claim 15 wherein the first body of information is a message thread comprising a plurality of messages, and the second body of information is an attachment to one of the plurality of messages in the message thread.

20. A computer system comprising the user interface of claim 15.