INFORMATION DISPLAY APPARATUS, INFORMATION DISPLAY METHOD, AND COMPUTER PROGRAM PRODUCT

• US 20090083261A1
• Filed: 09/18/2008
• Published: 03/26/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 09/26/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
• Inventors: Kawamura, Takahiro, Nagano, Shinichi, Cho, Kenta, Shimogori, Yumiko, Inaba, Masumi
• Application Number:
  US12/212,740
• Publication Number:
  US 20090083261A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

A keyword expressing a search target and an instance of information associated with the keyword are extracted from a character string included in a web document acquired for the keyword, based on a topic ontology, a relationship between the instances is visualized in a first topic graph expressed by a size of a topic node and a length of a topic link, and a reference relationship between web documents, which are an information source, is visualized in a blog graph expressed by a blog node and a blog link.

Claims

1. An information display apparatus comprising:

a display unit;

a first accepting unit that accepts a keyword to be searched;

an acquiring unit that acquires one or a plurality of web documents associated with the keyword from a network;

a dividing unit that divides a character string included in each of the web document into one or a plurality of words;

a first storage unit that stores an ontology in which an instance expressing each of the words is defined in association with a class to which the instance belongs, and a relation between the instances is defined by a distance between the classes;

an instance extracting unit that extracts an instance matching each of the words divided by the dividing unit from the ontology;

a second storage unit that stores the web documents, each extracted instance in association with the web document including the word matching the instance, and stores a reference relationship indicating a connection between the web documents;

a first display-condition determining unit that determines a size of a topic node at a time of displaying each instance stored in the second storage unit as a topic node according to number of web documents associated with each instance, and determines a length of a topic link connecting a topic node of the instance expressing a word of the keyword to a topic node of an instance other than the instance according to a distance between classes to which each instance defined in the ontology belongs;

a second display-condition determining unit that determines a connection of web links, which connects the web nodes, at a time of displaying each web document stored in the second storage unit as a web node, based on the reference relationship of the web documents;

a first display control unit that displays a first graph in which a relationship between instances stored in the second storage unit is expressed by the topic node and the topic link, in a first display area of the display unit, based on a size of the topic node and the length of the topic link determined by the first display-condition determining unit; and

a second display control unit that displays a second graph in which the relationship between web documents stored in the second storage unit is expressed by the web node and the web link, in a second display area of the display unit, based on the connection of the web links determined by the second display-condition determining unit.

2. The information display apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising a structure analysis unit that extracts an acquisition source, from which another web document having a relationship with the web document acquired by the acquiring unit is acquired, from the web document, thereby acquiring the other web document from the acquisition source by the acquiring unit.

3. The information display apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the instance extracting unit extracts an instance matching each word divided by the dividing unit from instances in each class present within a range of a predetermined number of hops from a base class, designating a class to which an instance expressing the keyword belongs as the base class.

4. The information display apparatus according to claim 3, further comprising a second accepting unit that accepts designation of the number of hops, wherein

the instance extracting unit extracts the instance matching each word divided by the dividing unit from instances in each class present within the range of the number of hops accepted by the second accepting unit from the base class.

5. The information display apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising

a third display-condition determining unit that determines a size of a class node at the time of displaying a class to which each instance stored in the second storage unit belongs as the class node, according to number of instances for each class to which each instance belongs, and determines a length of a class link connecting a class node to which the instance expressing the word of the keyword belongs to a class node of a class other than the class according to a distance between classes defined in the ontology, wherein

the first display control unit displays a third graph in which a relationship between classes, to which each instance stored in the second storage unit belongs, is expressed by the class node and the class link, in the first display area of the display unit based on the size of the class node and the length of the class link determined by the third display-condition determining unit.

6. The information display apparatus according to claim 5, further comprising

a third accepting unit that accepts instruction information instructing changeover of the graph displayed in the first display area, wherein

the first display control unit displays one of the first graph and the third graph in the first display area of the display unit according to an instruction content accepted by the third accepting unit.

7. The information display apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

a fourth accepting unit that accepts selection of a specific topic node among topic nodes displayed in the first display area;

a relevant-information extracting unit that specifies an instance corresponding to the specific topic node to extract relevant information of the web document associated with the instance from the second storage unit; and

a third display control unit that displays the relevant information extracted by the relevant-information extracting unit in at least one of the first display area and the second display area.

8. The information display apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

a fifth accepting unit that accepts selection of a specific web node among the web nodes displayed in the second display area; and

a narrowing unit that specifies a web document corresponding to the specific web node and a web document having a reference relationship with the web document from the second storage unit, and extracts an instance associated with each of the web documents, wherein

the first display-condition determining unit determines the size of the topic node at the time of displaying each of the instances as the topic node, and the length of the topic link connecting the topic node of the instance expressing the word of the keyword to a topic node other than the topic node within a range of each instance extracted by the narrowing unit.

9. An information display method executed by an information display apparatus including a display unit, comprising:

accepting a keyword to be searched;

acquiring one or a plurality of web documents associated with the keyword from a network;

dividing a character string included in each of the web document into one or a plurality of words;

extracting an instance matching each of the words divided at the dividing from an ontology in which the instance expressing each of the words is defined in association with a class to which the instance belongs, and a relation between the instances is defined by a distance between the classes;

storing including storing each instance extracted from the ontology in association with the web document including the word matching the instance, and storing a reference relationship indicating a connection between the web documents;

first determining of determining a size of a topic node at a time of displaying each instance stored at the storing as a topic node according to number of web documents associated with each instance;

second determining of determining a length of a topic link connecting a topic node of the instance expressing a word of the keyword to a topic node of an instance other than the instance according to a distance between classes to which each instance defined in the ontology belongs;

third determining of determining a connection of web links, which connects the web nodes, at a time of displaying each web document stored at the storing as a web node, based on the reference relationship of the web documents;

first displaying of displaying a first graph in which a relationship between the instances stored at the storing is expressed by the topic node and the topic link, in a first display area of the display unit, based on a size of the topic node and the length of the topic link; and

second displaying of displaying a second graph in which the relationship between the web documents stored at the storing is expressed by the web node and the web link, in a second display area of the display unit, based on the connection of the web links.

10. A computer program product having a computer readable medium including programmed instructions executable by a computer provided with a display unit, wherein the instructions, when executed by the computer, cause the computer to perform:

accepting a keyword to be searched;

acquiring one or a plurality of web documents associated with the keyword from a network;

dividing a character string included in each of the web document into one or a plurality of words;

extracting an instance matching each of the words divided at the dividing from an ontology in which the instance expressing each of the words is defined in association with a class to which the instance belongs, and a relation between the instances is defined by a distance between the classes;

storing including storing each instance extracted at the extracting in association with the web document including the word matching the instance, and storing a reference relationship indicating a connection between the web documents;

first determining of determining a size of a topic node at a time of displaying each instance stored at the storing as a topic node according to number of web documents associated with each instance;

second determining of determining a length of a topic link connecting a topic node of the instance expressing a word of the keyword to a topic node of an instance other than the instance according to a distance between classes to which each instance defined in the ontology belongs;

third determining of determining a connection of web links, which connects the web nodes, at a time of displaying each web document stored at the storing as a web node, based on the reference relationship of the web documents;

first displaying of displaying a first graph in which a relationship between instances stored at the storing is expressed by the topic node and the topic link, in a first display area of the display unit, based on a size of the topic node and the length of the topic link; and

second displaying of displaying a second graph in which the relationship between web documents stored at the storing is expressed by the web node and the web link, in a second display area of the display unit, based on the connection of the web links.