INFORMATION DISPLAY APPARATUS, INFORMATION DISPLAY METHOD, AND RECORDING MEDIUM

• US 20100077291A1
• Filed: 09/17/2009
• Published: 03/25/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/25/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Fujitsu Limited
• Original Assignee: Fujitsu Limited
• Inventors: Fukui, Masayuki, Matsumoto, Tatsuro, Hara, Masahiro, Takahashi, Eiichi, Yano, Ai
• Granted Patent: US 8,312,369 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/230
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

An apparatus includes a context information extracting part that monitors a state of the apparatus and extracts context information indicative of the state; a note information saving part that saves note information in association with context information when the note information for displaying is registered; a context information similarity evaluating part that determines, for each piece of the note information, similarity between the context information extracted by the context information extracting part at a certain point in time and context information which is associated with note information saved by the note information saving part; and a note information display part that displays the note information saved in the note information saving part in a display mode in accordance with the determined similarity of the note information.

Claims

1. An apparatus which displays various types of information, the apparatus comprising:

a context information extracting part that monitors a state of the apparatus and extracts context information indicative of the state;

a note information saving part that saves note information in association with context information when the note information for displaying is registered;

a context information similarity evaluating part that determines, for each piece of the note information, similarity between the context information extracted by the context information extracting part at a certain point in time and context information which is associated with the note information saved by the note information saving part; and

a note information display part that displays the note information saved in the note information saving part in a display mode in accordance with the determined similarity of the note information.

2. The apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

a note information creating part that creates the note information in accordance with input information; and

a context associating part that generates note information with context by associating the note information created by the note information creating part with the context information extracted by the context information extracting part, when the note information is created,

wherein the note information saving part saves the note information with context generated by the context associating part.

3. The apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein the context information extracting part extracts, as context information, window composition information which is information identifying a window screen contained in a screen being displayed on the apparatus, and

wherein the note information saving part saves the note information associated with the window composition information at the time of registration of the note information.

4. The apparatus according to claim 3,

wherein a set of window screens which are indicated in the window composition information extracted by the context information extracting part at the certain point in time is defined as W, and a set of window screens which are indicated in the window composition information associated with note information i, which is included in the note information saved in the note information saving part, is defined as W_i,

the context information similarity evaluating part calculates similarity S_i representing the similarity of the note information i from a number of elements N_i in the set W and the number of elements Ni_i in a product set of the set W_i and the set W according to:

5. The apparatus according to claim 3,

wherein a set of window screens which are indicated in the window composition information extracted by the context information extracting part at the certain point in time is defined as W, and a set of window screens which are indicated in the window composition information associated with note information i, which is included in the note information saved in the note information saving part, is defined as W_i,

the context information similarity evaluating part calculates similarity S_i representing the similarity of the note information i from the number of elements Nu_i in a sum set of the set W_i and the set W and the number of elements Ni_i in the product set of the set W_i and the set W according to:

6. The apparatus according to claim 3,

wherein the context information extracting part gives a weighted value to respective window screens included in a screen that is being displayed on the apparatus at the time of registration of the note information, the weighted value based on the display mode of the window screen, and extracts the window composition information including the weighted values for the respective window screens as context information,

wherein the note information saving part saves the note information associated with the extracted window composition information including the weighted values, and

wherein the context information similarity evaluating part that evaluates the similarity on the weighted values.

7. The apparatus according to claim 6,

wherein a set of window screens that are indicated in the window composition information extracted by the context information extracting part at the certain point in time is defined as W, and a set of window screens that are indicated in the window composition information associated with note information i, which is included in the note information saved in the note information saving part, is defined as W_i, and a function is defined as f(w,W) that, if element w in the set W_i is included in the set W, returns a weighted value given by the context information extracting part to the element w, and that returns a value of 0 if the element w is not included in the set W, and

wherein the context information similarity evaluating part calculates similarity S_i which represents the similarity of the note information i from the number of elements N_i in the set W according to:

8. The apparatus according to claim 6,

wherein a set of window screens that are indicated in the window composition information extracted by the context information extracting part at the certain point in time is defined as W, and a set of window screens that are indicated in the window composition information associated with the note information i, which is included in the note information saved in the note information saving part, is defined as W_i, and a function is defined as f(w,W) that, if element w in the set W_i is included in the set W, returns a weighted value given by the context information extracting part to the element w, and that returns a value of 0 if the element w is not included in the set W, and

wherein the context information similarity evaluating part calculates similarity S_i which represents the similarity of the note information i from the number of elements Nu_i in the sum set of the set W_i and the set W according to:

9. The apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein max( ) is defined as a function which returns a maximum value among arguments, and

wherein the context information similarity evaluating part that determines similarity S_i which represents the similarity of respective n pieces of note information i (where i=1, 2, . . . , n) saved in the note information saving part and thereafter calculates a value S′

_i which is a normalization of the similarity S_i according to;

10. The apparatus according to claim 7,

Wherein the note information saving part further saves, for respective window screens included in a screen which is being displayed on the apparatus at the time of registration of the note information, the number of pieces of window composition information including information identifying the window screen from the window composition information respectively associated with all pieces of note information saved in the note information saving part, as the number of links l for the window screen, and

wherein the context information similarity evaluating part calculates the similarity S_i for the note information i by defining the function f(w,W) as a function, which returns a value which is calculated by dividing the weighted value given by the context information extracting part to the element w by the number of links l for the element w if the element w of the set W_i is included in the set W, and returns a value of 0 if the element w is not included in the set W.

11. The apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein the context extracting part extracts the context information at certain time intervals from the time at which the note information is registered to the certain point in time, and outputs a sequence of extracted information as context history information, and

wherein the context information similarity evaluating part determines, from the context history information, the similarity St_i at a date/time t at the certain time intervals from the time of registration to the certain point in time for note information i, which is included in the note information saved in the note information saving part, and calculates the similarity S_i for the note information by defining a function A(t) which indicates a weighted value corresponding to the similarity St_i at the date/time t as a function whose value monotonically increases with respect to an increase in t, according to:

12. The apparatus according to claim 3,

wherein the context information extracting part further extracts one or more of information on day of the week at the time of registration of the note information, information on the time of registration, information on the weather at the time of registration, information on a temperature at the time of registration, and information on a place where registration of the note information is made, or any combination thereof, as various types of context information together with the window composition information,

wherein the note information saving part saves the note information associated with the various types of context information at the time of registration of the note information extracted by the context information extracting part,

wherein the context information similarity evaluating part determines, for note information i which is included in the note information saved in the note information saving part, the similarity of each item of the various types of context information based on a value at the time of registration of the note information i and the value at the certain point in time, and further calculates similarity S_i which represents the similarity of the note information i when a function that returns the similarity between the value c at the time of registration of the note information i and the value C at the certain point in time for context of item j is defined as fj(c,C), according to:

13. The apparatus according to claim 2, further comprising

a context information selecting part that obtains an indication of selection from the context information extracted by the context information extracting part,

wherein the context associating part that generates note information with context by associating the note information created by the note information creating part with the context information selected by the indication obtained by the context information selecting part.

14. The apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein the note information display part displays a display area for the note information saved in the note information saving part with a level of transparency which depends on the similarity of the note information.

15. The apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein the note information display part displays a display area for the note information saved in the note information saving part in a size that depends on the similarity of the note information.

16. The apparatus according to claim 1,

wherein the note information display part displays only note information whose similarity is greater than or equal to a certain threshold value in a display mode that is determined based on the similarity among pieces of note information saved in the note information saving part.

17. The apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising:

a note information selecting part that obtains an indication of selection from the note information displayed by the note information display part; and

a context recovery part that recovers the state of the apparatus at the time of registration of the note information which is selected by the indication obtained by the note information selecting part based on the context information associated with the note information saved in the note information saving part.

18. The apparatus according to claim 17,

wherein the context information extracting part extracts, as context information, window composition information which is information identifying a window screen contained in a screen that is being displayed on the apparatus,

wherein the note information saving part saves the note information with which the window composition information at the time of registration of the note information is associated, and

wherein the context recovery part displays a window screen included in a screen that is being displayed on the apparatus when note information selected by the indication obtained by the note information selecting part is registered based on the window composition information associated with the note information saved in the note information saving part.

19. A method for displaying various types of information, the method comprising:

monitoring, by a context information extracting part, a state of a computer having a display apparatus for displaying the information and extracting context information indicative of the state;

saving, by a note information saving part, note information associated with the context information at a time of registration of the note information for display, in a storage device;

determining, by a context information similarity evaluating part, for each piece of the note information, similarity between the context information extracted by the context information extracting part at a certain point in time and context information which is associated with the note information saved in the storage device; and

displaying, by a note information display part, the note information saved in the storage device in a display mode in accordance with the determined similarity of the note information, on the display apparatus.

20. A computer readable storage medium storing a program for displaying various types of information, the program causing a computer to function as:

monitoring a state of the computer and extracting context information indicative of the state;

saving note information associated with the context information extracted at a time of registration of the note information for display, in a storage part of the computer;

determining, for each piece of the note information, similarity between the extracted context information at a certain point in time and context information which is associated with the note information saved in the storage part; and

displaying the note information saved in the storage part in a display mode in accordance with the determined similarity of the note information, on a display apparatus of the computer.