IDENTIFYING A TOPIC-RELEVANT SUBJECT

• US 20110173210A1
• Filed: 01/08/2010
• Published: 07/14/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 01/08/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: THIONE, GIOVANNI LORENZO, COLLINS, IAN ROBERT, AHN, DAVID DONGJAH, SALVETTI, FRANCO, STERRETT, TOBY TAKEO, BIENIOSEK, MICHAEL PAUL
• Granted Patent: US 8,954,434 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/748
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/313 Selection or weighting of terms for indexing

Abstract

The present technology is related to identifying, from within a corpus of documents, a subject (e.g., person, location, date, etc.) that is relevant to a topic and that is usable to enhance a topic-describing document. Documents within the corpus of documents share a link structure, such that some documents include hyperlinks that enable navigation to the topic-describing document, and the topic-describing document includes hyperlinks that enable navigation to other documents. Text of documents within the corpus is parsed to identify the subject, and a context of the subject suggests a degree of relevance of the subject to the topic. An enhancement type of the subject is determined, and a version of the topic-describing document is enhanced to include a presentation of the subject.

Claims

1. One or more computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon that, when executed on a computing device, cause the computing device to perform a method of identifying, from within a corpus of documents, a subject that is relevant to a topic and that is usable to enhance a topic-describing document, the method comprising:

retrieving the topic-describing document and a linked document, wherein a hyperlink is embedded within text of the linked document that, when input, enables navigation to the topic-describing document;

parsing text of the linked document to identify the subject, wherein a context of the subject suggests a degree of relevance of the subject to the topic;

determining an enhancement type of the subject, wherein an enhancement type is a category of supplemental information that is usable to enhance the topic-describing document;

transforming a first version of the topic-describing document into an enhanced version of the topic-describing document, wherein the enhanced version includes a presentation of the subject; and

storing the enhanced version of the topic-describing document to be presented at runtime.

2. The one or more computer readable media of claim 1, wherein the topic-describing document and the linked document are reference documents within a collection of hyperlinked documents.

3. The one or more computer readable media of claim 1, wherein the subject is geographically significant.

4. The one or more computer readable media of claim 1, wherein the subject is temporally significant.

5. The one or more computer readable media of claim 1, wherein determining the enhancement type of the subject comprises analyzing metadata associated with the subject.

6. The one or more computer readable media of claim 5, wherein the metadata includes geo-coordinates of a location of the subject.

7. The one or more computer readable media of claim 1, wherein determining the enhancement type of the subject comprises identifying within text of the linked document a date-page hyperlink that forms at least part of the context of the subject and that navigates to a date-describing reference document.

8. The one or more computer readable media of claim 1, wherein the enhanced version includes a map presenting an indication of a geographic location of the subject.

9. The one or more computer readable media of claim 1, wherein the enhanced version includes a timeline presenting an indication of a date that is associated with the subject.

10. The computer readable media of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises:

applying a rule to the context of the subject to determine that the degree of relevance of the subject to the topic satisfies a relevance threshold.

11. The one or more computer readable media of claim 1, wherein another hyperlink is embedded within text of the linked document that, when input, enables navigation to a third document that describes the subject.

12. The one or more computer readable media of claim 11, wherein the method further comprises:

referencing the third document to disambiguate the subject.

13. The one or more computer readable media of claim 11, wherein the method further comprises:

identifying within text of the third document a date-page hyperlink that is associated with a date relevant to the subject and that navigates to a date-describing reference document

14. A system, which includes a processor and a computer readable medium, that identifies, from within a corpus of documents, a subject that is relevant to a topic and that is usable to enhance a topic-describing document, the system comprising:

a document retriever that retrieves a first set of documents, each of which includes a respective in-hyperlink that, when input, navigates to the topic-describing document, and a second set of documents, each of which is referenced by a respective out-hyperlink that is embedded in text of the topic-describing document;

a parser that parses text or HTML of the topic-describing document, text or HTML of the first set of documents, text or HTML of the second set of documents, or a combination thereof, to generate a set of potentially relevant subjects;

a subject evaluator that applies a rule to a respective context of each potentially relevant subject, wherein application of the rule identifies a relevant subject that is relevant to the topic;

an enhancement-type identifier that determines an enhancement type of the relevant subject, wherein an enhancement type is a category of supplemental information that is usable to enhance the topic-describing document; and

a document enhancer that transforms a first version of the topic-describing document into an enhanced version of the topic-describing document, which includes a presentation of the relevant subject.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the relevant subject is geographically significant.

16. The system of claim 14, wherein the relevant subject is temporally significant.

17. The system of claim 14, wherein the enhancement-type identifier includes a metadata analyzer that evaluates metadata associated with the relevant subject to determine the enhancement type of the relevant subject.

18. The system of claim 14, wherein the enhanced version includes a map presenting an indication of a geographic location of the subject.

19. The system of claim 14, wherein the enhanced version includes a timeline presenting an indication of a date that is associated with the subject.

20. A computer-implemented method, which is executed using a processor and computer readable media, of identifying, from within a corpus of documents, a subject that is relevant to a topic and that is usable to enhance a topic-describing document, the method comprising:

retrieving the topic-describing document and a linked document, wherein a hyperlink is embedded within text of the linked document that, when input, enables navigation to the topic-describing document;

grammatically parsing text of the linked document to identify the subject, wherein a grammatical context of the subject suggests a degree of relevance of the subject to the topic;

identifying within text of the linked document a date-page hyperlink that forms at least part of the grammatical context of the subject and that navigates to a date-describing reference document, which suggests that the subject is of temporal significance;

transforming a first version of the topic-describing document into an enhanced version, which includes a timeline that indicates the temporal significance of the subject; and

storing the enhanced version of the topic-describing document to be presented at runtime.