CUSTOMIZED E-BOOKS

• US 20140122990A1
• Filed: 10/25/2012
• Published: 05/01/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 10/25/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Puppin, Diego
• Granted Patent: US 9,430,776 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/229
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/117 Tagging; Marking up details of markup languages G06F40/143; Designating a block; Setting of attributes style sheets, e.g. eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation [XSLT], G06F40/154
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/131 Fragmentation of text files, e.g. creating reusable text-blocks; Linking to fragments, e.g. using XInclude; Namespaces
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/197 Version control for software G06F8/71
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data

Abstract

An e-book management system receives a request for an e-book from a user client operated by a user. The e-book management system accesses a user profile associated with the user and an e-book profile associated with the e-book. The e-book profile contains content sections referencing portions of the e-book, and containing information describing the characteristics of those portions. Based on the user profile, display settings for the e-book are generated. The display settings contain instructions describing how to transform the e-book based on the content sections. The display settings may be used by the e-book management system to transform the e-book, which can then be sent to the user client. Alternatively, the display settings may be sent to the user client, where they may be used to transform the e-book prior to display.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for displaying a customized version of an e-book on a user client, comprising:

receiving a request for a portion of an e-book from the user client operated by a user;

accessing a user profile for the user, the user profile describing the reading preferences of the user;

accessing an e-book profile associated with the e-book, the e-book profile describing a plurality of content sections associated with portions of the e-book, each content section having one or more section attributes describing an associated portion of the e-book;

determining e-book display settings for the requested portion of the e-book based on the user profile and the e-book profile, the e-book display settings comprising instructions indicating how the requested portion of the e-book should be displayed on the user client; and

generating a modified version of the requested portion of the e-book, using the display settings.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein determining the e-book display settings further comprises:

determining section transformations, the section transformations describing one or more transformations that may be applied to content sections; and

determining target attributes, the target attributes indicating the section attributes that must be present on a content section before the section transformation will be applied.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein determining the section transformations further comprises selecting a transformation from the group comprising:

hiding a section of the e-book, highlighting a section of the e-book, substituting a section of the e-book, and scaling a section of the e-book.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein generating a modified version of the requested portion of the e-book, using the display settings, further comprises:

sending the e-book display settings to the user client, wherein the user client is adapted to display the e-book according to the instructions in the display settings.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein generating a modified version of the requested portion of the e-book, using the display settings, further comprises:

transforming the requested portion of the e-book according to the instructions in the display settings; and

sending the transformed portion of the e-book to the user client.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining a content section associated with a portion of the e-book based on formatting information in the e-book; and

determining a section attribute describing characteristics of an associated content section by applying one or more of the group comprising natural language processing, machine-learned classification, and sentiment analysis.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein determining the e-book display settings further comprises:

determining section transformations, the section transformations describing one or more transformations that may be applied to content sections; and

determining section references, the section references describing the content sections where the section transformations may be applied.

8. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing executable computer program instructions, the instructions executable to perform steps comprising:

receiving a request for a portion of an e-book from the user client operated by a user;

accessing a user profile for the user, the user profile describing the reading preferences of the user;

accessing an e-book profile associated with the e-book, the e-book profile describing a plurality of content sections associated with portions of the e-book, each content section having one or more section attributes describing an associated portion of the e-book;

determining e-book display settings for the requested portion of the e-book based on the user profile and the e-book profile, the e-book display settings comprising instructions indicating how the requested portion of the e-book should be displayed on the user client; and

generating a modified version of the requested portion of the e-book, using the display settings.

9. The computer-readable medium of claim 8, wherein the instructions for determining the e-book display settings further comprise instructions for:

determining section transformations, the section transformations describing one or more transformations that may be applied to content sections; and

determining target attributes, the target attributes indicating the section attributes that must be present on a content section before the section transformation will be applied.

10. The computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the instructions for determining the section transformations further comprise instructions for selecting a transformation from the group comprising:

hiding a section of the e-book, highlighting a section of the e-book, substituting a section of the e-book, and scaling a section of the e-book.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 8, wherein the instructions for generating a modified version of the requested portion of the e-book, using the display settings, further comprise instructions for:

sending the e-book to the user client, wherein the user client is adapted to display the e-book according to the instructions in the display settings.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 8, wherein the instructions for generating a modified version of the requested portion of the e-book, using the display settings, further comprise instructions for:

transforming the requested portion of the e-book according to the instructions in the display settings; and

sending the transformed portion of the e-book to the user client.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 8, further comprising instructions for:

determining a content section associated with a portion of the e-book based on formatting information in the e-book; and

determining a section attribute describing characteristics of an associated content section by applying one or more of the group comprising natural language processing, machine-learned classification, and sentiment analysis.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 8, wherein the instructions for determining the e-book display settings further comprise instructions for:

determining section transformations, the section transformations describing one or more transformations that may be applied to content sections when displayed on the user client; and

determining section references, the section references describing the content sections where the section transformations may be applied when the content sections are displayed on the user client.

15. A system comprising:

a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing executable computer program instructions, the instructions executable to perform steps comprising;

receiving a request for a portion of an e-book from the user client operated by a user;

accessing a user profile for the user, the user profile describing the reading preferences of the user;

accessing an e-book profile associated with the e-book, the e-book profile describing a plurality of content sections associated with portions of the e-book, each content section having one or more section attributes describing an associated portion of the e-book;

determining e-book display settings for the requested portion of the e-book based on the user profile and the e-book profile, the e-book display settings comprising instructions indicating how the requested portion of the e-book should be displayed on the user client; and

generating a modified version of the requested portion of the e-book, using the display settings; and

a processor for executing the computer program instructions.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the instructions for determining the e-book display settings further comprise instructions for:

determining section transformations, the section transformations describing one or more transformations that may be applied to content sections; and

determining target attributes, the target attributes indicating the section attributes that must be present on a content section before the section transformation will be applied.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the instructions for determining the section transformations further comprise instructions for selecting a transformation from the group comprising:

hiding a section of the e-book, highlighting a section of the e-book, substituting a section of the e-book, and scaling a section of the e-book.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the instructions for generating a modified version of the requested portion of the e-book, using the display settings, further comprise instructions for:

sending the e-book to the user client, wherein the user client is adapted to display the e-book according to instructions in the display settings.

19. The system of claim 15, wherein the instructions for generating a modified version of the requested portion of the e-book, using the display settings, further comprise instructions for:

transforming the requested portion of the e-book according to the instructions in the display settings; and

sending the transformed portion of the e-book to the user client.

20. The system of claim 15, further comprising instructions for:

determining a content section associated with a portion of the e-book based on formatting information in the e-book; and

determining a section attribute describing characteristics of an associated content section by applying one or more of the group comprising natural language processing, machine-learned classification, and sentiment analysis.