Method and System for Cross-Platform Searching of Multiple Information Sources and Devices

• US 20150186538A1
• Filed: 12/22/2014
• Published: 07/02/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 12/31/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Visier Solutions Inc. (Visier, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: ABBYY Development LLC
• Inventors: Yan, David, Anisimovich, Konstantin
• Granted Patent: US 10,209,859 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/14 Details of searching files based on file metadata
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/156 Query results presentation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/16 File or folder operations, e.g. details of user interfaces specifically adapted to file systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/168 Details of user interfaces specifically adapted to file systems, e.g. browsing and visualisation, 2d or 3d GUIs query results presentation G06F16/156
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2246 Trees, e.g. B+trees
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/248 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/26 Visual data mining; Browsing structured data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/285 Clustering or classification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/40 of multimedia data, e.g. slideshows comprising image and additional audio data retrieval of still image data G06F16/50; retrieval of audio data G06F16/60; retrieval of video data G06F16/70
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/483 using metadata automatically derived from the content
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/5846 using extracted text
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/5866 using information manually generated, e.g. tags, keywords, comments, manually generated location and time information
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/907 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04817 using icons graphical or visual programming using iconic symbols G06F8/34
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04842 Selection of displayed objects or displayed text elements G06F3/0482 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/12 Use of codes for handling textual entities
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/1815 : Semantic context, e.g. disambiguation of the recognition hypotheses based on word meaning

Abstract

An illustrative method according to a set of instructions stored on a memory of a computing device includes receiving, by a processor of the computing device, a search input. The method further includes searching, by the processor, a plurality of electronic storage locations for electronic files related to the search input. The method further includes determining, by the processor, the presence of an electronic file on a first electronic storage location of the plurality of electronic storage locations that is related to the search input. The method further includes displaying, by the processor, on a graphical user interface (GUI), representative information of the electronic file. The representative information includes descriptive information relating to the electronic file.

Claims

1. A method according to a set of instructions stored on a memory of a computing device, the method comprising:

receiving, by a processor of the computing device, a search input;

searching, by the processor, a plurality of electronic storage locations for electronic files related to the search input;

determining, by the processor, the presence of an electronic file on a first electronic storage location of the plurality of electronic storage locations that is related to the search input; and

displaying, by the processor, on a graphical user interface (GUI), representative information of the electronic file, wherein the representative information comprises descriptive information relating to the electronic file.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the representative information further comprises location information indicating an actual physical location of the first electronic storage location.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the first electronic storage location and a second electronic storage location of the plurality of electronic storage locations are separate electronic devices.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

determining, by the processor, the presence of a second electronic file on the second electronic storage location that is related to the search input; and

displaying, by the processor, on the GUI, second representative information of the second electronic file, wherein the second representative information comprises descriptive information relating to the second electronic file.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the first electronic storage location further comprises a first storage location processor, wherein the second electronic storage location comprises a second storage location processors, and further wherein the first storage location comprises a first operating system that is executed by the first storage location processor and where the second storage location comprise a second operating system that is executed by the second storage location processor.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the first operating system and the second operating system are different types of operating systems.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the different types of operating systems comprise more than one different operating system.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of electronic storage locations comprise a tablet electronic device, a mobile smart phone device, a laptop computing device, a desktop computing device, a digital camera device, a cloud storage system, a smart television device, a portable digital media player device, or a wearable electronic device.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining, by the processor, the presence of a plurality of electronic files on the plurality of electronic storage locations that are related to the search input;

grouping, by the processor, clusters of the plurality of electronic files by data type; and

displaying, by the processor and on the GUI, cluster representative information regarding each of the clusters of the plurality of electronic files, wherein the cluster representative information comprises descriptive information relating to the data type of each of the clusters.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the cluster representative information further comprises the representative information of the electronic file.

11. The method of claim 9, further comprising:

receiving, by the processor, a second input associated with a first cluster of the clusters of the plurality of electronic files; and

displaying, by the processor, in response to the second input, representative information of individual electronic files of the first cluster.

12. The method of claim 9, wherein a first cluster of a first data type is displayed on the GUI more prominently than a second cluster of a second data type.

13. The method claim 9, wherein the displaying of the clusters comprises displaying the clusters as a hierarchical tree structure.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the displaying of the clusters further comprises displaying a number indicator with each of the clusters, wherein the number indicator indicates the number of search results associated with each of the clusters.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the electronic file comprises an e-mail message.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the electronic file further comprises an attached electronic file to the e-mail message.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein the electronic file comprises a contact information file.

18. The method of claim 1, wherein the searching comprises morphological searching, metadata searching, tag searching, full text searching, fuzzy searching, or ontology-based semantic searching.

19. An apparatus comprising:

a memory;

a processor coupled to the memory; and

a first set of instructions stored on the memory and configured to be executed by the processor, wherein the processor is configured to;

receive a search input;

search a plurality of electronic storage locations for electronic files related to the search input;

determine the presence of an electronic file on a first electronic storage location of the plurality of electronic storage locations that is related to the search input; and

display on a graphical user interface (GUI), representative information of the electronic file, wherein the representative information comprises descriptive information relating to the electronic file.

20. A non-transitory computer readable medium having instructions stored thereon that, upon execution by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations, wherein the instructions comprise:

instructions to receive a search input;

instructions to search a plurality of electronic storage locations for electronic files related to the search input;

instructions to determine the presence of an electronic file on a first electronic storage location of the plurality of electronic storage locations that is related to the search input; and

instructions to display on a graphical user interface (GUI), representative information of the electronic file, wherein the representative information comprises descriptive information relating to the electronic file.