SEARCHING DIGITAL CONTENT

• US 20160132194A1
• Filed: 01/29/2015
• Published: 05/12/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 11/06/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Dropbox, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Dropbox, Inc.
• Inventors: Kleinpeter, Tom, Wen, Tina, Grue, Anthony, Haven, Andrew
• Granted Patent: US 10,725,614 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/58 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• 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 16/587 using geographical or spatial information, e.g. location
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus

Abstract

One or more embodiments allow a user to search a gallery of digital content. In particular, a user can interact with a digital content system to search for, and identify, one or more digital content items (e.g., photos, videos, audio) within a collection of digital content. For instance, the digital content system can maintain tokens with respect to a collection of digital content and associate the tokens with digital content items within the collection of digital content. The digital content system can also provide a gallery of digital content items within a view area of a graphical user interface. Upon receiving a search query, the digital content system can identify a token and identify digital content items corresponding to the token. The digital content system can further provide a new or modified gallery within the view area of the graphical user interface based on the identified digital content items.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

maintaining one or more tokens with respect to a collection of digital content, each of the one or more tokens corresponding to a characteristic of at least one digital content item within the collection of digital content;

associating, using at least one processor, each of the one or more tokens with one or more digital content items within the collection of digital content based on one or more characteristics of each digital content item within the collection of digital content;

providing, to a user, a gallery of digital content items within a view area of a graphical user interface, the gallery of digital content items comprising the collection of digital content;

determining that a search query relates to a first token of the one or more tokens;

based on determining that the search query relates to the first token, identifying, from among the collection of digital content, one or more digital content items associated with the first token; and

providing, to the user, a modified gallery of digital content items within the view area of the graphical user interface based on the identified one or more digital content items.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein associating each of the one or more tokens with one or more digital content items comprises generating an index for each of the one or more tokens, wherein the index comprises a reference to one or more digital content items from the collection of digital content.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the reference comprises a day.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein generating the index comprises identifying one or more characteristics of digital content within the collection of digital content items associated with the first token.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein identifying the one or more digital content items associated with the first token comprises identifying an index corresponding to the first token.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining that the search query corresponds to a second token.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising identifying each digital content item of the one or more digital content items associated with both the first token and the second token.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein providing the modified gallery is further based on the identified digital content items associated with both the first token and the second token.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the collection of digital content comprise one or more photos or videos.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more tokens correspond to one or more dates.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more tokens correspond to one or more locations.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more tokens correspond to one or more holidays.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the search query comprises at least one character.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein determining that the search query relates to the first token comprises:

presenting a listing of token suggestions related to the at least one character of the search query;

receiving a user selection of a token suggestion from the listing of token suggestions; and

wherein identifying one or more digital content items is further based on the selected token suggestion.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the selected token suggestion comprises multiple tokens.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the modified gallery comprises providing only the identified digital content items within the modified gallery.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the modified gallery comprises modifying the gallery of digital content items by removing any digital content items within the gallery of digital content items that are not the identified one or more digital content items.

18. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing an option to identify one or more additional digital content items from among the collection of digital content related to the identified digital content items; and

providing a further modified gallery of digital content items within the view area of the graphical user interface based on the identified digital content items and the one or more additional digital content items within the graphical user interface.

19. A method comprising:

sending, from a client device, a digital content item to an online content management system;

receiving, from the online content management system, analysis information associated with the digital content item, the analysis information related to a characteristic of the digital content item;

determining a token based on the analysis information, the token representative of the characteristic of the digital content item;

associating, using at least one processor, the digital content item with the token;

determining, using the at least one processor, that a search query from a user relates to the token; and

based on determining that the search query relates to the token, presenting the digital content item to the user via a graphical user interface on the client device.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the analysis information comprises location information or content information associated with the digital content item.