Estimating the degree of change of web pages

• US 5,890,164 A
• Filed: 06/24/1996
• Issued: 03/30/1999
• Est. Priority Date: 06/24/1996
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Oracle America, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Sun Microsystems Incorporated (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Nielsen, Jakob
• Primary Examiner(s): Lintz, Paul R.
• Application Number:
  US08/668,893
• Time in Patent Office: 1,009 Days
• Field of Search: 707/10, 707/201, 707/203, 707/204
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99952 Coherency, e.g. same view to multiple users

Abstract

When monitoring a large number of information sources such as pages on the World Wide Web, a user may not have time to normally look at each source at regular intervals. A background process will connect to each source maintained in a database and calculate an estimate of how much the source has changed since the last time a user viewed it. The amount of change is graphically displayed to the user as part of an icon or file listing. The user can thus determine whether the amount of new material justifies connecting to the source.

Claims

1. A system for displaying information about changes in files on one or more file servers, comprising:

a. a network;

b. one or more file servers connected to said network; and

c. a computer, having a database and a display, connected to said network and configured to periodically access files listed in said database over said network and to determine the amount the files have changed since the last time a user viewed the files and to display an indication of how much a file has changed.

2. The system of claim 1 in which said computer accesses files listed in said database in a background mode.

3. The system of claim 1 in which said computer determines the amount files have changed by comparing information stored in said database at a time a user last viewed the file with information in the file at the time of access.

4. The system of claim 3 in which comparing information involves comparing word counts for the file.

5. The system of claim 4 in which comparing word counts includes deriving a change estimate by determining the absolute value of the difference between a first word count at the time a user last viewed the file and a second word count at the time of access and dividing that absolute value by the maximum of the first word count and the second word count.

6. The system of claim 3 in which comparing information involves comparing signature numbers for paragraphs of the file.

7. The system of claim 6 in which signature numbers are calculated for a paragraph by assigning white space characters and punctuation a value of zero, assigning upper case characters their corresponding lowercase counterpart'"'"'s ASCII value;

eliminating comments, summing all character values in said paragraph and saving only the low order 32 bits.

8. The system of claim 5 in which comparing signature numbers for paragraphs of the file includes matching corresponding signature numbers.

9. The system of claim 8 in which a paragraph change estimate is calculated for each paragraph by determining the absolute value of the difference between the paragraph signature number at the time a user last viewed the file and the paragraph signature number at the time of access and dividing that absolute value by the maximum of a number of paragraphs at the time a user last viewed the file and a number of paragraphs at the time of access.

10. The system of claim 1 in which said computer determines the amount files have changed by calculating a change estimate based on word count and a change estimate based on paragraph signature numbers and by selecting the larger value of change estimates as the value of the amount files have changed.

11. The system of claim 10 in which said computer displays a glyph indicating approximately the amount files have changed.

12. The system of claim 10 in which said computer displays an icon indicating approximately the amount files have changed.

13. The system of claim 10 in which said computer displays an icon with a pie chart indicating approximately the amount files have changed.

14. The system of claim 1 in which said database includes one or more records, each record containing a field containing a URL, a word count when a file was last seen by a user;

a number of paragraphs and a list of signature numbers;

a date of last user access to said file and an estimate of change.

15. Apparatus for displaying information about changes in files, comprising:

a. a memory having a database stored thereon, said database containing a list of file locations; and

b. a computer, connected to said memory and configured to periodically access files listed in said database to determine an estimate of the amount the files have changed since the last time a user viewed the files and to display that estimate for the user.

16. A method for displaying information about changes in files comprising the steps of:

a. providing an element for performing the step of storing information about a file;

b. providing an element for performing the step of subsequently accessing the file without a user viewing it;

c. providing an element for performing the step of calculating an estimate of change of the file between a time when a user last viewed the file and a subsequent access of said file; and

d. providing an element for performing the step of displaying an estimate of change when information about the file is displayed.

17. A computer program product, comprising:

a. a memory; and

b. a computer program stored on said memory, said computer program containing instructions for storing information about a file when a user views the file, subsequently accessing the file without a user viewing it, calculating an estimate of change of the file between a time when a user last viewed the file and a subsequent access of said file; and

displaying an estimate of change when information about the file is displayed.