System for collecting and displaying summary information from disparate sources

• US 6,675,350 B1
• Filed: 11/04/1999
• Issued: 01/06/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 11/04/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Abrams, Steven R., Jameson, David H.
• Primary Examiner(s): Feild, Joseph H.
• Assistant Examiner(s): LUDWIG, MATTHEW J
• Application Number:
  US09/433,872
• Time in Patent Office: 1,524 Days
• Field of Search: 707/501.1, 707/513, 715/501.1, 715/513, 715/500.1, 705/75
• US Class Current: 715/229
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/345 Summarisation for human users
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/202 Interconnection or interaction of plural electronic cash registers [ECR] or to host computer, e.g. network details, transfer of information from host to ECR or from ECR to ECR
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99934 Query formulation, input preparation, or translation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

A system is described for collecting and displaying summary information from disparate sources. The system provides for user customization of data acquisition parameters for locating articles to be summarized, user customization of parameters for parsing the located source material so as to extract headlines, and user organization of extracted headlines into groups.

Claims

1. A system for collecting and displaying summary information from disparate sources, comprising:

a user definable database of data sources, each said source being accessible via a protocol and having data acquisition procedures for taking the data into a common format, at least one of said sources having a protocol and data acquisition procedures disparate from the protocol and data acquisition procedures of at least one other source;

data acquisition means for locating each of said data sources, said data acquisition means having lookup parameters configurable by said user into one or more source acquisition profiles; and

parsing means for extracting summary information from each of said data sources, said parsing means having parser parameters configurable by said user into one or more parser profiles, each said parser profile being applicable to one or more of said data sources, such that when parser profile is applied to a data source said parser profile extracts said summary information, each said parser profile being configured by a trial-and-error method using immediate display of results of application of said parser parameters to said one or more data sources.

2. A system as in claim 1, further comprising means for displaying said summary information.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein said display means further comprises one or more of scrolling display means, tab display means, or a MyPortal view.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein said MyPortal view displays headlines within each of a plurality of smaller windows within a larger window, at least one of said smaller windows being independently sizable and movable within said larger window.

5. The system of claim 3, wherein said MyPortal view positions headlines on a page in accordance with a user defined organizational structure.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein constraints from an inventory of parser parameters are customized by the user, said constraints being applied to identify headlines for one or more sources.

7. The system of claim 4, wherein said constraints comprise any of:

text which must be present anywhere in a Universal Resource Locator (URL);

text which must not be present anywhere in said URL;

text which must be present at the beginning of said URL;

text which must be present at the end of said URL;

text which must not be present at the beginning of said URL; and

text which must not be present at the end of said URL.

8. The system of claim 3, wherein said display means positions headlines on a display in accordance with an organizational structure defined by a user.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one of said data sources contains content which changes over time, and wherein application of said parser profile corresponding to said data source results in extraction of summary information corresponding to said changed content.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein at least one of said lookup parameters is ascertained automatically.

11. The system of claim 9, wherein at least one of said parser parameters is ascertained automatically.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein each said parser profile contains a set of constrain g filters.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein said data acquisition means includes an algorithm for computing dates in a URL.

22. The method of claim 1, wherein said displaying step further comprises the step of positioning headlines on a display in accordance with an organizational structure defined by a user.

14. A configurator system comprising:

a parser for extracting summary information from a data source, said parser being operable through application of parser parameters configurable by a user; and

a user interface for presenting information from said data source to a user and for enabling said user to configure said parser parameters by selectively applying one or more of said parser parameters to said data source information and by displaying results from said application, wherein said user repeats said selection until satisfied with said displayed results.

15. A configurator system as in claim 14, wherein at least one of said parser parameters is automatically ascertained.

16. A method for collecting and displaying summary information from disparate sources, comprising the steps of:

using lookup parameters to locate data sources, said lookup parameters being configurable by a user into one or more source acquisition profiles; and

using parser parameters to extract summary information from each of said data sources, said parser parameters being configurable by said user into one or more parser profiles, each said parser profile being applicable to one or more of said data sources, such that when applied to a data source said parser profile extracts said summary information, each said parser profile being configured by a trial-and-error method using immediate display of results of application of said parser parameters to said one or more data sources.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising the step of displaying said summary information.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein said displaying step further comprises one or more of the steps of:

scrolling summaries across a ticker display;

presenting summaries behind one or more tabs;

displaying summaries in a MyPortal view.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein said MyPortal view displays headlines within each of a plurality of smaller windows within a larger window, at least one of said smaller windows being independently sizable and movable within said larger window.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein said MyPortal view positions headlines on a page in accordance with a user defined organizational structure.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein constraints from an inventory of parser parameters are customized by the user, said constraints being applied to identify headlines for one or more sources.

23. The method of claim 16, wherein at least one of said data sources contains content which changes over time, and wherein application of said parser profile corresponding to said data source results in extraction of summary information corresponding to said changed content.

24. The method of claim 23, wherein at least one of said lookup parameters is ascertained automatically.

25. The method of claim 23, wherein at least one of said parser parameters is ascertained automatically.

26. The method of claim 16, wherein each said parser profile contains a set of constraining filters.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein said constraining filters comprise any of:

text which must be present anywhere in a Universal Resource Locator (URL);

text which must not be present anywhere in said URL;

text which must be present at the beginning of said URL;

text which must be present at the end of said URL;

text which must not be present at the beginning of said URL; and

text which must not be present at the end of said URL.

28. The method of claim 16, wherein said lookup parameters include an algorithm for computing dates in a URL.

29. A method of presenting summary information, comprising the steps of:

applying parser parameters to extract summary information from a data source, said parser parameters being configurable by a user;

presenting information from said data source to a user;

enabling said user to configure said parser parameters by selectively applying one or more of said parser parameters to said data source information; and

displaying results from said selective application, wherein said user repeats said selection and application until satisfied with said displayed results.

30. The method of claim 29, wherein at least one of said parser parameters is automatically ascertained.