Apparatus and method for normalizing user-selected keywords in a folksonomy

• US 7,685,209 B1
• Filed: 06/08/2005
• Issued: 03/23/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/28/2004
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Hall, Ashley, Xu, Zhichen, Mao, Jianchang, Tam, Chung-Man, Norton, Kenneth, Arnold, Nathan, Bassett, Adrienne
• Primary Examiner(s): Le; Uyen T.
• Application Number:
  US11/149,323
• Time in Patent Office: 1,749 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 707/803
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/907 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually

Abstract

An annotation method for annotating content includes displaying a set of suggested keywords on an editing interface page configured to receive one or more annotations for the content. A request is received via the editing interface page to annotate the content with at least one keyword from the set of suggested keywords. Association information is generated that associates the at least one keyword with the content.

Claims

1. An annotation method for annotating content comprising:

dynamically receiving annotation information from one or more users wherein annotation information includes an annotation rating;

determining one or more suggested keywords based on a related annotation rating and used by a user to annotate one or more items of content;

performing text recognition on a given item of content to generate recognized text;

determining a subject of the given item of content from the recognized text;

determining one or more suggested keywords based on the subject of the given item of content;

determining one or more suggested keywords used by at least one other user to annotate the given item of content;

displaying a set of suggested keywords comprising the one or more suggested keywords used by a user to annotate one or more items of content, the one or more suggested keywords based on the subject of the item of content and the one or more suggested keywords used by at least one other user to annotate the given item of content on an editing interface page configured to receive one or more annotations for the given item of content;

positioning at least one user keyword higher in the set of suggested keywords than another user keyword if the at least one keyword is used by the user to annotate the one or more items of content a larger number of times than the another user keyword;

receiving a request via the editing interface page to annotate the given item of content with at least one keyword from the set of suggested keywords; and

associating the at least one keyword with the content.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of performing text recognition includes performing text recognition on metadata for the content and/or an address for the content.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising retrieving the set of suggested keywords from one or more other sets of keywords used by other users who annotated the content.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the retrieving step includes retrieving the one or more other sets of keywords from an annotation database.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising retrieving the user keywords from an annotation database.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising storing the association between the at least one keyword and the content in an annotation database.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the set of suggested keywords includes at least one keyword that includes a text string entered by the user, and the text string forms a portion of the at least one keyword.

8. An annotation method for annotating content comprising:

dynamically receiving annotation information from one or more users wherein annotation information includes an annotation rating;

determining one or more suggested keywords based on a related annotation rating and used by a user to annotate one or more items of content;

performing text recognition on a given item of content to generate recognized text;

determining a subject of the given item of content from the recognized text;

determining one or more suggested keywords based on the subject of the given item of content;

determining one or more suggested keywords used by at least one other user to annotate the given item of content;

displaying a set of suggested keywords comprising the one or more suggested keywords used by a user to annotate one or more items of content, the one or more suggested keywords based on the subject of the item of content and the one or more suggested keywords used by at least one other user to annotate the given item of content on an editing interface page configured to receive one or more annotations for the given item of content;

receiving a request via the editing interface page to annotate the given item of content with at least one keyword from the set of suggested keywords;

displaying the at least one keyword in a set of annotating keywords used to annotate the content,

displaying a visible delimiter following the at least one keyword; and

associating the at least one keyword with the content to annotate the content.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the visible delimiter is a comma.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the set of suggested keywords further includes at least one keyword that includes a text string entered by the user, and the text string forms a portion of the at least one keyword.

11. The method of claim 8, further comprising displaying the at least one keyword disparately than other suggested keywords.

12. A computer system for annotating content comprising:

an aggregator module configured to dynamically receive annotation information from one or more users wherein annotation information includes an annotation rating;

a text-recognition module configured to generate recognized text from a given item of content, determine a subject of the given item of content from the recognized text, and generate one or more suggested keywords based on a related annotation rating and on the subject; and

a server configured to publish a set of suggested keywords comprising one or more suggested keywords used by a user to annotate one or more items of content, the one or more suggested keywords based on the subject of the given item of content and one or more suggested keywords used by at least one other user to annotate the given item of content on an editing interface page configured to receive one or more annotations for a given item of content, position at least one user keyword higher in the set of suggested keywords than another user keyword if the at least one keyword is used by the user to annotate the one or more items of content a larger number of times than the another user keyword, receive a request via the editing interface page to annotate the given item of content with at least one keyword from the set of suggested keywords, and associate the at least one keyword with the content.

13. The computer system of claim 12, further comprising an annotation database configured to store association information for the association between the at least one keyword and the content.