Integration of annotations to dynamic data sets

• US 7,861,154 B2
• Filed: 03/14/2005
• Issued: 12/28/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 02/28/2005
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: MacLaurin, Matthew B
• Primary Examiner(s): Basehoar; Adam L
• Application Number:
  US11/079,348
• Publication Number:
  US 20060206501A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,115 Days
• Field of Search: 715/512, 715/511, 715/514, 715/515, 715/513, 715/530, 715/531, 715/230, 715/231, 715/232, 715/233, 715/229, 715/272, 707/3, 707/102, 707/101, 707/100, 707/7, 707/706, 707/736, 707/803, 706/16, 706/20, 706/45
• US Class Current: 715/230
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes

Abstract

A data enhancement system that facilitates attaching annotations to dynamic data items and collections. The system employs the concepts of and item to associate an annotation to a dynamic collection and/or item prior to rendering (e.g., via a graphical user interface) such collection and/or item. A user interface can be provided to facilitate creation and attachment of the annotations (e.g., textual, graphical). A schema can facilitate associating appropriate annotations with a dynamic collection. A display system can be employed to render the annotations to a user.

Claims

1. A computer system that facilitates enhancing data in a computer readable storage medium, the computer system comprising at least a processor and memory and also comprising:

a dynamic collection component stored in the memory and executed by the processor that concurrently stores and maintains a plurality of dynamic collections of files comprising respective able user-defined queries of a file system that is maintained by the computer system, where the dynamic collections are dynamically and automatically maintained by the dynamic collection component by background monitoring of changes to the file system and automatically and dynamically adding and removing files to the dynamic collections of files according to the monitoring determining whether the files satisfy the respective queries, wherein when the dynamic collections are displayed a user interacts with the dynamic collections to generate first annotations comprising annotations of the files in respective dynamic collections therein and second annotations of respective dynamic collections but not of particular files;

an annotation storage component in the memory that, by execution of the processor, stores the user-generated annotations, the annotations having been interactively generated by a user interacting with the displayed dynamic collections;

an integration component that, as executed by the processor, stores first association information that associates each of the stored first annotations with a particular file and a particular dynamic collection containing the file such that a file can have multiple first annotations that are each associated with the particular file and with different respective dynamic collections, stores second association information that associates each of the stored second annotations with a particular dynamic collection but not with a particular file, wherein when a dynamic collection is displayed the first and second associations are searched to find any first and second annotations associated with the displayed dynamic collection, and any first annotations associated with a particular file in the displayed dynamic collection are displayed with respect to the corresponding file and any annotations associated with the displayed dynamic collection but not with a particular file are displayed during display of the dynamic collection.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the dynamic collection comprises a dynamic list of files.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the annotations include at least one of a graphical annotation or a textual annotation.

4. The system of claim 1, further comprising a schema component that stores the association information in the form of schema to facilitate attaching disparate annotations to the files based at least in part on the corresponding dynamic collection.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the annotations include at least one of a textual comment, an audible comment, a visual effect applied to a of the corresponding dynamic collection, or a position identifier.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the integration component includes a retrieval component that employs a query used by the dynamic collection component to generate the dynamic collection.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the integration component comprises:

a rule engine component that automatically instantiates a rule that implements a predefined criteria; and

a rule evaluation component that applies the rule to associate the annotations to the files.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein an artificial intelligence component predicts a user intention for an annotation as a function of historical user criteria.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the artificial intelligence component includes an inference component that facilitates automatic association of at least one annotation to at least one file as a function of the predicted user intention.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the association information includes mapping identifiers for respective annotations.

11. The system of claim 1, the file comprises a folder of a file system of the computer system.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein further comprising a graphical user interface for interactively generating the annotations and for displaying files of a dynamic collection along with any associated annotations.

13. A computer implemented method for enhancing data in a computer readable storage medium, the method comprising:

generating and concurrently storing dynamic collections of files that are dynamically and automatically maintained by and on the computer by a local file system of the computer, the file system handling changes to files in the file system, wherein a dynamic collection is maintained by the computer storing information, entered by a user, defining the dynamic collection where the information comprises membership criteria used by the computer to dynamically and automatically determine which files on the computer belong to the dynamic collection such that file membership in a dynamic collection changes automatically and dynamically such that files are added and removed from the dynamic collection when they are modified/created and are determined, according to background monitoring of the file system, to begin to satisfy or not satisfy the membership criteria and when a dynamic collection is displayed including files thereof, receiving user input creating first and second annotations of the displayed dynamic collection, wherein the first annotations are associated with the dynamic collection and respective files of the dynamic collection and the second annotations are associated with the dynamic collection itself and not any particular files in the dynamic collection;

storing associations of the first annotations to both the respective annotated files and the corresponding dynamic collection such that each first annotation is associated with both a file and a dynamic collection, where a same file has a plurality of associated first annotations that are associated with different dynamic collections such that the file is annotated with one of the first annotations when displayed with a first dynamic collection and the file is annotated with another first annotation when displayed with a second dynamic collection, where the association of an annotation to a file is determined as a function of the currently displayed dynamic collection and a file therein.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising generating a dynamic collection based at least in part on a file system directory view.

15. The method of claim 13, further comprising creating an annotation that corresponds to a sub-item of the dynamic collection and applying an annotation schema upon rendering the sub-item.

16. The method of claim 13, further comprising recursively applying additional annotations to sub-items of a dynamic collection.

17. A method of annotating files stored by a local file storage system of a computing device, the method comprising:

storing files in the local file storage system in which a user can store and access and modify arbitrary files maintained by the computing device;

storing arbitrary dynamic collections of the files, a dynamic collection having been interactively defined by a user specifying criteria that must be satisfied for a file to belong to the dynamic collection, where files are automatically and dynamically added to and removed from the dynamic collection in accordance with changes to the files that cause them to satisfy and not satisfy the criteria, the changes detected by background monitoring of the local file storage system;

displaying the dynamic collections by displaying indicia of files in the dynamic collections, and while so displaying receiving user input defining first annotations of the files corresponding to the indicia and second annotations of the dynamic collections themselves and not individual files, and storing the first and second annotations and association information that associates each first annotation with both a particular one of the files and a particular one of the dynamic collections and that associates each second annotation with a particular dynamic collection but not a file therein, wherein some files have multiple first annotations associated therewith and associated with different respective dynamic collections;

further displaying the annotated dynamic collections by automatically selecting, using the association information, for a given annotated dynamic collection, those of the first and second annotations that are associated with the given annotated dynamic collection, wherein a first annotation is displayed in association with a particular file displayed with the given dynamic collection and a second annotation is displayed in association with given dynamic collection but not in association with a particular file in the given dynamic collection.