Metadata quality improvement

• US 7,925,967 B2
• Filed: 06/08/2001
• Issued: 04/12/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 11/21/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Yahoo Assets LLC
• Original Assignee: AOL Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Porter, Charles A., Nowitz, Jonathan Robert, Lee, Scott Chao-Chueh, Derosa, John Anthony, Berkun, Ken Alan, Rehm, Eric Carl, Dahl, Austin David, Alexander, Robin Andrew, Sudanagunta, Srinivasan, Abajian, Aram Christian
• Primary Examiner(s): Bashore; William L
• Application Number:
  US09/876,942
• Publication Number:
  US 20020099737A1
• Time in Patent Office: 3,595 Days
• Field of Search: 709/223, 709/231, 709/229, 709/201, 345/335, 707/10, 707/102, 707/513, 707/1, 707/3, 707/5, 715/201, 715/206, 715/208
• US Class Current: 715/201
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/27 Replication, distribution or synchronisation of data between databases or within a distributed database system; Distributed database system architectures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/41 Indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/4387 by the use of playlists
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/48 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/907 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/908 using metadata automatically derived from the content
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/955 using information identifiers, e.g. uniform resource locators [URL]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/205 Parsing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/913 Multimedia
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/923 Intellectual property
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/959 Network
• 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 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99948 Application of database or data structure, e.g. distributed, multimedia, or image

Abstract

A method and system for improving the quality of original metadata associated with media on a computer network, such as multimedia and streaming media, includes analyzing each field of the URL of the multimedia and streaming media. Each field is analyzed to identify new metadata associated with that field. Identified new metadata is added to the original metadata. In another embodiment, the fields in the URL are reorganized in reverse order and metadata associated with a prefix of fields of the reorganized URL is added to the original metadata. In yet another embodiment, the contents of the field next to the prefix of fields is used to improve the quality of the original metadata.

Claims

1. A method in a computing system for improving a quality of original metadata associated with a streaming media file having a uniform resource indicator (URI) on a communications network, said URI comprising a plurality of fields, said method comprising the steps of:

maintaining in a database original metadata associated with said streaming media file;

analyzing two or more fields of said plurality of fields of said URI associated with said streaming media file to determine if an association exists between said analyzed fields and predetermined sets of metadata;

identifying metadata that is associated with all of two or more of said analyzed fields; and

adding said identified metadata to said original metadata in said database,

wherein code implementing the method is stored in memory of the computing system for execution by one or more processors of the computing system.

2. The method in accordance with claim 1, further comprising the step of reorganizing said plurality of fields of said URI to provide a reorganized plurality of fields, wherein said step of analyzing two or more field comprises analyzing two or more fields of said reorganized plurality of fields.

3. The method in accordance with claim 2, wherein said step of reorganizing said plurality of fields comprises reorganizing said plurality of fields by reversing the order of said plurality of fields of said URI.

4. The method in accordance with claim 1, wherein:

said step of analyzing two or more fields comprises analyzing said two or more fields in contiguous field order until no associated metadata is identified for a field.

5. The method in accordance with claim 4, further comprising the step of adding a contents of said field for which no associated metadata was identified to said original metadata in said database.

6. The method in accordance with claim 5, further comprising the steps of:

replacing each connecting character in said contents with a space for providing a plurality of terms;

adding said plurality of terms to said original metadata in said database.

7. The method in accordance with claim 1, wherein said identified metadata comprise elements related to at least one of content of the streaming media file, intellectual property rights associated with the streaming media file, and instantiation of the streaming media file.

8. The method in accordance with claim 1, wherein said streaming media file comprises multimedia.

9. The method in accordance with claim 1, wherein said communications network is a computer network.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein said two or more analyzed fields for which metadata is identified include the last field of said URI.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein said two or more analyzed fields for which metadata is identified include only a sequence of contiguous fields of said URI.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein said contiguous fields include all of said two or more analyzed fields that have metadata in common and said identified metadata is the common metadata.

13. A computer-readable storage medium having embodied thereon a program for causing a processor to improve a quality of original metadata associated with a streaming media file having a uniform resource indicator (URI), said URI comprising a plurality of fields, said computer-readable storage medium comprising:

means for causing said processor to reorganize said plurality of fields of said URI associated with said streaming media file;

means for causing said processor to analyze two or more fields of said reorganized plurality of fields of said URI to determine if an association exists between said analyzed fields and predetermined sets of metadata;

means for causing said processor to identify metadata associated with all of two or more of said analyzed fields; and

means for causing said processor to add said identified metadata to said original metadata in a database.

14. The computer-readable storage medium in accordance with claim 13, further comprising:

means for causing said processor to add contents of an analyzed field for which no associated metadata was identified to said original metadata in said database;

means for causing said processor to replace each connecting character in said contents with a space for providing a plurality of terms; and

wherein said means for causing said processor to add said content causes said processor to add said plurality of terms to said original metadata in said database.

15. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 wherein said two or more analyzed fields for which metadata is identified include the last field of said URI.

16. The computer system of claim 15 further comprising instructions that, when executed by the processor of the computer system, cause the computer system to:

add contents of an analyzed field for which no associated metadata was identified to the original metadata; and

replace each connecting character in the contents with a space character before the contents are added to the original metadata.

17. The computer system of claim 15 wherein the two or more analyzed fields for which metadata is identified include the last field of the URI.

18. The computer system of claim 15 wherein the two or more analyzed fields for which metadata is identified include only a sequence of contiguous fields of the URI.

19. The computer system of claim 18 wherein the contiguous fields include all of the two or more analyzed fields that have metadata in common and the identified metadata is the common metadata.

20. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 13 wherein said two or more analyzed fields for which metadata is identified include only a sequence of contiguous fields of said URI.

21. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 20 wherein said contiguous fields include all of said two or more analyzed fields that have metadata in common and said identified metadata is the common metadata.

22. A computer system to improve the quality of original metadata associated with a media file, the media file specified by a uniform resource indicator (URI) on a communications network, the URI comprising a plurality of fields, each field comprising textual content, the system comprising:

a processor;

a storage component that stores original metadata associated with the media file; and

computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the processor of the computer system, cause the computer system to;

analyze two or more fields of the plurality of fields of the URI associated with the media file to determine if an association exists between the analyzed fields and predetermined sets of metadata;

identify metadata that is associated with all of two or more of the analyzed fields; and

add the identified metadata to the original metadata associated with the media file.