System for providing information via context searching of printed substrate

• US 8,328,088 B2
• Filed: 07/13/2010
• Issued: 12/11/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 05/25/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Silverbrook Research Pty Limited
• Original Assignee: Silverbrook Research Pty Limited
• Inventors: Silverbrook, Kia, Lapstun, Paul, Hollins, Michael, Dehghani, Zhamak, Newman, Andrew Timothy Robert
• Primary Examiner(s): Colbert, Ella
• Application Number:
  US12/834,897
• Publication Number:
  US 20110302197A1
• Time in Patent Office: 882 Days
• Field of Search: 705/1, 705/1.1, 178/18.01, 178/18.09, 178/19.01, 382/179, 235/179, 235/375, 235/454, 235/494, 358/403, 715/739, 715/854
• US Class Current: 235/380
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/332 Query formulation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3331 Query processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/381 using identifiers, e.g. barcodes, RFIDs for URLs G06F16/9554
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access

Abstract

A system for providing information to a user via a printed substrate. The system includes the printed substrate, an optically imaging pen device and a display device. The optically imaging pen device is configured for reading coded data from the substrate; generating interaction data using the coded data; and sending the interaction data to a computer system. Receipt of the interaction data by the computer system causes the computer system to: identify and retrieve a page description corresponding to the printed substrate; generate a query expression including one or more search terms; form a request using the query expression; and send the request to the display device.

Claims

1. A system for providing information to a user via a printed substrate, the system comprising:

the printed substrate comprising user information and coded data indicative of a region identity associated with the substrate and of a plurality of locations on the substrate;

an optically imaging pen device configured to;

read at least some of the coded data when operatively positioned or moved relative to the substrate;

generate interaction data indicative of the region identity and at least one coordinate position of the optically imaging pen device relative to the substrate; and

send the interaction data to a computer system; and

a display device in communication with the computer system,

wherein the receipt of the interaction data by the computer system causes the computer system to;

identify and retrieve at least part of a page description corresponding to the printed substrate using the region identity;

generate a query expression comprising one or more search terms, at least one of said search terms being identified using the page description and the at least one position of the optically imaging pen device;

form a request using the query expression; and

send the request, or a results resource including search results obtained using the request, to the display device.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the request is a request Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) derived from the query expression.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the display device comprises a web terminal and receipt of the request URI by the display device initiates retrieval of a corresponding resource via the internet.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one search term is associated, in the page description, with a zone of the substrate containing the position of the optically imaging pen device.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the at least one search term is a keyword extracted from text in the zone.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein said keyword comprises a plurality of associated words, said plurality of associated words being identified from at least one word in the zone.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the page description comprises a lexicon for identifying said plurality of associated words from the at least one word and at least one adjacent word.

8. The system of claim 4, wherein the at least one search term is a primary search term and at least one of the other search terms of the query expression is a context search term, said context search term being derived from a word, phrase, line, sentence, paragraph, section, article, document or region containing the zone.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein said context search term is contained in or associated with a word, phrase, line, sentence, paragraph, section, article, document or region containing the zone.

10. The system of claim 8, wherein the search results contain all of the content of the primary search term, and are ranked according to whether they contain the context search term.

11. The system of claim 8, wherein the at least one primary search term is a keyword and the at least one context search term is derived by at least partially determining a meaning of said keyword.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the meaning is at least partially determined by making a selection from the group comprising:

identifying a part of speech for said keyword;

identifying a supersense of said keyword; and

identifying a concept corresponding to said keyword in an ontology.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one of said search terms identifies a concept, a person, an organization, a place, a product, a publication, a weather condition, a geographic location, a date, a time of day, a day of the week, a current user location, a user home location, a user demographic indicator, a user preference, a search history, a click-through history, a user interest or a user language.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one of said search terms is derived from a resource description, a subject description, a user description or an environment description.

15. The system of claim 1, wherein the query expression is generated by combining the search terms using operators selected from the group comprising:

Boolean operators, proximity constraint operators and occurrence constraint operators.

16. The system of claim 1, wherein the results resource is derived, at least partially from the request using at least one of:

a concordance;

a semantic concordance;

a database of search terms associated with advertisements; and

a search engine.

17. The system of claim 1, wherein the substrate is selected from the group comprising:

a printed document, a printed form, a page of a printed publication, a package for a product item, a label for a product item and a surface of a product item.

18. The system of claim 1, wherein the display device is a mobile phone or a personal digital assistant.