Linking to relevant content from an ereader

• US 8,850,301 B1
• Filed: 03/05/2012
• Issued: 09/30/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 03/05/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Rose, Robert Brett
• Primary Examiner(s): Ries, Laurie
• Application Number:
  US13/412,542
• Time in Patent Office: 939 Days
• Field of Search: 715/203, 715/204, 715/205, 715/208
• US Class Current: 715/208
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/94 Hypermedia Hyperlinking G06F40/134
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9558 Details of hyperlinks; Management of linked annotations
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/134 Hyperlinking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/289 Phrasal analysis, e.g. finite state techniques or chunking

Abstract

Technologies are described for causing an eReader to automatically and dynamically parse a document rendered on the eReader and identify content of potential interest to a user, and, in response to identifying content of potential interest, receiving at a server, from the eReader, the identified content. The server performing heuristics on the identified content at the server in conjunction with searching a network communicatively coupled to the server to locate data contextually relevant to the identified content, and the server transmitting the contextually relevant data from the server to the eReader for presentation to a user through a user interface on the eReader. This Abstract is submitted with the understanding that it will not be used to interpret or limit the scope or meaning of the claims.

Claims

1. An Ebook reader comprising:

a content identifier configured to identify a plurality of terms or phrases from a document presented by the Ebook reader for linkification, the plurality of terms or phrases being one or more of terms or phrases comprising nouns, verbs, names, places, modifiers, or combinations of the terms or phrases, wherein the plurality of terms or phrases are selected by the Ebook reader using a combination of a language specific dictionary and natural language processing techniques;

a content submitter configured to submit the identified plurality of terms or phrases to a server system;

a data receiver configured to receive from a server system, in response to the submission of the identified plurality of terms or phrases, a plurality of hyperlinks, each corresponding to one of the submitted terms or phrases; and

a presenter configured to hyperlink the plurality of terms or phrases in the document presented by the Ebook reader based on the received plurality of hyperlinks, and visually indicate that to the user,

wherein the content identifier is further configured to change a speed or amount of processing performed in identifying the plurality of terms or phrases for linkification, based on a percentage of the document that has been linkified.

2. The Ebook reader according to claim 1, wherein:

the content identifier is further configured to distinguish between connecting words or transitional words in the plurality of terms or phrases, and words that are selected from the group consisting of nouns, verbs, names, places, paragraph headings, popular terms from social media, trending terms from social media, and song names.

3. The Ebook reader according to claim 1, wherein:

the content identifier is further configured to examine one or more of a name, Uniform Resource Locator, size, or tags of an image.

4. The Ebook reader according to claim 1, wherein:

the content identifier is configured to employ term frequency-inverse document frequency numerical statistics to determine how important each of the identified plurality of terms or phrases is to the presented document.

5. The Ebook reader according to claim 1, wherein:

the content identifier is further configured to download the language specific dictionary to the Ebook reader in conjunction with a determination of the language of the document presented by the Ebook reader for linkification.

6. The Ebook reader according to claim 5, wherein:

the language specific dictionary is further selected for download to the Ebook reader based on one or more of the genre of the document, the technical nature of the subject matter in the document, the advanced level of the subject matter in the document, or whether the document is fiction or non-fiction.

7. The Ebook reader according to claim 1, further comprising:

a communicator configured to establish an asynchronous HTTP connection between the server system and the Ebook reader through which the data receiver receives the plurality of hyperlinks.

8. The Ebook reader according to claim 1, wherein:

the content submitter is further configured to offer a user the option to provide personal information or other individualized attributes to the server system.

9. The Ebook reader according to claim 1, further including:

a look-up table of well-known names of people, places, or things that would generally appear frequently across a broad corpus of documents; and

the content identifier further configured to compare the plurality of terms or phrases to the look-up table for an initial set of results for linkification.

10. The Ebook reader according to claim 1, wherein:

the content identifier is configured to adjust the speed or amount of processing by reducing the speed or amount of processing performed in identifying the plurality of terms or phrases for linkification as a percentage of the document that has not been linkified decreases.

11. The Ebook reader according to claim 1, wherein:

the plurality of hyperlinked terms or phrases in the document presented by the Ebook reader are communicated to a server and made accessible to one or more of other client devices presenting the document to the user or other client devices presenting the document to other users.

12. A computer implemented method being performed on an Ebook reader having one or more processors and memory storing one or more programs for execution by the one or more processors to perform the method comprising:

identifying a plurality of terms from a document presented by the Ebook reader for linkification, the plurality of terms being one or more of terms or phrases comprising nouns, verbs, names, places, modifiers, or combinations of the terms or phrases, wherein the plurality of terms are selected by the Ebook reader using a combination of a language specific dictionary and natural language processing techniques;

submitting the identified plurality of terms to a server system;

receiving from a server system, in response to the submission of the identified plurality of terms, a plurality of hyperlinks, each corresponding to one of the identified plurality of terms; and

hyperlinking the identified plurality of terms in the document presented by the Ebook reader based on the received plurality of hyperlinks, and visually indicating that to the user using the one or more processors,

wherein a speed or amount of processing performed in identifying the plurality of terms for linkification changes based on a percentage of the document that has been linkified.

13. The method according to claim 12, wherein:

the identifying a plurality of terms comprises distinguishing between connecting words or transitional words and words that are selected from the group consisting of nouns, verbs, names, places, paragraph headings, popular terms from social media, trending terms from social media, and song names.

14. The method according to claim 12, wherein:

the identifying a plurality of terms comprises examining one or more of the name, Uniform Resource Locator, size or tags of an image.

15. The method according to claim 12, wherein:

the identifying a plurality of terms employs term frequency-inverse document frequency numerical statistics to determine how important each of the identified plurality of terms is to the presented document.

16. The method according to claim 12, wherein:

the identifying a plurality of terms comprises downloading the language specific dictionary to the Ebook reader in conjunction with a determination of the language of the document presented by the Ebook reader for linkification.

17. The method according to claim 16, wherein:

the language specific dictionary is selected for download to the Ebook reader based on one or more of the genre of the document, the technical nature of the subject matter in the document, the advanced level of the subject matter in the document, or whether the document is fiction or non-fiction.

18. The method according to claim 12, further including:

establishing an asynchronous HTTP connection between the server system and the Ebook reader for receiving the hyperlinks from the server.

19. The method according to claim 12, further including:

offering to a user the option to provide personal information or other individualized attributes to the remote server system.

20. The method according to claim 12, wherein:

the Ebook reader comprises one of a dedicated Ebook device, an Ebook application, and an Ebook browser extension.

21. The method according to claim 12, further including:

providing a look-up table of well-known names of people, places, or things that would appear frequently across a broad corpus of documents; and

comparing the plurality of terms to the look-up table for an initial set of quick results for linkification.

22. The method according to claim 12, wherein:

the speed or amount of processing performed in identifying the plurality of terms for linkification decreases as the percentage of the document that has not been linkified decreases.

23. The method according to claim 12, wherein:

the plurality of hyperlinked terms in the document presented by the Ebook reader are communicated to a server and made accessible to one or more of other client devices presenting the document to the user or other client devices presenting the document to other users.

24. The method according to claim 12, wherein:

the hyperlinks received from the server are presented on the Ebook reader as an overlay of the document being presented by the Ebook reader in a manner that does not affect the format of the document being presented on the Ebook reader.

25. The method according to claim 24, further including:

presenting the hyperlinks overlaid on the document being presented on the Ebook reader in response to a user gesture comprising one or more of depressing a button on the device, tapping on the device three times, or selecting a menu choice on the device.

26. An integrated system, comprising:

an Ebook reader and a server communicatively coupled over a network, the Ebook reader and the server each comprising one or more processors and memory storing one or more programs for execution by the one or more processors to implement a plurality of functions comprising;

identifying a plurality of terms from a document presented by the Ebook reader for linkification, the plurality of terms being one or more of terms or phrases comprising nouns, verbs, names, places, modifiers, or combinations of the terms or phrases, wherein the plurality of terms are selected by the Ebook reader using a combination of a language specific dictionary and natural language processing techniques;

submitting the identified plurality of terms to the server;

receiving from the server, in response to the submission of the identified plurality of terms, a plurality of hyperlinks, each corresponding to one of the identified plurality of terms; and

hyperlinking the identified plurality of terms in the document presented by the Ebook reader based on the received plurality of hyperlinks, and visually indicating that to the user using the one or more processors,

wherein a speed or amount of processing performed in identifying the plurality of terms for linkification changes based on a percentage of the document that has been linkified.

27. A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having control logic stored therein, the control logic comprising:

computer readable program code which causes an Ebook reader to identify a plurality of terms from a document presented by the Ebook reader for linkification, the plurality of terms being one or more of terms or phrases comprising nouns, verbs, names, places, modifiers, or combinations of the terms or phrases, wherein the plurality of terms are selected by the Ebook reader using a combination of a language specific dictionary and natural language processing techniques;

computer readable program code which causes the Ebook reader to submit the identified plurality of terms to a server communicatively coupled to the Ebook reader;

computer readable program code which causes the Ebook reader to receive from the server a plurality of hyperlinks, in response to the submission of the identified plurality of terms, each of the hyperlinks corresponding to one of the identified plurality of terms; and

computer readable program code which causes the Ebook reader to hyperlink the identified plurality of terms in the document presented by the Ebook reader based on the received plurality of hyperlinks, and visually indicate that to a user,

wherein a speed or amount of processing performed in identifying the plurality of terms for linkification changes based on a percentage of the document that has been linkified.

28. The computer program product according to claim 27, further including:

computer readable program code which causes the Ebook reader to present the hyperlinks to the user as an overlay on the document that does not affect the format of the document being presented on the Ebook reader.

29. An Ebook reader comprising:

a content identifier configured to identify a plurality of terms or phrases from a document presented by the Ebook reader for linkification, the plurality of terms or phrases being one or more of terms or phrases comprising nouns, verbs, names, places, modifiers, or combinations of the terms or phrases, wherein the plurality of terms or phrases are selected by the Ebook reader using a combination of a language specific dictionary and natural language processing techniques;

a content submitter configured to submit the identified plurality of terms or phrases to a server system;

a data receiver configured to receive from a server system, in response to the submission of the identified plurality of terms or phrases, a plurality of hyperlinks, each corresponding to one of the submitted terms or phrases; and

a presenter configured to hyperlink the plurality of terms or phrases in the document presented by the Ebook reader based on the received plurality of hyperlinks, and visually indicate that to the user,

wherein the content identifier is further configured to reduce a speed or amount of processing performed in identifying the plurality of terms or phrases for linkification as a percentage of the document that has not been linkified decreases.

30. A computer implemented method being performed on an Ebook reader having one or more processors and memory storing one or more programs for execution by the one or more processors to perform the method comprising:

identifying a plurality of terms from a document presented by the Ebook reader for linkification, the plurality of terms being one or more of terms or phrases comprising nouns, verbs, names, places, modifiers, or combinations of the terms or phrases, wherein the plurality of terms are selected by the Ebook reader using a combination of a language specific dictionary and natural language processing techniques;

submitting the identified plurality of terms to a server system;

receiving from a server system, in response to the submission of the identified plurality of terms, a plurality of hyperlinks, each corresponding to one of the identified plurality of terms; and

hyperlinking the identified plurality of terms in the document presented by the Ebook reader based on the received plurality of hyperlinks, and visually indicating that to the user using the one or more processors,

wherein a speed or amount of processing performed in identifying the plurality of terms for linkification decreases as a percentage of the document that has not been linkified decreases.