Providing relevant information to a user based upon monitored user activities in one or more contexts

• US 9,697,290 B2
• Filed: 01/16/2014
• Issued: 07/04/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 01/16/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Lang, Brian J., Hahn, Timothy J., Srikanth, Viswanath, Small, Joshua M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Hershley, Mark E
• Application Number:
  US14/157,099
• Publication Number:
  US 20150199439A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,265 Days
• Field of Search: 707748
• 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: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/55 Push-based network services

Abstract

Techniques are described herein that facilitate monitoring one or more activities performed by a user on one or more devices, determining one or more topics of interest based on the monitored activities, preference information, and information within a user network, retrieving information from one or more network sites relating to the one or more topics of interest, and providing the retrieved information to the user.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a memory;

a network interface; and

a processor configured to;

determine one or more topics of interest based on monitored activities performed by a user on one or more devices, profile information, and information within a user network;

weight topics of interest that are related to a category of work being performed higher than other topics of interest when the user is actively working, whether the user is actively working being determined based on the profile information which includes working hours of the user;

weight non-work-related topics of interest higher than work-related topics of interest when the user is not actively working;

prioritize the determined one or more topics of interest based upon a plurality of factors including a weight of each of the one or more topics of interest;

retrieve information from one or more network sites relating to the prioritized one or more topics of interest; and

provide the retrieved information to the user.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the processor is configured to filter the retrieved information based on at least one of relevance, historical data, and user preference information.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the processor is configured to provide feedback for the retrieved information based on user actions with respect to the retrieved information.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the processor is configured to:

continuously determine the one or more topics of interest based on monitoring the one or more activities performed by the user on the one or more devices, the profile information, and the information within a user network;

continuously retrieve the information from the one or more network sites relating to the one or more topics of interest; and

continuously provide the retrieved information to the user.

5. A computer program product for providing information to a user, comprising a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therewith, the computer readable program code, when executed by a processor, causes the processor to:

determine one or more topics of interest based on monitoring one or more activities performed by a user on one or more devices, profile information, and information within a user network;

weight topics of interest that are related to a category of work being performed higher than other topics of interest when the user is actively working, whether the user is actively working being determined based on the profile information which includes working hours of the user;

weight non-work-related topics of interest higher than work-related topics of interest when the user is not actively working;

prioritize the determined one or more topics of interest based upon a plurality of factors including a weight of each of the one or more topics of interest;

retrieve information from one or more network sites relating to the prioritized one or more topics of interest; and

provide the retrieved information to the user.

6. The computer program product of claim 5, the computer readable program code further configured to cause the processor to retrieve information based on at least one of relevance, historical data, and user preference information.

7. The computer program product of claim 5, the computer readable program code further configured to cause the processor to provide feedback for the retrieved information based on user actions with respect to the retrieved information.

8. The computer program product of claim 5, the computer readable program code further configured to cause the processor to continuously determine the one or more topics of interest based on monitoring the one or more activities performed by the user on the one or more devices, the profile information, and the information within the user network;

continuously retrieve the information from the one or more network sites relating to the one or more topics of interest; and

continuously provide the retrieved information to the user.