Book version mapping

• US 10,592,598 B1
• Filed: 11/13/2017
• Issued: 03/17/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 12/28/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Weight, Christopher F., Hamaker, Janna, Killalea, Tom, Posokhow, Bruno A., Rausch, Daniel B.
• Primary Examiner(s): Baderman, Scott T
• Assistant Examiner(s): Jung, Seung Woon
• Application Number:
  US15/810,510
• Time in Patent Office: 855 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/194 Calculation of difference between files
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/197 Version control for software G06F8/71

Abstract

Techniques for use with electronic book readers include coordinating or translating position information between different versions of an electronic book. Positions within different versions can be translated for various purposes, such as transferring annotations between versions or synchronizing positions within different versions.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:

under control of one or more servers configured with executable instructions,

receiving a first version of an electronic book at the one or more servers;

indexing words of the first version of the electronic book to create a first index indicating positions of the words within the first version;

determining that there is a second version of the electronic book available from the one or more servers;

indexing words of the second version of the electronic book to create a second index indicating positions of the words within the second version;

generating a position map based on a comparison between the first index and the second index;

receiving an annotation from an electronic book reader, wherein the annotation specifies a version number of the electronic book and a first position within the first version of the electronic book;

determining a second position, based on the position map, within the second version of the electronic book that corresponds to the first position within the first version of the electronic book;

associating the annotation with the second position within the second version of the electronic book; and

transferring the annotation to the electronic book reader or to one or more other electronic book readers having the first version of the electronic book and/or the second version of the electronic book.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein each of the first and second versions comprises a sequence of words, and the position map includes metadata indicating correspondence types for corresponding word positions;

wherein the determining the second position within the second version of the electronic book that correspond to the first position within the first version of the electronic book comprises referencing the position map.

3. The computer implemented method of claim 2, wherein the metadata comprises at least one of:

words that have been inserted in the second version and have no corresponding words in the first version;

or

words that have been deleted in the second version and not deleted from the first version.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein each of the first and second versions comprises a sequence of words, and the position map includes metadata indicating confidence factors for corresponding word positions;

wherein the determining the second position within the second version of the electronic book that correspond to the first position within the first version of the electronic book comprises referencing the position map.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising identifying one or more particular annotations that are included in at least a number of the annotations as being popular annotations.

6. The computer implemented method of claim 1, wherein the first version of the electronic book is in a first format and the second version of the electronic book is in a second format, the first format being different than the second format.

7. A computer-implemented method comprising:

under control of one or more servers configured with executable instructions,

receiving a first version of an electronic book at the one or more servers;

indexing words of the first version of the electronic book to create a first index indicating positions of the words within the first version;

determining that there is a second version of the electronic book available from the one or more servers;

indexing words of the second version of the electronic book to create a second index indicating positions of the words within the second version;

generating a position map based on a comparison between the first index and the second index;

receiving an annotation from an electronic book reader, wherein the annotation specifies a version number of the electronic book and a first position within the first version of the electronic book;

identifying a second position within the second version of the electronic book that corresponds to the first position within the first version of the electronic book;

associating the annotation with the second position within the second version of the electronic book; and

sending the annotation to the electronic book reader or one or more other electronic book readers having the first version of the electronic book and/or the second version of the electronic book.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein each of the first and second versions comprises a sequence of words, and the position map includes metadata indicating correspondence types for corresponding word positions;

wherein identifying the second position within the second version of the electronic book that correspond to the first position within the first version of the electronic book comprises referencing the position map.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein each of the first and second versions comprises a sequence of words, and the position map includes metadata indicating confidence factors for corresponding word positions;

wherein identifying the second position within the second version of the electronic book that correspond to the first position within the first version of the electronic book comprises referencing the position map.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, further comprising identifying one or more particular annotations that are included in at least a number of the annotations as being popular annotations.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 7, wherein the first version of the electronic book is in a first format and the second version of the electronic book is in a second format, the first format being different than the second format.

12. A system comprising:

one or more processors; and

memory storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, configure the one or more processors to perform operations comprising;

receiving a first version of an electronic book at the one or more processors;

indexing words of the first version of the electronic book to create a first index indicating positions of the words within the first version;

determining that there is a second version of the electronic book available at the one or more processors;

indexing words of the second version of the electronic book to create a second index indicating positions of the words within the second version;

generating a position map based on a comparison between the first index and the second index;

receiving an annotation from an electronic book reader, wherein the annotation specifies a version number of the electronic book and a first position within the first version of the electronic book;

determining a second position, based on the position map, within the second version of the electronic book that corresponds to the first position within the first version of the electronic book;

associating the annotation with the second position within the second version of the electronic book; and

transferring the annotation to the electronic book reader or one or more other electronic book readers having the first version of the electronic book and/or the second version of the electronic book.

13. The system of claim 12, the operations further comprising:

comparing the first index to the second index; and

determining, based at least in part on the comparing, metadata representing one or more differences between one or more corresponding words of the first version and the second version.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the position map is generated based on the metadata.

15. The system of claim 13, wherein the metadata comprises at least one of:

an indication of words in the second version that have no corresponding words in the first version;

or

an indication of words that have been deleted in the second version and not deleted from the first version.

16. The system of claim 13, wherein the metadata identifies words in the first version that have been at least one of:

inserted, deleted, or replaced in the second version with different words.

17. The system of claim 13, wherein the metadata indicates types of correspondences between the one or more corresponding words of the first version and the second version.

18. The system of claim 12, wherein the position map includes a confidence factor for one or more of the first position or the second position of corresponding words indicating a level of confidence with which the determined first position or the second position.

19. The system of claim 12, wherein the position map indicates:

word positions in the first version using a first index metric; and

corresponding word positions in the second version using a second index metric.

20. The system of claim 12, wherein the position map further indicates:

positions in the first version using a text index; and

positions in the second version using a time index.