Method and system to collect and search user-selected content

• US 20060020587A1
• Filed: 07/21/2005
• Published: 01/26/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 07/21/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc. (Cisco Systems, Inc.)
• Inventors: Kausik, Balas Natarajan
• Granted Patent: US 9,026,534 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9562 Bookmark management

Abstract

A method and system to provide search results via a network is described. The method may comprise receiving a search request from a user including search criteria, searching cached World Wide Web documents to obtain a web result based on the search criteria, and searching for an associated document to obtain a restricted result based on the search criteria. The associated document may be associated with the user (e.g., the user may mark or otherwise identify the document after viewing it) and access to the associated document may be restricted. The web result and the restricted result may be communicated to the user for viewing via a web browser. In an example embodiment, the user may be provided via a web interface with an option to search the World Wide Web or a database including associated documents.

Claims

1. A method of providing search results via a network, the method comprising:

receiving a search request from a user including search criteria;

searching cached World Wide Web documents to obtain a web result based on the search criteria;

searching for at least one associated document to obtain a restricted result based on the search criteria, the at least one associated document being associated with the user and access to the at least one associated document being restricted; and

communicating the web result and the restricted result to the user.

2. The method of claim 1, which comprises providing the user with an option to search at least one of the World Wide Web and a at least one storage device including associated documents.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the associated document is a document previously accessed by the user and identified by the user for storage in at least one storage device of a search engine.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the associated document is a web document previously accessed by a member of a group with which the user is associated and identified by the member of the group for storage.

5. The method of claim 1, which comprises allowing the user to elect receiving search results from cached web documents and the at least one associated document.

6. The method of claim 1, which comprises communicating an Internet web page including the web result and the restricted result via the Internet to the user.

7. The method of claim 1, which comprises allowing the user to rank the associated documents.

8. The method of claim 1, which comprises allowing, prior to storing the document as an associated document, the user to provide notations to a document viewed by the user.

9. The method of claim 8, which comprises searching the notations in response to receiving the search request from the user.

10. The method of claim 1, which comprises allowing a user to designate access privileges to the associated document.

11. The method of claim 1, in which a name of a user directing storage of the associated document is displayed when viewing the associated document.

12. The method of claim 1, which comprises receiving the search request at a search engine via the Internet from a content browser on a client machine, the document being selected from the group consisting of email correspondence, HTML pages, digital images, and digital audio.

13. The method of claim 1, which comprises storing the at least one associated document at a central storage device remote from a client computer.

14. The method of claim 1, which comprises storing the associated document on a client computer.

15. The method of claim 1, which includes:

monitoring selection of a portion of text in a web page by a user; and

performing a search based upon the selected portion of text.

16. A machine-readable medium embodying instructions which, when executed by a machine, cause the machine to perform the method of claim 1.

17. A system to provide search results via a network, the system comprising:

a search engine to receive a search request from a user including search criteria;

at least one database including cached World Wide Web documents, and associated documents that are associated with the user and wherein access to the associated documents is restricted, the search engine to search the cached World Wide Web documents to obtain a web result based on the search criteria, and to search for at least one associated document to obtain a restricted result based on the search criteria; and

an interface to communicate the web result and the restricted result to the user.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the user is provided with an option to search at least one of the World Wide Web and a database including associated documents.

19. The system of claim 17, wherein the associated document is a document previously accessed by the user and identified by the user for storage in at least one storage device of a search engine.

20. The system of claim 17, wherein the associated document is a web document previously accessed by a member of a group with which the user is associated and identified by the member of the group for storage.

21. The system of claim 17, wherein an Internet web page including the web result and the restricted result is communicated via the Internet to the user.

22. The system of claim 17, wherein the associated documents are ranked and the web result and the restricted result are communicated to the user based on the ranking.

23. The system of claim 17, wherein the associated documents include user provided notations, the notations being searchable by the search engine.

24. The system of claim 17, wherein the associated documents are subject to access privileges defined by the user.

25. The system of claim 17, wherein the search request is received at the search engine via the Internet from a content browser on a client machine and the associated document is selected from the group consisting of email correspondence, HTML pages, digital images, and digital audio.

26. A system to provide search results via a network, the system comprising:

means for receiving a search request from a user including search criteria;

means for searching cached World Wide Web documents to obtain a web result based on the search criteria;

means for searching for at least one associated document to obtain a restricted result based on the search criteria, the associated document being associated with the user and access to the at least one associated document being restricted; and

means for communicating the web result and the restricted result to the user.