Personalizable information networks

• US 20060265396A1
• Filed: 01/17/2006
• Published: 11/23/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 05/19/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Trimergent
• Inventors: Hillman, Matthew F., Raman, Suri, Sirohi, Ashwani
• Application Number:
  US11/334,008
• Publication Number:
  US 20060265396A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/954 Navigation, e.g. using categorised browsing
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/101 Access control lists [ACL]

Abstract

A facility for creating a shareable pinboard collection is disclosed. In various embodiments, the facility receives from a user a selection of one or more search providers, employs the selected one or more search providers to perform a search for information items matching a criteria specified by the user, and receives an indication of information items located by the selected one or more search providers.

Claims

1. A method performed by a computing device for creating a shareable pinboard collection, comprising:

receiving from a user a selection of one or more search providers, each of the search providers for searching an information source;

employing the selected one or more search providers to perform a search for information items matching a criteria specified by the user; and

receiving an indication of information items located by the selected one or more search providers, each located information item indicating a result.

2. The method of claim 1 including employing multiple search providers to concurrently perform a search for information items based on the query.

3. The method of claim 1 including transforming the result into an internal form.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein the internal form is RSS.

5. The method of claim 3 wherein the transforming includes creating an extract of the result.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the receiving includes receiving an indication of a single action performed by a user.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the employing includes retrieving information from the selected one or more search providers relating to how to employ the search provider.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the information includes an application program interface.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein one of the search providers is a third-party search provider that is indicated in a shareable pinboard collection.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising creating the pinboard collection comprising at least the indicated information items.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the pinboard collection indicates links between the pinboard collection and the indicated information items.

12. The method of claim 11 further comprising storing a link associating the indicated information items with the pinboard collection.

13. The method of claim 12 further comprising retrieving other pinboard collections with which the indicated information items are associated.

14. The method of claim 1 further comprising dynamically adding a search provider that can be selected by the user.

15. The method of claim 1 further comprising filtering the information items.

16. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing a method of creating a shareable pinboard collection, the method comprising:

employing multiple search providers to perform a search for information items matching a criteria specified by a user;

merging results provided by the search providers into an internal form; and

providing an indication of the merged results to a user.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 16 including transforming the merged results before providing the indication of the merged results to a user.

18. The computer-readable medium of claim 17 wherein the transforming includes creating an HTML document.

19. The computer-readable medium of claim 16 including receiving an indication to pin some of the merged results.

20. The computer-readable medium of claim 16 wherein the internal form is RSS.

21. The computer-readable medium of claim 16 including employing a provider description that is indicated by a search provider.

22. The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein the provider description is an application program interface.

23. The computer-readable medium of claim 16 wherein a merged result contains a back link wherein the back link is an indication of a previously stored pinboard collection that also contains one of the results.

24. The computer-readable medium of claim 16 wherein the merging includes overlaying a result wherein the overlaying includes combining results from multiple search providers and removing duplicate attributes to provide a single result that has unique attributes from some of the multiple search providers.

25. The computer-readable medium of claim 16 wherein a result indicates a search provider.

26. The computer-readable medium of claim 25 further comprising dynamically registering the search provider and employing the search provider to perform the search.

27. The computer-readable medium of claim 16 wherein at least two search providers provide different types of results, each type of result viewable using a different viewing component.

28. The computer-readable medium of claim 16 wherein the merged results are overlaid with results from a second search.

29. The computer-readable medium of claim 16 further comprising transforming the results from the internal form into a form that is provided to the user.

30. The computer-readable medium of claim 16 wherein a location is specified for an information item and wherein the location identifies a point within the information item.

31. The computer-readable medium of claim 30 wherein the location is specified using a bookmark anchor tag.

32. The computer-readable medium of claim 30 wherein the information item is pinned to a pinboard collection.

33. The computer-readable medium of claim 32 wherein the pinboard collection has an annotation associated with the pinned information item.

34. The computer-readable medium of claim 32 wherein another pinboard collection has an annotation relating to the pinned information item.