Portable search engine

• US 20070130370A1
• Filed: 03/20/2006
• Published: 06/07/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/06/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Emeka Akaezuwa
• Original Assignee: Emeka Akaezuwa
• Inventors: Akaezuwa, Emeka
• Application Number:
  US11/384,935
• Publication Number:
  US 20070130370A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 710/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/13 File access structures, e.g. distributed indices arrangements of input from, or output to, record carriers G06F3/06
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques

Abstract

POSE is a portable search engine that is designed to be a search platform. A search platform is a search engine that runs on all the devices, on all the platforms, parses most of the data formats, regardless of platform and is Unicode-based. POSE runs on portable and miniaturized drives and devices such as portable removable drives, cellular phones, PDAs, nano drives and any device that has a portable hard drive embedded. The idea of POSE is that device, search and data should occupy the same space. In this regard, search moves into the devices rather than stay on the desktop. Moving search into these devices makes search as portable as the data carried on these portable drives and devices. To intelligently manage the flow of information within and among devices and between devices that are connected to public information systems, POSE creates a series of device registries, federation of devices, device knowledgebase and rules files. Collectively these files moderate the exchange of data among devices, identify device owners, define what a device is and what its capabilities are and help to enable data conversion from one device'"'"'s format to another.

Claims

1. A device independent portable distributed search engine (POSE) system and method that installs and runs on any device including a dumb device like a flash drive, an external drive or a smart device like a desktop computer, a laptop, personal digital assistant, wrist watch, home entertainment system, video camera, tablet PC, etc. comprising:

a) storing application files and user generated files on a device'"'"'s storage media instead of the operating system'"'"'s registries and resources;

b) treating the device'"'"'s storage media as the operating system;

c) a file-based device registry that allows POSE to register devices so it knows which devices to search and which ones to ignore;

d) a device knowledgebase that allows POSE to know the capabilities of the devices to be indexed and searched;

e) rules that tell POSE what it can and cannot do with each device;

f) a cross platform index that is not binary tied to any specific operating system;

g) a file system-mirror-based index that mirrors and monitors the actual operating system'"'"'s filesystem;

h) dynamic symbolic links to point to all the individual indices running on all connected devices for searching;

i) a device-based federated search engine to search all the independent indices running on each device;

j) a file-based startup; and

k) an access layer to access non-accessible storage devices.

2. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein the search engine searches the index on portable or non-portable devices or drives.

3. The method and system as recited in claim 1, including a standard search platform that runs natively on all major operating systems including Windows, Linux, Macintosh, UNIX, portable operating systems such as PalmOS, Windows Mobile and on embedded systems wherein POSE can read its index on all these platforms and so can share its data across platforms.

4. The method and system as recited in claim 1, including a process for encapsulating search engines, data and devices by installing POSE on any device such as dumb devices including external drives, flash drives and smart devices including desktop computers and cell phones, creating a search unit that can be searched independently or collectively including independent search units or devices that can be chained together and searched collectively.

5. The method and system as recited in claim 1, providing a portable, distributed device-based search engine that can store its index on another device rather than the device on which the search engine is stored, as opposed to the prior art approach of search engines that index devices but keeps the indices from the devices on the desktop, whereby POSE can index a host computer (desktop or laptop computer or any other host) and keep the index either on the host computer or on another device so that the host is then searchable when the device is connected to the host.

6. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein a portable federated search engine searches multiple connected drives or devices simultaneously.

7. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein a copy of a shared index is stored onto a portable device including a portable drive, an embedded drive, a mobile manager, personal digital assistant, a wristwatch and any other device incorporating an electronic storage media.

8. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein the device registry, the device knowledgebase, the license file and the rules file work together to create modes of operation:

Home mode, Away mode and Stand-alone mode.

9. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein connected devices are started automatically, where a dynamic symbolic link points to indices, saved searches, data categories, device registry and all the relevant files on connected devices

10. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein data is indexed in memory either on the device, a host computer or any number of devices and then written to disk.

11. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein the results of a federated search are combined either on the device, a host computer or any number of devices and returned as one result set.

12. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein the results of a federated search are combined and or sorted either on the device, a host computer or any number of devices and returned individually for each searched device.

13. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein the results of a federated search are combined and or sorted either on the device, a host computer or any number of devices and returned individually for each searched source, wherein said source could be an internal or external database or an internal or external website or source of data.

14. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein the search engine can search internal and external sources of data from a portable device including the Web, internal or external databases or any other source of data.

15. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein the portable search engine operates independently on each device or drive and can communicate with, and if necessary, defer to another occurrence of the search engine in a federation of devices comprising a collection of multiple POSE-enabled connected devices working together.

16. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein search, language and custom configuration files are stored on each individual device and can be indexed and searched independently.

17. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further providing a POSE generated unique ID for each index with the ID constant for each index whereby,

a) The ID is returned along with a document when user searches;

and

b) Using the ID as a key, POSE can recover the drive letter using the algorithm;

Index 1 ID;

P1kAlMiG;

Index 2 ID;

S6fL34GY, that when a document is returned, the document will have a field called index ID which contains the value of the generated ID for that index so that when another instance of POSE is started, POSE passes a pair of index ID and drive letter, so that with this information POSE can later restore drive letter during search.

18. The method and system as recited in claim 1, providing portable, distributed, cross-platform Unicode parsers that parse words on devices.

19. The method and system as recited in claim 1, including a “

subscription layer”

that;

a) manages all the data that is needed to connect to a site and retrieve information with the subscription layer containing a user'"'"'s user name and password, the URL to a site, the user'"'"'s license information and any other information the user will need to connect to and retrieve information from a paid or protected site

b) allows the user to enter all the information related to logging on and retrieving information from a site once whereby POSE saves this information and automatically logs on and downloads the data for the user;

c). the subscription layer could be used for one or many sites;

d). the subscription layer is also used for managing paid subscription service(s) on a transactional, monthly, or yearly subscription basis from a portable device; and

e) the professional information band allows POSE to manage paid subscriptions for journals, books, magazines, or other types of paid information with all data related to the subscription layer encrypted by POSE.

20. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein the indexer is able to index network and local drives, databases and the Internet from a portable device or drive.

21. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein the search engine searches the self-contained index on a portable device or drive.

22. The method and system as recited in claim 1, including a search server that resides on a portable device or drive and binds either to a localhost or to some other protocol outside of the device.

23. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further providing a portable document URL for retrieving documents from portable and other external sources from a device.

24. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a process for adding one or more indices to a list of indices that will be made available for searching in a collection of devices.

25. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a process for removing one or more indices from the list of available indices on devices.

26. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a process for regenerating indexes on portable devices or drives.

27. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a unique identifier for a host that allows POSE to identify a device and therefore allow or prevent POSE from searching or indexing the contents of the host or device.

28. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a path convert process that converts absolute paths on devices or drives to relative paths that ensures relative paths are transformed into the absolute paths that are required to retrieve data from the file system so that when drive letters are not constant for portable drives or devices, such as, a portable drive that may be identified as drive “

E”

at one time but then referred to as drive “

N”

the next whereby saving the absolute path of a file in the index will cause search retrieval errors and the path convert process also reverses this process when necessary.

29. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein the device knowledgebase contains the capabilities of the device.

30. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further providing the ability to connect to local drives from portable, removable and embedded systems.

31. The method and system as recited in claim 1, providing an auto-run search engine and indexer for devices.

32. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further providing drive monitoring on all devices but desktop and laptop computers and drive monitoring on desktop and laptop computers from other devices.

33. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further providing browser activation from portable, removable drives.

34. The method and system as recited in claim 1, providing portable search server that runs on devices.

35. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a POSE On-the-fly indexing of contents on devices.

36. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a POSE process for automatic categorization of data on devices and for merging categories across devices.

37. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a process to automatically update distributed indices in real-time using wireless or wired connection.

38. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a process for real-time update of distributed indices on devices running on a single platform, for example, Linux or Windows or Macintosh or UNIX.

39. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a POSE process for real-time update of distributed indices on devices running on multiple platforms, for example a combination of Linux, Windows, Macintosh, UNIX, PalmOS, BSD, Windows Mobile, Symbian, etc.

40. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a POSE process to use a custom Graphical User Interface or a browser to display results and documents from a portable device or drive.

41. The method and system as recited in claim 1, providing a portable, distributed, cross-platform index that stores words extracted from devices and also contains file system information such as file system structure with the index in addition to holding words and pointing to which documents the words could be found in and where the documents reside, the index also mirrors the file system.

42. The method and system as recited in claim 1, providing a portable, distributed, cross-platform indexer comprising a craweler part and a storer that. indexes documents after they have been parsed and indexes documents and uses the documents to create an index.

43. The method and system as recited in claim 1, providing a portable, distributed, cross-platform crawler that traverses the drive directory tree, reads all files in the directory and passes them to the indexer.

44. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein said portable device crawler crawls the directories in alphabetical order starting with the “

C”

drive on Windows or “

/”

, the root directory in Linux, UNIX and Mac, and crawls its way down the list of drives or file system with the craweler as single threaded on devices that lack multiple threading support or using multiple threads to crawl multiple drives simultaneously on devices with multiple threads support.

45. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a POSE, distributed, cross-platform device analyzer, which is a part of the indexer, that tokenizes text, parses queries and excludes stop words by functioning as follows:

a) during indexing, the analyzer is responsible for tokenizing text into terms for storing into index;

b) during searching the analyzer is used to parse queries; and

c) excluding stop words from inclusion in the index by referencing the stop word file to determine which words are considered stop words.

46. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein said portable, distributed, cross-platform Storer running on devices that works in concert with said crawler and analyzer to actually index the documents it receives in internal format and store them in the index and uses said Analyzer to tokenize text into terms.

47. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a portable, distributed, cross-platform Re-index Interval that specifies the amount of time to wait until the next time POSE will scan a device'"'"'s drive/filesystem for changes having a configurable parameter that can be changed from the POSE.

48. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein the POSE process can remove an index from devices.

49. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein the POSE process searches desktops, laptops and other portable devices from a portable device.

50. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein POSE is a dual search engine that can operate as a desktop search engine and as a portable search engine that can be installed on stand-alone devices.

51. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further providing a POSE process for automatically adding devices in real time that have POSE installed on them to a list of devices available for searching or indexing so that when a user plugs a POSE-enabled device into a USB, FireWire or any other connector, POSE will sense the device and will automatically make the device'"'"'s information available to the user via search and to the indexer.

52. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further providing a POSE process for adding or omitting a device from a query when multiple POSE-enabled devices are connected to a host by:

a) adding the device'"'"'s index and identifier to the search process;

b) providing a user with a process whereby the device can be eliminated from a search; and

c) maintaining the device'"'"'s index as part of the general search while eliminating the device'"'"'s index when the eliminate device from search option is turned on.

53. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further including a POSE process for adding, stopping, pausing a device from indexing comprising:

a) adding the device'"'"'s index and identifier to the index process when multiple POSE-enabled devices are connected to a host; and

b) providing a process that allows a user to add, stop, pause the device from an indexing wherein;

i) adding allows the user to add a device to POSE'"'"'s index queue;

ii) stopping stops POSE from indexing the device;

iii) pausing pauses the indexer and the device is not indexed and allows the user to Resume indexing if the device is paused.

54. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a POSE process for searching desktop, laptop and network devices.

55. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a POSE process for indexing remote resources, including local drives, network drives, portable drives attached to a remote resource, from a device.

56. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a process to install POSE on any device in a multiple device environment when one of the multiple devices is already running POSE.

57. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a process to manage multiple devices through one instance of POSE however many devices are connected to a host computer, so that only one instance of POSE runs and manages all the other instances.

58. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a process that independently manages each device at the indexing, updating and search level but collective manages them through one interface at the search level, so that if ten devices are connected, each device monitors its drive, indexes its data independently and updates its index while making its index available for searching.

59. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a process to incrementally index (index on the fly) any device in a multiple devices environment.

60. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a process to automatically recognize a newly installed or connected POSE-enabled device and add its resources including device name, device capability and device index to the list of available devices in real time.

61. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a POSE process to search the Web from devices.

62. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a virtual search manager as a temporary space created on a host computer from where all the resources including pointers or links to the indices and configuration files of all the connected devices and drives are managed, whereby:

a) running all the devices from a virtual search manager on the host eliminates the bottleneck that will occur if a portable device is used to manage other portable devices;

b) unplugging a portable device that is used as a virtual search manager practically kills all the processes that the other devices need and effectively stops all the other devices, so that using a host-based virtual search manager eliminates this problem;

c) the host-based virtual search manager removes all the links and pointers related to a device as the device is shut down; and

d) when the last device is removed, POSE removes the temporary directory from the host.

63. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a devices knowledgebase that allows POSE to know the capabilities of a device such as the input and output devices available on a device;

the amount of storage space, memory, type of device, name of device, manufacturer, model and other pertinent information relating to the device.

64. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a POSE tool bar framework for managing different data types, post search, whereby the POSE tool bar framework allows POSE to present the user with data-type specific actions they can use to manage data after POSE has retrieved data, as an example, the Photos tool bar will allow users to view photos as slide, print, copy, email, delete and copy photos right from the search interface.

65. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising an auto search/indexer shutdown process so that when a device is pulled from the host without first shutting down the device, POSE will not crash but will gracefully shut down its search and index files and exit cleanly.

66. The method and system as recited in claim 1, wherein the search index is used as secure key by virtue of POSE storing the indexer, index on a portable device which must be connected to a host before the host can be searched, thereby the POSE index becomes the user name/password for searching a host.

67. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a process for encrypting personal, program and authentication data on POSE, wherein said encryption process is used to encrypt files on the drive in addition to some critical POSE files such as the device registry, the knowledgebase, the license file, the rules file and the subscription layer data that holds users'"'"' log on password, user name and other sensitive data.

68. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a process for gathering Alerts from free and paid information sources on the Web, in corporate databases or from any source, distilling the information and presenting it in a single user interface sorted by source, date, type of information and by priority.

69. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a process for working with biometric and other authentication systems from a portable device.

70. The method and system as recited in claim 1, further comprising a process for accessing paid information services from a portable device whereby said process combines a Comprehensive Information Database (CIDB), personalization, security, context, authentication, commerce and an Information Provider Domain Service (IPDS).

71. The method and system as recited in claim 1, where search is based on a profile wherein:

a) POSE is a profile-based search engine because it checks all the devices for ownership on startup and before indexing or searching; and

b) checking the device registry for ownership before indexing or searching provides a layer of privacy and security at the search application level.