SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR IDENTIFYING INTERSECTIONS USING CONTENT METADATA

• US 20120005209A1
• Filed: 05/24/2011
• Published: 01/05/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 05/24/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Corrino Holdings LLC (IPValuation Partners, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Intersect PTP, Inc.
• Inventors: Rinearson, Peter, Selden, Kristofor, Flashman, Michael
• Granted Patent: US 9,152,734 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/737
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/248 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/285 Clustering or classification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/489 using time information
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/80 of semi-structured data, e.g. markup language structured data such as SGML, XML or HTML content-based retrieval of web data G06F16/95
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

User-submitted content (e.g., stories) may be associated with descriptive metadata (intersection metadata), such as a timeframe, location, tags, and so on. The user-submitted content may be browsed and/or searched using the descriptive metadata. Intersection criteria comprising a prevailing timeframe, a location, and/or other metadata criteria may be used to identify an intersection space comprising one or more stories. The stories may be ordered according to relative importance, which may be determined (at least in part) by comparing story metadata to the intersection criteria.

Claims

1. A method for presenting story content relating to a timeframe and location of interest, the method comprising:

receiving a query comprising an intersection criteria, the intersection criteria comprising a location and a timeframe of interest;

generating an intersection space responsive to the query by;

accessing a plurality of stories stored on a computer-readable storage medium, each story comprising one or more content items and having respective intersection metadata, the intersection metadata of each story comprising a location and a timeframe pertaining to the story, and

selecting stories for inclusion in the intersection space that have intersection metadata corresponding to the location and the timeframe of the intersection criteria; and

providing for presenting the intersection space to a user on a display device, the display comprising indicators of one or more of the stories included in the intersection space.

2. The method of claim 1, selecting a story for inclusion in the intersection space comprises:

matching the location of the intersection criteria to the location of the story intersection metadata; and

matching the timeframe of the intersection criteria to the timeframe of the story intersection metadata.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the location of the intersection criteria comprises one of an area and a volume, and wherein a location matches the location of the intersection criteria when one or more of:

the location is contained within the location of the intersection criteria, the location overlaps the location of the intersection criteria, and the location is within a proximity threshold of the location of the intersection criteria.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising modifying the intersection criteria when the intersection space comprises fewer than a threshold number of stories, and wherein the modifying comprises automatically expanding one of the timeframe of the intersection criteria and the location of the intersection criteria.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein expanding the intersection criteria comprises scaling one of the timeframe of the intersection criteria and the location of the intersection criteria by a proportional scaling factor.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising filtering the stories included in the intersection space by:

calculating a minimum area value and a maximum area value using the location of the intersection criteria; and

removing a story from the intersection space when the location of the story has an area that is less than the minimum area value or is greater than the maximum area value.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

modifying one of the minimum area value and the maximum area value when the filtered intersection space comprises less than a threshold number of stories; and

filtering the intersection space using one of the modified minimum area value and the modified maximum area value.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising calculating a relative importance of each story in the intersection space, wherein the importance of a story is based upon comparing the intersection metadata of the story to the intersection criteria.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein calculating the importance of a story comprises:

comparing the location of the intersection criteria to the location of the story intersection metadata, the comparison comprising one or more of an overlap proximity comparison, an overlap comparison, an overlap ratio comparison, location scale comparison, a Euclidian distance comparison, unsupervised machine learning, clustering, partitioning, and spectral partitioning.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein calculating the importance of a story comprises comparing the timeframe of the intersection criteria to a timeframe of the story intersection metadata, the comparison comprising one or more of a relative start time comparison, an absolute start time comparison, a timeframe comparison, and a time scale comparison.

11. The method of claim 8, further comprising removing one or more stories from the intersection space based upon the relative importance of the stories in the intersection space.

12. The method of claim 8, further comprising:

ordering the stories in the intersection space based upon the relative importance of the stories; and

providing for prominently displaying important stories in the intersection space.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the location of the intersection criteria is one of a geographical area, a volume, a geographical point, a virtual area, and a location alias.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the intersection criteria comprises a descriptive tag, and wherein selecting a story for inclusion in the intersection space comprises matching the descriptive tag in intersection criteria of the story.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein the intersection criteria comprises a participant, and wherein selecting a story for inclusion in the intersection space comprises matching the participant in intersection criteria of the story.

16. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a user-submitted story comprising one or more content items;

associating the story with user-submitted intersection metadata comprising a location and a timeframe pertaining to the story; and

storing the story in association with the intersection metadata on a computer-readable storage medium.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising extracting intersection metadata from one or more content items of the user-submitted story.

18. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

deriving the intersection criteria from intersection metadata of a story in the datastore; and

using the derived intersection criteria to generate the intersection space.

19. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions to cause a computing device to perform a method, comprising:

receiving a plurality of user-submitted stories, each story comprising one or more content items and respective intersection metadata defining a location and timeframe pertaining to the story;

storing each story in a datastore in association with the respective intersection metadata;

receiving a query comprising an intersection criteria, the intersection criteria comprising a location and a timeframe;

generating an intersection space responsive to the query by identifying stories in the datastore for inclusion in the intersection space that have intersection metadata corresponding to the location and the timeframe of the intersection criteria; and

providing for presenting the intersection space to a user on a display device, the display comprising indicators of one or more of the stories included in the intersection space.

20. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 19, the method further comprising:

calculating a relative importance of each story in the intersection space based upon comparing one or more of the location intersection criteria and timeframe intersection criteria to intersection metadata of the stories; and

presenting the stories in the intersection space in accordance with the relative importance of the stories.

21. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 19, wherein the intersection space comprises less than a threshold number of stories, the method further comprising:

automatically expanding the intersection criteria by one or more of;

calculating a timeframe scaling factor proportional to the timeframe of the intersection criteria and scaling the timeframe of the intersection criteria by the timeframe scaling factor, and

calculating a location scaling factor proportional to the location of the intersection criteria and scaling the location of the intersection criteria by the location scaling factor; and

generating an expanded intersection space by identifying stories in the datastore that have intersection metadata corresponding to the location and the timeframe of the expanded intersection criteria.

22. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 21, the method further comprising:

partitioning the stories in the expanded intersection into one or more spectral partitions using a distance matrix, the distance matrix quantifying a distance between the stories in the expanded intersection space and the location of the intersection criteria; and

filtering stories from the expanded intersection space based upon story partition membership.

23. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 19, the method further comprising:

receiving the intersection criteria in response to a user manipulating a timeframe control presented on a display, the timeframe control comprising a time range and a prevailing timeframe that selectively spans a portion of the time range,

wherein the timeframe of the intersection criteria corresponds to the selected prevailing timeframe of the timeframe control.

24. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 19, the method further comprising:

receiving the intersection criteria in response to a user manipulating a location control presented on a display, the location control comprising a map and a location of interest selectively spanning an area on the map,

wherein the location of the intersection criteria corresponds to the selected area spanned by the location of interest of the location control.

25. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 19, the method further comprising:

receiving an indication of one or more of a current location of the user and a current time; and

deriving the intersection criteria from one or more of the current location of the user and the current time.

26. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 19, wherein receiving a user-submitted story comprises:

receiving an indicator of a timeframe pertaining to the story via a timeframe control presented to a user on a display, the timeframe control comprising a time range and a prevailing timeframe that selectively spans a portion of the time range, wherein the timeframe of the story intersection metadata corresponds to the selected prevailing timeframe of the timeframe control.

27. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 19, wherein receiving a user-submitted story comprises:

receiving an indicator of a location pertaining to the story via a location control presented to a user on a display, the location control comprising a map and a location of interest selectively spanning an area on the map, wherein a location of the story intersection metadata corresponds to the area spanned by the location of interest on the map of the location control.

28. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 19, wherein receiving a user-submitted story comprises:

automatically determining one or more of a location pertaining to the story and a timeframe pertaining to the story from a content item of the story.

29. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 28, the method further comprising extracting one or more of a location and a timeframe pertaining to the story from one of an image content item of the story, video content item of the story, and a text content item of the story.

30. A system for presenting story content relating to a timeframe and location of interest, comprising:

a network-accessible service comprising a computing device, the computing device comprising a processor and a datastore, the datastore comprising a plurality of stories, each story comprising one or more content items and having respective intersection metadata, the intersection metadata of each story comprising a location and a timeframe pertaining to the story;

an intersection module operating on the processor, wherein the intersection module is configured to;

generate an intersection space in response to a query comprising intersection criteria by selecting stories from the datastore for inclusion in the intersection space having a location that matches the location of the intersection criteria and a timeframe that matches the timeframe of the intersection criteria,

assign a relative importance to each story in the intersection space, the relative importance based on comparing the location intersection metadata of each story to the location of the intersection criteria, and

order the stories in the intersection space according to the relative importance of the stories; and

an interface module to provide for presenting the intersection space to a user on a display, the intersection space comprising indicators of one or more of the stories included in the intersection space, wherein the indicators reflect the relative importance of the one or more stories.

31. The system of claim 30, wherein the intersection module is further configured to:

remove one or more stories from the intersection space based upon the relative importance of the stories in the intersection space when the intersection space comprises more than a threshold of stories; and

modify the intersection criteria to expand the intersection space when the intersection space comprises fewer than a sufficiency threshold of stories.