System and methods for constructing personalized context-sensitive portal pages or views by analyzing patterns of users' information access activities

• US 7,203,909 B1
• Filed: 04/04/2002
• Issued: 04/10/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 04/04/2002
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Anderson, Corin Ross, Horvitz, Eric
• Primary Examiner(s): Bayerl; Raymond J.
• Application Number:
  US10/115,655
• Time in Patent Office: 1,832 Days
• Field of Search: 715/765, 715/738, 715/745, 715/744, 715/747, 715/760, 715/866, 715/501.1, 715/513, 715/515
• US Class Current: 715/765
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/954 Navigation, e.g. using categorised browsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0256 User search
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99948 Application of database or data structure, e.g. distributed, multimedia, or image

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system and methodology to assist users with data access activities and that includes such activities as routine web browsing and/or data access applications. A coalesced display or montage of aggregated information is provided that is focused from a plurality of sources to achieve substantially one-button access to user'"'"'s desired web or data source information/destinations in order to mitigate efforts in retrieving and viewing such information. Past web or other type data access patterns can be mined to predict future browsing sites or desired access locations. A system is provided that builds personalized web portals for associated users based on models mined from past data access patterns. The portals can provide links to web resources as well as embed content from distal (remote) pages or sites producing a montage of web or other type data content. Automated topic classification is employed to create multiple topic-centric views that can be invoked by a user.

Claims

1. A system to display a montage, comprising:

at least one lens component focused to retrieve information from at least one data site the at least one data site chosen based on a user'"'"'s past web usage and data access patterns;

a predictive component that automatically determines a user'"'"'s past web usage and data access patterns via a probabilistic model constructed from log files that record previous user activity and previous data access patterns in conjunction with an associated context in which the user activity occurs; and

a second component to receive the information from the lens component and output the information to a montage in accordance with a current context, the montage combines content from a plurality of different data sites including at least one of links to pages and embedded distal site content, wherein the second component tailors the content to a user'"'"'s current browsing context, and assembles the content to automatically fit within a user'"'"'s current browser window.

2. The system of claim 1, the montage is dynamically updated in at least one of a page in a web browser, a persistent sidebar display, a sidebar display that is accessed with a gesture, the gesture associated with at least one of a keyboard sequence and a hovering of a mouse cursor on a display region, a portal display, a viewing display, a peripheral display, an ambient display, a help display, and an iconic display in order to provide a location for users to access information of interest.

3. The system of claim 1, the montage is generated on a graphical display having at least one display object and provided as part of a graphical user interface.

4. The system of claim 1, the montage includes 1 to P display clippings associated with 1 to O lenses, O and P being an integer.

5. The system of claim 4, the current context relates to a user and is associated with at least one of a time, a day of the week, a date and event when the user is likely to have an interest in the displayed clippings based upon past data access activities in similar contexts.

6. The system of claim 4, the lenses are adapted as a portal having at least one of address, instruction, and coordinate information to retrieve 1 through N selected portions of information onto the clippings, N being an integer.

7. The system of claim 6, the lenses adapted for multidimensional coordinate systems, and the clippings include at least one of a plurality of shapes, colors, dimensions, code formats, and executables.

8. The system of claim 4, further comprising user controls to configure the montage, the user controls including at least one of sizing options, resizing options, formatting options, parameter options, weighting options, dimensions for the clippings, providing feedback regarding displayed content and models, and controlling clipping refresh rates.

9. The system of claim 4, the clippings includes at least one of a rectangle, square, triangle, circle, ellipse, trapezoid, user-defined shapes, cubes, polygons, spheres, ellipsoids, pyramids, N-dimensional shapes.

10. The system of claim 1, the current context is associated with a user'"'"'s collaboration with other users having a similar context.

11. The system of claim 1, further comprising topic-centric segmentation of the montage based on an automated topic classifier.

12. The system of claim 11, the topic classifier is employed to at least one of enrich display content and provide topic-centric pages at display time.

13. The system of claim 11, the topic-centric segments of the montage provide means by which users access other montages that are focused on a particular topic.

14. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions stored thereon to perform the acts recited in claim 1.

15. A graphical user interface, comprising:

at least one display region associated with a lens, the lens focused from at least one data site based on a mined probability, the mined probability determined based at least in part on past web data access patterns and recorded context and from a predictive component that automatically determines a user'"'"'s past web usage and data access patterns via a probabilistic model constructed from log files that record previous user activity and previous data access patterns in conjunction with an associated context in which the user activity occurs; and

at least one display object associated with the display region to provide information from a selected portion of the at least one data site in accordance with a current user context, wherein the display object tailors the information to a user'"'"'s current browsing context, and assembles the information automatically to fit within a user'"'"'s current browser window.

16. The interface of claim 15, further comprising at least one of drawing controls for outlining shapes, dimension controls for altering multidimensional display objects, sizing controls, cropping controls and clipping refresh controls.

17. The interface of claim 16, clipping refresh controls adjust a frequency at which clipping content is refreshed.

18. A computer-readable medium having stored thereon a signal, comprising:

a data packet to communicate data derived from a plurality of lens components, the lens components focused on selected portions of a plurality of associated data sites, the plurality of associated data sites chosen based on a predictive component that automatically determines a user'"'"'s past web usage and data access patterns via a probabilistic model constructed from log files that record previous user activity and previous data access patterns in conjunction with an associated context in which the user activity occurs, the lens components focused in accordance with a current context, wherein the lens component tailors the plurality of associated data sites to automatically fit within a user'"'"'s current browser window.

19. A computer-readable medium having stored thereon a data structure, comprising:

a first data region that stores at least one clipping associated with a first data site, the first data site chosen based on a predictive component that automatically determines a user'"'"'s past web usage and data access patterns via a probabilistic model constructed from log files that record previous user activity and previous data access patterns in conjunction with an associated context in which the user activity occurs;

at least a second data region that stores at least a second clipping associated with a second data site, the second data site chosen based on a predictive component that automatically determines a user'"'"'s past web usage and data access patterns via a probabilistic model constructed from log files that record previous user activity and previous data access patterns in conjunction with an associated context in which the user activity occurs; and

a context field to relate the data regions, wherein the context field tailors the data regions to automatically fit within a user'"'"'s current browser window.

20. A method for displaying a montage, comprising:

focusing on a plurality of data sites based on a mined probability, the mined probability determined based at least in part on past web data access patterns and recorded context;

automatically determining a user'"'"'s past web usage and data access patterns via a probabilistic model constructed from log files that record previous user activity and previous data access patterns in conjunction with an associated context in which the user activity occurs;

displaying selected portions of the plurality of data sites based on a current context; and

automatically assembling the selected portions of the plurality of data sites to fit within a user'"'"'s current browser window.

21. The method of claim 20, further comprising displaying at least one of an embedded-content montage and a links montage.

22. The method of claim 21, displaying a links montage comprising providing a table containing links to web sites.

23. The method of claim 21, displaying an embedded-content montage comprising at least one of:

forming a set of nested frames;

hosting framesets employed to specify the size of respective panes that facilitate setting the size of a cropping window for distal content;

scrolling content to a suitable position on a distal page;

adorning a URL with an associated tag;

passing a request along to a server and removing an adornment; and

inserting an executable into a stream.

24. The method of claim 21, displaying an embedded-content montage comprising at least one of:

passing a URL directly to a montage;

fetching a page; and

modifying contents of a page.

25. The method of claim 20, further comprising employing feedback to refine the mined probability.