System and method for providing viewers of a digital image information about identifiable objects and scenes within the image

• US 8,136,028 B1
• Filed: 02/02/2007
• Issued: 03/13/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 02/02/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Loeb Enterprises, LLC
• Original Assignee: Loeb Enterprises, LLC
• Inventors: Loeb, Michael R., McCabe, Edward J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Hutton, Jr., Doug
• Assistant Examiner(s): DYER, ANDREW R
• Application Number:
  US11/701,623
• Time in Patent Office: 1,866 Days
• Field of Search: 715200-202, 715/205
• US Class Current: 715/205
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2423 Interactive query statement specification based on a database schema
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/5866 using information manually generated, e.g. tags, keywords, comments, manually generated location and time information
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/134 Hyperlinking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0241 Advertisements

Abstract

There are provided methods and systems for providing viewers of a digital image with information about identifiable and scenes within the image. In an embodiment, digital images, uploaded to a host website, are customized through the incorporation of some number of selectable informational links and other text based information to provide viewers of the image real-time access to social and advertising related information regarding certain identifiable objects and scenes in the image. The selectable information links are incorporated within and around the digital image in a process referred to herein as image tagging.

Claims

1. A computer based method for providing viewers of a digital image with information about certain objects and scenes displayed within identifiable areas of the digital image, wherein the identifiable areas comprise less than the entire digital image, the method comprising:

(a) associating pre-stored product information hyperlinks with corresponding identifiable areas in the digital image to produce a customized digital image, by identifying and linking the product information links with the corresponding identifiable areas, comprising;

i. identifying specific objects and scenes of interest in the digital image;

ii. circumscribing an area around each identified object and scene of interest;

iii. receiving descriptive text from a user describing said identified specific objects and scenes of interest in at least one of said circumscribed areas;

iv. extracting one or more keywords from the descriptive text received from the user;

v. searching an existing data-store comprised of a plurality of records, each record comprising one or more keywords and at least one associated product information hyperlink to identify relevant product information hyperlinks from the existing data-store based on a keyword match between the one or more extracted keywords and the keywords in the existing data-store;

vi. linking the identified product information hyperlinks with said corresponding identifiable areas in the digital image, to thereby form an association;

(b) displaying the customized digital image to a viewer, the customized digital image including the identified product information links associated with said corresponding identifiable areas of the digital image;

(c) receiving, from the user, a selection of a given associated product information hyperlink in said digital image, selected in association with a given corresponding area in the digital image;

(d) retrieving information, from an address included in said selected product information hyperlink that identifies a location of content on an electronic network; and

(e) displaying said retrieved information to the viewer.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the address is one of:

(a) a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), (b) a Uniform Resource Identifier, (c) an Internet Protocol (IP) address, (d) a file transfer protocol (“

FTP”

) address.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

receiving a scroll over of a given identifiable area in the digital image prior to said receiving step (c); and

displaying product information hyperlinks associated with said given identifiable area.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the product information hyperlinks are displayed as part of:

(a) a pop-up window, (b) a banner ad.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein certain of the associated product information hyperlinks change between viewing instances.

6. The method according to claim 1, wherein said descriptive text is selected from the group comprising one of:

(a) a text string, (b) one or more keywords.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

compensating a provider of said at least one informational link.

8. The method of claim 7, further wherein said provider is not an owner of the digital image.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein said provider of said at least one informational link is an owner of said digital image.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein said compensation comprises a percentage of revenue derived from incremental clicks of said at least one informational link over and above a pre-defined baseline number of clicks.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein said compensation comprises a certain number of points per click impression.

12. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having computer executable instructions for performing the method of claim 1.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the searching step further comprises:

matching one or more of the primary key terms with at least one secondary common keyword from among a plurality of secondary common keywords stored in the data-store,

selecting an associated informational link stored in association with said secondary common keywords in said data-store.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising establishing, prior to said associating step (a), wherein establishing the data-store comprises:

repeatedly scanning web content over a period of time using different primary keywords as drivers in each scan to extract a set of common keywords that convey major themes from the different primary keywords utilized in each scan;

storing the extracted common keywords in the data-store as secondary common keywords;

associating informational links with each of the stored secondary common keywords.

15. A system for providing viewers of a digital image with information about certain objects and scenes displayed within identifiable areas of the digital image, wherein the identifiable areas comprise less than the entire digital image, the system comprising:

a processor;

a memory connected to the processor and storing instructions for operating the processor to perform the steps of;

(a) associating pre-stored product information hyperlinks with corresponding identifiable areas in the digital image to produce a customized digital image, by identifying and linking the product information hyperlinks with the corresponding identifiable areas, comprising;

identifying specific objects and scenes of interest in the digital image;

circumscribing an area around each identified object and scene of interest;

receiving descriptive text from a user describing said identified specific objects and scenes of interest in at least one of said circumscribed areas;

extracting one or more keywords from the descriptive text received from the user;

searching an existing data-store comprised of a plurality of records, each record comprising one or more keywords and at least one associated product information hyperlink to identify relevant product information hyperlinks from the existing data-store based on a keyword match between the one or more extracted keywords and the keywords in the existing data-store;

linking the identified product information hyperlinks with said corresponding identifiable areas in the digital image, to thereby form an association;

(b) displaying the customized digital image to a viewer, the customized digital image including the identified product information hyperlinks associated with said corresponding identifiable areas;

(c) receiving, from the user, a selection of a given associated product information hyperlink in said digital image, selected in association with a given corresponding area in the digital image;

(d) retrieving information, from an address included in said selected associated product information hyperlink that identifies a location of content on an electronic network; and

(e) displaying said retrieved information to the viewer.

16. The system of claim 15, further comprising:

receiving a scroll over of a given identifiable area in the digital image prior to said receiving step (c); and

displaying product information hyperlinks associated with said given identifiable area.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the address is one of:

(a) a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), (b) a Uniform Resource Identifier, (c) an Internet Protocol (IP) address, (d) a file transfer protocol (“

FTP”

) address.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the product information hyperlinks are displayed by the processor as part of:

(a) a pop-up window, (b) a banner ad.

19. The system of claim 15, wherein certain of the associated the product information hyperlinks change between viewing instances.

20. The system according to claim 15, wherein the step of the processor identifying the at least one selectable product information hyperlinks to be associated with the at least one identifiable object, further comprises the steps of:

providing text describing said circumscribed areas in the digital image;

parsing said descriptive text to extract key terms there-from; and

searching for content on the electronic network utilizing the extracted key terms as an index.

21. The system according to claim 20, wherein the user descriptive text is selected from the group comprising one of:

(a) a text string, (b) one or more keywords.

22. The system according to claim 15, wherein the step of the processor identifying the at least one selectable informational link to be associated with the at least one identifiable object, further comprises the steps of:

searching a data repository to identify images corresponding to said at least one circumscribed identifiable object; and

retrieving said at least one selectable informational link associated with said identified images in said data repository.

23. A computer based method for providing viewers of a digital image with information about certain objects and scenes displayed within identifiable areas of the digital image, wherein the identifiable areas comprise less than the entire digital image, the method comprising:

a processor;

a memory connected to the processor and storing instructions for operating the processor to perform the steps of;

associating product information links with corresponding identifiable areas in the digital image to produce a customized digital image, by identifying and linking the product information links with the corresponding identifiable areas, comprising;

i. identifying specific objects and scenes of interest in the digital image;

ii. circumscribing an area around each identified object and scene of interest;

iii. receiving descriptive text from a user describing said identified specific objects and scenes of interest in at least one of said circumscribed areas;

iv. extracting one or more keywords from the descriptive text received from the user;

v. searching an existing data-store comprised of a plurality of common images stored in association with a corresponding plurality of product information links, to identify relevant product information links to be associated with said identifiable areas in the digital image based on image matching;

vi. linking the identified relevant product information links with said corresponding identifiable areas in the digital image, wherein linking comprises;

a) creating a record for said digital image, said record including at least associated coordinate data for each identifiable area within the digital image,

b) determining when a user scrolls across the digital image, whether a current pointer position is within the boundaries of a circumscribed area of the digital image defined by the associated coordinate data,

c) retrieving from memory one of the identified product information links associated with the identifiable area;

displaying the customized digital image to a viewer, the customized digital image including the identified relevant product information links associated with said corresponding identifiable areas;

receiving the viewer selection of a given associated product information link in said digital image, selected in association with a given corresponding area in the digital image;

retrieving information, from an address included in said selected product information link that identifies a location of content on an electronic network; and

displaying said retrieved information to the viewer.

24. A system for creating an electronic storage record linking one or more identifiable objects or scenes in a digital image with at least one corresponding informational link that pertains to an address that identifies a location of content on a wide area network, the system comprising:

a processor;

a memory connected to the processor and storing instructions for operating the processor to perform the steps of;

identifying specific objects and scenes of interest in the digital image;

circumscribing an area around each identified object and scene of interest;

sampling a region of the digital image corresponding to each circumscribed area including a given identifiable object or scene in the digital image, wherein said circumscribed area comprises less than the entire digital image;

storing each sampled region of the digital image as part of a record linking each sampled region with at least one product information hyperlink;

receiving descriptive text from a user describing said identifiable areas in the digital image;

extracting one or more keywords from the descriptive text received from the user;

searching an existing data-store comprised of keywords and associated product information hyperlinks to identify relevant product information hyperlinks from the existing data-store based on a keyword match between the one or more extracted keywords and the keywords in the existing data-store;

including the identified product information hyperlinks as part of the record, to thereby form an association with the previously stored sampled regions

displaying the digital image to a viewer, the digital image including the identified product information hyperlinks associated with said sampled regions;

receiving, from the user, a selection of a given associated product information hyperlink in said digital image, selected in association with a given sampled region in the digital image;

retrieving information, from an address included in said selected associated product information hyperlink that identifies a location of content on an electronic network; and

displaying said retrieved information to the viewer.

25. The system according to claim 24, wherein the sampled region is scalable in accordance with a size of the display of said digital image.

26. The system of claim 24, wherein the processor further performs the step of compensating a provider of said at least one selectable informational link.

27. The system of claim 26, wherein said provider is not an owner of said digital image.

28. The system of claim 26, wherein said provider of said at least one informational link is an owner of said digital image.

29. The system of claim 26, wherein said compensation comprises a percentage of revenue derived from incremental clicks of said digital image over and above a pre-defined baseline number of clicks.

30. The system of claim 26, wherein said compensation comprises a certain number of points per click impression.