Person-based information aggregation

• US 9,104,768 B2
• Filed: 04/02/2014
• Issued: 08/11/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 10/16/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Paglia, Marco, Faaborg, Alexander
• Primary Examiner(s): NGUYEN, PHONG H
• Application Number:
  US14/243,329
• Publication Number:
  US 20140214879A1
• Time in Patent Office: 496 Days
• Field of Search: 707/732, 707/748, 707/805, 715/753
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24 Querying
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation

Abstract

Techniques are described for aggregating person-based information on a computing device. The computing device includes a display device and one or more processors. The processors are configured to determine a context of the computing device, and identify a contact associated with the currently-executing application and a plurality of contact identifiers associated with the contact. The processors are configured to receive, from two or more different sources and based on at least one contact, information associated with the contact that includes a respective portion of information received from each of the different sources, determine, based on the context of the computing device, a respective priority value for each of the portions of the information, select, based on the respective priority value, one or more portions of the information, and output, for display, a graphical user interface including at least the selected one or more portions of the information.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

determining, by a computing device, a context of the computing device, the context of the computing device including a currently executing application, wherein the currently executing application is associated with at least a portion of a graphical user interface being output by the computing device;

identifying, by the computing device and based on the context of the computing device, a contact associated with the currently executing application and a plurality of contact identifiers associated with the contact;

receiving, by the computing device, from two or more different sources, and based on at least one contact identifier from the plurality of contact identifiers, information associated with the contact, wherein the information includes a respective portion of information received from each of the two or more different sources, and wherein the information associated with the contact includes information other than the plurality of contact identifiers associated with the contact;

determining, by the computing device and based on the context of the computing device, a respective priority value for each of the portions of the information;

selecting, by the computing device and based on the respective priority value, one or more portions of the information; and

outputting, by the computing device and for display, a graphical user interface including at least the selected one or more portions of the information.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the context of the computing device comprises identifying the currently executing application based at least in part on one of the process name, file name, or file path of the application associated with a process executing at the computing device.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the context of the computing device comprises identifying the currently executing application based at least in part on a function call generated by the currently executing application.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the identified contact is one or more of a person, an object, a location, a landmark, and a place of interest.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising storing, at the computing device, the plurality of contact identifiers associated with the contact.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the information from the two or more different sources comprises receiving the information from the computing device and a computing system communicatively coupled to the computing device.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the information from the two or more different sources comprises:

generating, by the computing device, two or more requests for the information associated with the contact, wherein each of the two or more different sources is associated with a respective request of the two or more requests;

sending, from the computing device, the respective request to the different source from the two or more different sources associated with the respective request; and

receiving, by the computing device from the two or more different sources, the information.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein receiving the information from the two or more different sources comprises receiving at least a portion of the information from a restricted user account associated with one of the two or more different sources.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the information from the two or more different sources comprises:

authenticating, by the computing device and based on authentication information associated with the contact, a user account associated with the contact; and

responsive to the authenticating, receiving, by the computing device and based on the user account, the respective portion of the information.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the information from the two or more different sources further comprises:

receiving, by the computing device, information associated with at least one of

     1) an identity of a source from the plurality of different sources,

     2) application activity associated with at least one piece of information from the one or more pieces of information, or

     3) a time and date associated with the at least one piece of information; and

receiving, by the computing device, information associated with the currently executing application including at least one of application usage information, or application identification information.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the respective priority value for each of the portions of the information indicates a predicted relevance of a corresponding portion of the information to a user of the computing device.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein selecting, based on the respective priority value, the one or more portions of information comprises selecting each portion of the information determined to have a respective priority value that satisfies a threshold.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the respective priority value for each of the portions of information comprises, responsive to determining that the contact is associated with a social network service, increasing the respective priority value by a configurable amount.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the respective priority value for each of the portions of information comprises increasing the respective priority value proportionally to an amount of time that has elapsed since a software application associated with the portion of information was last executed by the computing device.

15. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

identifying, by the computing device, a respective software application associated with each of the portions of information,

wherein determining the priority rating for each of the portions of information comprises assigning, based on a characteristic of the respective software application, a priority value to each of the portions of the information.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein outputting the graphical user interface including at least the selected one or more portions of the information further comprises:

determining, by the computing device and based on the respective priority rating of each of the selected one or more portions of information, an order of the selected one or more portions of information; and

outputting, by the computing device and for display, the selected one or more portions of information in the order, wherein the respective priority rating for each portion of information from the portions of information satisfies a threshold value.

17. A computing device, comprising:

a display device; and

one or more processors, wherein the one or more processors are configured to;

determine a context of the computing device, the context of the computing device including a currently executing application, wherein the currently executing application is associated with at least a portion of a graphical user interface being output by the computing device;

identify, based on the context of the computing device, a contact associated with the currently executing application and a plurality of contact identifiers associated with the contact;

receive, from two or more different sources and based on at least one contact identifier from the plurality of contact identifiers, information associated with the contact, wherein the information includes a respective portion of information received from each of the two or more different sources, and wherein the information associated with the contact includes information other than the plurality of contact identifiers associated with the contact;

determine, based on the context of the computing device, a respective priority value for each of the portions of the information;

select, based on the respective priority value, one or more portions of the information; and

output, for display, a graphical user interface including at least the selected one or more portions of the information.

18. The computing device of claim 17, wherein the respective priority value for each of the portions of the information indicates a predicted relevance of a corresponding portion of the information to a user of the computing device.

19. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium is encoded with instructions that, when executed, cause one or more processors of a computing device to:

determine a context of the computing device, the context of the computing device including a currently executing application, wherein the currently executing application is associated with at least a portion of a graphical user interface being output by the computing device;

identify, based on the context of the computing device, a contact associated with the currently executing application and a plurality of contact identifiers associated with the contact;

receive, from two or more different sources and based on at least one contact identifier from the plurality of contact identifiers, information associated with the contact, wherein the information includes a respective portion of information received from each of the two or more different sources, and wherein the information associated with the contact includes information other than the plurality of contact identifiers associated with the contact;

determine, based on the context of the computing device, a respective priority value for each of the portions of the information;

select, based on the respective priority value, one or more portions of the information; and

output, for display, a graphical user interface including at least the selected one or more portions of the information.

20. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 19, wherein the respective priority value for each of the portions of the information indicates a predicted relevance of a corresponding portion of the information to a user of the computing device.