Abstract: A method and system for extracting both explicit and implicit social relations among people and organizations are provided. Various relations are explicitly defined in a tree structure in a social-relationship database. Based on the explicitly defined relations, implicit relations among people and organizations can also be extracted. According to a method for performing a database search concerning social relations of an entity (person or organization), first, in response to a search request received from a search requester, which contains the identity of the entity, explicit relations of the entity are extracted from the database. Next, implicit relations of the entity are extracted based on the extracted explicit relations. Thereafter, the extracted explicit and implicit relations may be formatted and sent to the search requester. In one embodiment, the method is implemented over a network, such as the Internet.

Abstract: A method and device for automatic error detection and correction for computerized text files uses a two-step segmentation method. A sentence of the computerized text file is first segmented at the first segmentation step into an original format and then converted into a correct sentence in the second segmentation step. In the first segmentation step the original sentence is segmented into a series of characters and the characters are analyzed so that the original phonetic or pictographic codes of the characters are revealed. The sentence in the original format is then converted into a series of phonetic representative codes and/or pictographic representative codes. Words consisting the sentence are then selected from a lexicon to reconstruct the sentence. The reconstructed sentence is then segmented again so that the errors in the original sentence are detected and corrections thereof are suggested.