Abstract: A system and associated method for collaboratively developing information. An information delivery system for information regarding rapidly evolving software products builds an initial information set and a vocabulary. The initial information set is released for annotations on the information set by contributing users. The vocabulary defines a group of terms and respectively associated confidence level that can be used in describing annotations. An access control list may be employed in authenticating contributing users in accessing the information delivery system to assure reliability of annotations. A reliable annotation having a confidence level satisfying a threshold confidence level is integrated with the information set according to an approval by a content owner.

Abstract: A tool (30) for graphically defining an expression is disclosed. The tool comprises a graphic user interface (GUI) component (31) and an expression generator component (32) adapted to read a graphic definition of an expression provided by a user through the GUI component. The GUI component is responsive to user input to define one or more tree structures comprising a hierarchical series of nodes, and one or more lists comprising a plurality of items, each list item being associated with respective node of an associated tree. The expression generator component analyzes the graphic definition and generates an expression based on the structure of the or each tree and any list items associated with respective nodes of a tree.

Abstract: A system and associated method for collaboratively developing information. An information delivery system for information regarding rapidly evolving software products builds an initial information set and a vocabulary. The initial information set is released for annotations on the information set by contributing users. The vocabulary defines a group of terms and respectively associated confidence level that can be used in describing annotations. An access control list may be employed in authenticating contributing users in accessing the information delivery system to assure reliability of annotations. A reliable annotation having a confidence level satisfying a threshold confidence level is integrated with the information set according to an approval by a content owner.

Abstract: A method for classification of objects (17) for retrieval from a database (19). The method includes a user (10) classifying an object (30) by designating one or more terms for the object (17). The one or more terms are saved in association with an address for the object (17) in a user index (21). The user index (21) is in a local environment (14) of the user (10). The method also includes promoting the one or more terms for the object (17) from the user index (21) to a global index (22) if the one or more terms meet a predefined set of rules. The global index (22) is accessible by multiple users (10) and may be a search engine index. The objects (17) for retrieval from the database (19) may be web pages or web sites on the Internet. The objects (17) may be in the form of text documents, audio, video, image or any other form of media or a combination of forms of media. The one or more terms may be terms in the object (17) or in an associated description of the object (17).

Abstract: A method and apparatus for classification of objects (17) for retrieval from a database (19). The method includes a user (10) classifying an object (30) by designating one or more terms for the object (17). The one or more terms are saved in association with an address for the object (17) in a user index (21). The user index (21) is in a local environment (14) of the user (10). The method also includes promoting the one or more terms for the object (17) from the user index (21) to a global index (22) if the one or more terms meet a predefined set of rules. The global index (22) is accessible by multiple users (10) and may be a search engine index. The objects (17) for retrieval from the database (19) may be web pages or web sites on the Internet. The objects (17) may be in the form of text documents, audio, video, image or any other form of media or a combination of forms of media. The one or more terms may be terms in the object (17) or in an associated description of the object (17).

Abstract: Provided are a system and a method for data retrieval which identify from requested data retrieval operations those operations which require a particular processing task to be performed, and then separate those operations from operations not requiring the processing task. The separated sets of tasks are queued separately for independent processing. This enables resource scheduling to be performed which avoids the operations which do not require performance of the task from having to wait for the operations which do require the task. This is an advantage where the task is a processor-intensive task such as digital watermarking of images. A particular resource allocation method includes enqueuing the set of operations requiring the processing task in a circularly linked list and then employing a scheduler to implement a round-robin allocation of resources for each of the system users in turn.