Abstract: Methods and systems are described for navigating a corpus of content items stored in one or more information repositories within a distributed communications system. The content items may include video feeds, audio feeds, television broadcasts, website, a web log or the like. Using any browser application, the user views content items presented in an interactive scroll display. Modules are included for filtering, sorting and sampling content to ensure delivery of relevant high-quality content to the user. A feedback mechanism is also included for refining relevance filtering, sorting and sampling processes.

Abstract: The subject matter disclosed herein relates to a process for receiving, evaluating and selecting of content modules such as content summary boxes and landing pages for display on network-accessible search engine results page. In one particular example, potential content providers may be provided with incentives and guidelines for the preparation of content summary boxes and landing pages over an electronic communications network, and the resulting submissions can be ranked and published in conjunction with the display of a search engine results page over the network.

Abstract: An improved system and method for selecting and visualizing object metadata evolving over time is provided. An application may generate a visualization depicting the temporal evolution of metadata describing objects in an object store over a plurality of time intervals. The application may switch between a visualization of object metadata flowing like a river or cascading like a waterfall over time. A ranked list of metadata items may be determined for some pre-selected intervals during a pre-processing step. Then at runtime when a request may be received for providing a ranked list of metadata items for a query interval, a combination of time intervals from the pre-selected time intervals may be determined that cover the query time interval, and the ranked lists of metadata items for each time interval in the combination of time intervals that cover the query time interval may be aggregated and output for visualization.

Abstract: Techniques are described for generating an authority value of a first one of a plurality of documents. A first component of the authority value is generated with reference to outbound links associated with the first document. The outbound links enable access to a first subset of the plurality of documents. A second component of the authority value is generated with reference to a second subset of the plurality of documents. Each of the second subset of documents represents a potential starting point for a user session. A third component of the authority value is generated representing a likelihood that a user session initiated by any of a population of users will end with the first document. The first, second, and third components of the authority value are combined to generate the authority value. At least one of the first, second, and third components of the authority value is computed with reference to user data relating to at least some of the outbound links and the second subset of documents.

Abstract: A first component of an authority value is generated with reference to outbound links associated with a document and corresponding to a first subset of a plurality of documents. A second component of the authority value is generated with reference to a second subset of the plurality of documents that represent potential starting points for user sessions. A third component of the authority value is generated representing a likelihood that a user session initiated by any of a population of users will end with the document. At least one of the first, second, and third components of the authority value is computed with reference to user data relating to at least some of the outbound links and the second subset of documents.

Abstract: An improved system and method for selecting and visualizing object metadata evolving over time is provided. An application may generate a visualization depicting the temporal evolution of metadata describing objects in an object store over a plurality of time intervals. The application may switch between a visualization of object metadata flowing like a river or cascading like a waterfall over time. A ranked list of metadata items may be determined for some pre-selected intervals during a pre-processing step. Then at runtime when a request may be received for providing a ranked list of metadata items for a query interval, a combination of time intervals from the pre-selected time intervals may be determined that cover the query time interval, and the ranked lists of metadata items for each time interval in the combination of time intervals that cover the query time interval may be aggregated and output for visualization.

Abstract: The subject matter disclosed herein relates to a process for receiving, evaluating and selecting of content modules such as content summary boxes and landing pages for display on network-accessible search engine results page. In one particular example, potential content providers may be provided with incentives and guidelines for the preparation of content summary boxes and landing pages over an electronic communications network, and the resulting submissions can be ranked and published in conjunction with the display of a search engine results page over the network.

Abstract: Methods and systems are described for navigating a corpus of content items stored in one or more information repositories within a distributed communications system. The content items may include video feeds, audio feeds, television broadcasts, website, a web log or the like. Using any browser application, the user views content items presented in an interactive scroll display. Modules are included for filtering, sorting and sampling content to ensure delivery of relevant high-quality content to the user. A feedback mechanism is also included for refining relevance filtering, sorting and sampling processes.

Abstract: Techniques are described for generating an authority value of a first one of a plurality of documents. A first component of the authority value is generated with reference to outbound links associated with the first document. The outbound links enable access to a first subset of the plurality of documents. A second component of the authority value is generated with reference to a second subset of the plurality of documents. Each of the second subset of documents represents a potential starting point for a user session. A third component of the authority value is generated representing a likelihood that a user session initiated by any of a population of users will end with the first document. The first, second, and third components of the authority value are combined to generate the authority value. At least one of the first, second, and third components of the authority value is computed with reference to user data relating to at least some of the outbound links and the second subset of documents.

Abstract: An improved system and method for selecting and visualizing object metadata evolving over time is provided. An application may generate a visualization depicting the temporal evolution of metadata describing objects in an object store over a plurality of time intervals. The application may switch between a visualization of object metadata flowing like a river or cascading like a waterfall over time. A ranked list of metadata items may be determined for some pre-selected intervals during a pre-processing step. Then at runtime when a request may be received for providing a ranked list of metadata items for a query interval, a combination of time intervals from the pre-selected time intervals may be determined that cover the query time interval, and the ranked lists of metadata items for each time interval in the combination of time intervals that cover the query time interval may be aggregated and output for visualization.

Abstract: An improved system and method for selecting and visualizing object metadata evolving over time is provided. An application may generate a visualization depicting the temporal evolution of metadata describing objects in an object store over a plurality of time intervals. The application may switch between a visualization of object metadata flowing like a river or cascading like a waterfall over time. A ranked list of metadata items may be determined for some pre-selected intervals during a pre-processing step. Then at runtime when a request may be received for providing a ranked list of metadata items for a query interval, a combination of time intervals from the pre-selected time intervals may be determined that cover the query time interval, and the ranked lists of metadata items for each time interval in the combination of time intervals that cover the query time interval may be aggregated and output for visualization.

Abstract: A system and method are provided for eliciting interesting structure from a collection of entities or resources with explicit and/or implicit, static and/or dynamic relations, called “affinities,” between them. Interesting structure includes (1) notions of quality, authority, or definitiveness of information, (2) notions of relevance to a user's information need, (3) notions of similarity among the plurality of resources retrieved from a universe of resources by a query process, and (4) notions of similarity among the usages of resources by different users/servers. Similarities between entities are computed, based on similarities between the affinity values for the entities. That is, where the affinitiy values for two entities resemble each other, the two entities have a high degree of similarity. Using the similarities, the entities are ranked, clustered, etc., based on a significance derived from the similarities. The ranking, clustering, etc., makes up the interesting structure which is sought.

Abstract: A method and system for identifying groups of pages of common interest from a collection of hyper-linked pages are disclosed. A plurality of community cores are identified from the collection where each core includes first and second sets of pages, and each page in the first set points to every page in the second set. Each identified core is expanded into a full community which is a subset of the pages regarding a particular topic. The identification community cores is based on the analysis of the Web graph in which the communities correspond to instances of Web subgraphs. Extraneous pages are then pruned to improve the quality of the resulting communities.

Abstract: A system and method for ranking hyperlinked documents, such as web pages, is provided wherein a stochastic backoff process is used to rank those hyperlinked documents. In more detail, the stochastic process is derived from a random walk through the pages of the web. First, a directed graph may be generated from a crawl wherein the nodes are documents in the crawl and a directed edge from one node A to another node B indicates the presence of a hyperlink from the corresponding document docA to document docB. Using a stochastic backoff process on this graph, a weight between 0 and 1 is assigned to each document so that the documents may be ranked according to the weights.

Abstract: A method and system for representing database and query information for multiple windows, includes defining an interval hash tree as a two-way interval tree, constructing a first interval hash tree for database windows, constructing a second interval hash tree for query windows, and matching the second and first interval hash trees node by node.

Abstract: A method of ranking search results includes producing a relevance score for a document in view of a query. A similarity score is calculated for the query utilizing a feature vector that characterizes attributes and query words associated with the document. A rank value is assigned to the document based upon the relevance score and the similarity score.

Abstract: This invention includes the step of transmitting a query to a set of search engines. Any result lists returned from these search engines is received, and a subset of entries in each result list is selected. Each entry in this subset is assigned a scoring value according to a scoring function, and each result list is then assigned a representative value according to the scoring values assigned to its entries. A merged list of entries is produced based upon the representative value assigned to each result list.

Abstract: This invention includes the step of transmitting a query to a set of search engines. Any result lists returned from these search engines is received, and a subset of entries in each result list is selected. Each entry in this subset is assigned a scoring value according to a scoring function, and each result list is then assigned a representative value according to the scoring values assigned to its entries. A merged list of entries is produced based upon the representative value assigned to each result list.

Abstract: A method of ranking search results includes producing a relevance score for a document in view of a query. A similarity score is calculated for the query utilizing a feature vector that characterizes attributes and query words associated with the document. A rank value is assigned to the document based upon the relevance score and the similarity score.

Abstract: An application caching system and method are provided wherein one or more applications may be cached throughout a distributed computer network. The system may include a central cache directory server, one or more distributed master application servers and one or more distributed application cache servers. The system may permit a service, such as a search, to be provided to the user more quickly.