Abstract: Techniques are described that provide a reading pane for reading one or more content portions of a work and a guide pane that displays a structured overview of additional information from the corpus that is focused by an analysis of information from the currently-visible content portion of the work. The contents of the currently-visible content portion displayed within the reading page are used to derive dynamic representations of the user's immediate interests. At the user's request, a structured persistent context-aware guide is computed and displayed. The persistent context-aware guide provides a framework for accessing other parts of the corpus having the most-related information. The elements in the persistent context-aware guide are other content portions or other organizations such as sections, chapters, or articles in the corpus. The persistent context-aware guide may also incorporate additional closely-related information elements from outside the corpus including advertisements.

Abstract: Techniques are provided to improve communication through selective display of attention shifting display elements. A focus of attention is determined, display events located and attention shifting display elements displayed. The attention shifting display elements suggest display events as candidate foci of attention based on the display event, the display event location and the distance from the focus of attention. Attention shifting display elements are composed of attention directing portions, and optional attention attracting and informing portions. The attention directing portions help direct attention across distances and help attract attention to a point. The informing portions indicate availability of information associated with the display event occurring outside the focus of attention.

Abstract: A system and method for redistributing interest in a hierarchical data structure representation is provided. A data representation of a hierarchical data structure includes depth levels having one or more blocks of sibling nodes associated with node interest characteristics. Two or more of the sibling nodes are combined as aggregates into elided subsets. One of the elided subsets is selected and expanded to reveal the aggregated sibling nodes. A breadth of the depth level in which the block is located is determined. A further determination that the breadth exceeds a constrained breadth extent for the data representation is made. The breadth is decreased by ordering the sibling nodes in the depth level by their node interest characteristic and by combining at least a portion of the sibling nodes into the elided subset based on the respective node interest characteristics such that the breadth does not exceed the constrained breadth extent.

Abstract: A system and method for providing a topic-directed search is provided, which advantageously harnesses user-provided topical indexes and an ability to characterize indexes according to how articles fall under their topical organizations. A corpus of articles and an index that includes topics from the articles is maintained. For each topic, a coarse-grained topic model is built, which includes the characteristic words included in the articles relating to the topic and scores assigned to the characteristic words. A search query is executed against the index. The topics that match the search terms are chosen by their scores. The topics that match the coarse-grained topic models and the articles corresponding to the search query are presented. In contrast to conventional search engines, search results are organized according to topic and search results can be offered across multiple indexes, where part of returned results are selected from most-relevant indexes with their most-relevant topics.

Abstract: Page turning of a three-dimensional electronic book is modeled as a dynamic animation. The page to be turned may be rotated by rotating it about a base line, and deformed by curling points of the front face of the turning page around the outer side of an imaginary geometric shape.

Abstract: Techniques provide for the dynamic display of a page-oriented information asset using an audio output mode. Pluralities of elements in the page-oriented information asset are determined based on chapters, sections, paragraphs, sentences, words and the like. The elements are rendered to an audio output mode. Optionally selectable representations of the elements are also determined and output using a 3-dimension-like rendering to a visual output mode. The 3-dimension-like rendering of the visual representations of the elements shows how the current element relates to the other elements and its location within the page-oriented information asset. The 3-dimension-like rendering provides visual orientation or context within the page-oriented information asset. The visual representations of the elements are optionally selectable as spatial context indicators providing direct navigation control to support reading, browsing and information retrieval tasks within the page-oriented information asset.

Abstract: User's interests can be explicitly determined via keywords that the user specifies, and/or are implicitly constructed from user browsing and reading activity. User interests may be expressed as an interest profile. Conceptual keywords related to user interests are selected by combining spreading activation and word co-occurrence, by latent semantic analysis, or other methods. One embodiment automatically highlights sentences and other information that contain conceptual keywords related to user interests. Highlights can be activated when the user directly performs a keyword search or index search, or the invention can generate information reflecting user interests, apply it to the text, and generate and display highlights. One embodiment includes an algorithm for computing a conceptual keyword vector through an iterative spreading activation process also employing word co-occurrence. A conceptual index of the text may be created and then combined with conceptual highlighting.

Abstract: A system and method for redistributing interest in a hierarchical data structure representation is provided. A data representation of a hierarchical data structure includes depth levels having one or more blocks of sibling nodes associated with node interest characteristics. Two or more of the sibling nodes are combined as aggregates into elided subsets. One of the elided subsets is selected and expanded to reveal the aggregated sibling nodes. A breadth of the depth level in which the block is located is determined. A further determination that the breadth exceeds a constrained breadth extent for the data representation is made. The breadth is decreased by ordering the sibling nodes in the depth level by their node interest characteristic and by combining at least a portion of the sibling nodes into the elided subset based on the respective node interest characteristics such that the breadth does not exceed the constrained breadth extent.

Abstract: A system and method for providing a topic-directed search is provided, which advantageously harnesses user-provided topical indexes and an ability to characterize indexes according to how articles fall under their topical organizations. A corpus of articles and an index that includes topics from the articles is maintained. For each topic, a coarse-grained topic model is built, which includes the characteristic words included in the articles relating to the topic and scores assigned to the characteristic words. A search query is executed against the index. The topics that match the search terms are chosen by their scores. The topics that match the coarse-grained topic models and the articles corresponding to the search query are presented. In contrast to conventional search engines, search results are organized according to topic and search results can be offered across multiple indexes, where part of returned results are selected from most-relevant indexes with their most-relevant topics.

Abstract: A system and method for turning pages of a three-dimensional electronic book. A closed three-dimensional electronic book is modeled as at least one three-dimensional object having length, width and thickness dimensions. An opened three-dimensional book electronic is modeled as at least two three-dimensional objects having length, width and thickness dimensions, representing the left side of the opened book and the right side of the opened book. The page(s) to be turned is modeled as at least a three-dimensional object having length, width and thickness dimensions. The cross-section parallelogram having a width dimension and a thickness dimension based on the width and thickness dimensions of the closed three-dimensional electronic book, and a user-selected number of page(s) to be turned.

Abstract: To annotate a three-dimensional electronic document, a user specifies, on a two-dimensional screen, a portion of a page of a three-dimensional document as a specified page area to be annotated by making a stroke. The annotation may be displayed to the user by a hybrid technique where the annotation is displayed by a 3D polyline segment placed behind the near clipping plane of a virtual camera frustum. At the same time, previous annotations are displayed by another technique, such as, for example, the texture coloring technique. During the intermittent time between the stroke and another stroke the 3D polyline segment is removed from behind the near clipping plane and the page texture is updated with the annotation data. The display techniques support highlighting annotations, free-form annotations, and text annotations.

Abstract: Apparatus, methods, and computer program products are disclosed that perform computationally efficient layout of hierarchical data structures.

Abstract: To annotate a three-dimensional electronic object, e.g., document, a user specifies, on a two-dimensional screen, a portion of a page of a three-dimensional document as a specified page area to be annotated by making a stroke. The annotation may be displayed to the user by a hybrid technique where the annotation is displayed by a 3D polyline segment placed behind the near clipping plane of a virtual camera frustrum. At the same time, previous annotations are displayed by another technique, such as, for example, the texture coloring technique. During the intermittent time between the stroke and another stroke the 3D polyline segment is removed from behind the near clipping plane and the page texture is updated with the annotation data. The display techniques support highlighting annotations, free-form annotations, and text annotations.

Abstract: Method and system to enable a user to view large collections of hierarchically linked information on a computer based display. A tree structure visualization is created which presents a representation of the complete collection of information on the display. The visualization fits completely within a fixed area of the computer based display, negating the need to scroll information into the display area. The visualization is based on identified focus nodes and through calculation of a Degree of Interest (DOI) for each of the nodes based in the structure. Layout and presentation of the visualization structure is based on the DOI values in combination with considerations of available display space. A user may dynamically manipulate views of the structure by selecting one or more focus nodes, thus causing a recalculation of the degree of interest.

Abstract: Techniques provide for the dynamic display of a page-oriented information asset using an audio output mode. Pluralities of elements in the page-oriented information asset are determined based on chapters, sections, paragraphs, sentences, words and the like. The elements are rendered to an audio output mode. Optionally selectable representations of the elements are also determined and output using a 3-dimension-like rendering to a visual output mode. The 3-dimension-like rendering of the visual representations of the elements shows how the current element relates to the other elements and its location within the page-oriented information asset. The 3-dimension-like rendering provides visual orientation or context within the page-oriented information asset. The visual representations of the elements are optionally selectable as spatial context indicators providing direct navigation control to support reading, browsing and information retrieval tasks within the page-oriented information asset.

Abstract: Techniques are described that provide a reading pane for reading one or more content portions of a work and a guide pane that displays a structured overview of additional information from the corpus that is focused by an analysis of information from the currently-visible content portion of the work. The contents of the currently-visible content portion displayed within the reading page are used to derive dynamic representations of the user's immediate interests. At the user's request, a structured persistent context-aware guide is computed and displayed. The persistent context-aware guide provides a framework for accessing other parts of the corpus having the most-related information. The elements in the persistent context-aware guide are other content portions or other organizations such as sections, chapters, or articles in the corpus. The persistent context-aware guide may also incorporate additional closely-related information elements from outside the corpus including advertisements.

Abstract: Techniques for estimating user interest in graph structures are provided. A graph structure containing at least two nodes, a threshold disinterest value and at least one interesting node within the graph structure are determined. Each determined interesting node is added to a set of active nodes. Adjacent nodes connected to the set of active nodes and associated with Degree-Of-Interest values more interesting than the threshold disinterest value are in turn added to the set of active nodes until no additional adjacent connected nodes have a Degree-Of-Interest value more interesting than the threshold value. A new visualization of the graph structure is determined based on the nodes in the set of active nodes. The interesting nodes may be determined based on specific indications of interest in a node, such as a mouse selections, or may be based on the user's focus of attention within the graph based information structure.

Abstract: A system and method for annotating three-dimensional electronic documents. A user specifies, on a two-dimensional screen, a portion of a page of a three-dimensional document as a specific page area to be annotated. The annotation is displayed to the user with the transparent polygon technique, the vertex coloring technique and/or the texture coloring technique. These display techniques support highlighting annotations, free-form annotations, and text annotations.

Abstract: A method for the conversion and display of tree-structured information to a “treetable”, a table-like display structure, in which each path from a root to a leaf node is represented by a single column, and cells representing the immediate successors of a node are placed immediately under that node. Variation in the amount of space given to cells within particular columns is used to allow more detail to be given for selected paths and subtrees. Extraction of subparts of a treetable into another such structure is used for deeper exploration of trees. The treatable structure is also suitable for use as a selector and guide to the reading, in auxiliary displays, of the concatenated node content associated with either (a) individual columns (representing full paths), or (b) all successors to a given node.

Abstract: A method for the conversion and display of tree-structured information to a “treetable”, a table-like display structure, in which each path from a root to a leaf node is represented by a single column, and cells representing the immediate successors of a node are placed immediately under that node. Variation in the amount of space given to cells within particular columns is used to allow more detail to be given for selected paths and subtrees. Extraction of subparts of a treetable into another such structure is used for deeper exploration of trees. The treetable structure is also suitable for use as a selector and guide to the reading, in auxiliary displays, of the concatenated node content associated with either (a) individual columns (representing full paths), or (b) all successors to a given node.