Abstract: A method and apparatus is provided for visually coding or sorting search results based on the similarity of the search results to one or more concepts. A search query containing search terms is used to conduct a web search and obtain search results comprising a number of document surrogates describing the located web pages. Concepts are obtained using the search terms and the similarities between the obtained concepts and the search results are evaluated. The search results are then displayed in a manner that indicates the relative similarity of search results to one or more of the determined concepts, such as by sorting the search results based on the level of similarity of the search results to one or more concepts or by providing an accordance indicator with each displayed search result, the accordance indicators indicating the similarity of the corresponding search result with one or more of the concepts.

Abstract: An apparatus and method is provided that conducts a web search or other computer readable document search and obtains search results comprising a number of meta-documents where each meta-document describes a web pages or other document located in the search. The meta-documents retrieved in the search results are then analyzed to determine the frequency of occurrence of terms used in these meta-documents and the most commonly occurring of these terms are then presented in a visual representation to the user to allow the user to see what are the most commonly occurring of these terms as well as the frequency with which these terms appear relative to other terms in the search results. Using the visual representations of these commonly occurring terms, a user can re-sort the search results by selected terms or alter the original search query by adding or removing terms from the search query.

Abstract: A method and system of visually coding search results is provided. Using a search query containing a plurality of search terms, a web search is conducted and a set of search results is obtained. Occurrence frequencies of the search terms in the returned document are tallied and used to formulate a number of occurrence indicators having color shades based on the occurrence frequencies of the search terms. The search results are then displayed in two levels of detail with a first portion of the search results displayed in a first format and a second portion displayed in a second format. The occurrence indicators for the search terms are displayed beside each returned document to indicate to a user the frequency of the search terms in the search results.

Abstract: A data structure, apparatuses and methods for expanding a search query to be used by a web search engine is provided. The search query is expanded by accessing a concept knowledge base data structure having concept data objects and term data objects with each term data object defining a term and associated with at least one of the concept data objects. Search terms making up the search query are matched to term data objects and a concept set is generated containing concept data objects associated with the term data objects. A second set of term data objects are generated by using the concept data objects to locate term data objects associated with the concept data objects. A user can then select one of the term data objects in the second set to expand the user's search query.

Abstract: An apparatus and method is provided that conducts a web search or other computer readable document search and obtains search results comprising a number of meta-documents where each meta-document describes a web pages or other document located in the search. The meta-documents retrieved in the search results are then analyzed to determine the frequency of occurrence of terms used in these meta-documents and the most commonly occurring of these terms are then presented in a visual representation to the user to allow the user to see what are the most commonly occurring of these terms as well as the frequency with which these terms appear relative to other terms in the search results. Using the visual representations of these commonly occurring terms, a user can re-sort the search results by selected terms or alter the original search query by adding or removing terms from the search query.

Abstract: A method and system of visually coding search results is provide. Using a search query containing a plurality of search terms, a web search is conducted and a set of search results is obtained. Occurrence frequencies of the search terms in the returned document are tallied and used to formulate a number of occurrence indicators having color shades based on the occurrence frequencies of the search terms. The search results are then displayed in two levels of detail with a first portion of the search results displayed in a first format and a second portion displayed in a second format. The occurrence indicators for the search terms are displayed beside each returned document to indicate to a user the frequency of the search terms in the search results.

Abstract: A method and apparatus is provided for visually coding or sorting search results based on the similarity of the search results to one or more concepts. A search query containing search terms is used to conduct a web search and obtain search results comprising a number of document surrogates describing the located web pages. Concepts are obtained using the search terms and the similarities between the obtained concepts and the search results are evaluated. The search results are then displayed in a manner that indicates the relative similarity of search results to one or more of the determined concepts, such as by sorting the search results based on the level of similarity of the search results to one or more concepts or by providing an accordance indicator with each displayed search result the accordance indicators indicating the similarity of the corresponding search result with one ore more of the concepts.

Abstract: A data structure, apparatuses and methods for expanding a search query to be used by a web search engine is provided. The search query is expanded by accessing a concept knowledge base data structure having concept data objects and term data objects with each term data object defining a term and associated with at least one of the concept data objects. Search terms making up the search query are matched to term data objects and a concept set is generated containing concept data objects associated with the term data objects. A second set of term data objects are generated by using the concept data objects to locate term data objects associated with the concept data objects. A user can then select one of the term data objects in the second set to expand the user's search query.

Abstract: A region-based system, method and architecture for encoding and decoding digital still images to produce a scalable, content-based, randomly accessible compressed bit stream is disclosed. According to the system raw image data is decomposed and ordered into a hierarchy of multi-resolution sub-images. Regions of interest are then determined. A region mask is defined to identify the regions of interest and then encoded. This data is then sorted on the basis of the magnitude of the multi-resolution coefficients to produce the scalable, content-based randomly accessible compressed bit stream.