Meta-Web
In one aspect, a system includes an information server, operable to perform operations comprising: receiving a search query from a user device; receiving search results responsive to the search query from a search engine; determining from a registry that user annotations or other metadata are associated with the received search results; ordering the search results according to their relevance, where the relevance is determined based at least in part on the user annotations or other metadata in the registry; generating a search results page including the ordered search results and an annotation tool, wherein the annotation tool provides functions that allow a user of the user device to provide annotations for a particular search result, and wherein the annotation tool receives annotations provided by the user for later use in generating search results pages; and transmitting the search results page to the user device for presentation.
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This application is a continuation application of pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/823,017, filed on Jun. 24, 2010, entitled “Meta-Web”, which is a continuation application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/737,618, filed on Dec. 15, 2003, entitled “Meta-Web”, and issued as U.S. Pat. No. 7,765,206, issued on Jul. 27, 2010, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/474,155, filed Apr. 10, 2002, entitled “Knowledge Web”, and issued as U.S. Pat. No. 7,502,770, issued on Mar. 10, 2009 and claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/529,245, filed Dec. 12, 2003, entitled “Reputation System”, and U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/433,050, filed Dec. 13, 2002, entitled “Automated Purchasing System/Multi-player Game Hub with Voting Scheme”. The disclosures of the foregoing applications are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION1. Technical Field
The invention relates to knowledge. More particularly, the invention relates to a system for organizing knowledge in such a way that users can find it, learn from it, and add to it as needed.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There is widespread agreement that the amount of knowledge in the world is growing so fast that even experts have trouble keeping up. Today not even the most highly trained professionals—in areas as diverse as science, medicine, law, and engineering—can hope to have more than a general overview of what is known. They spend a large percentage of their time keeping up on the latest information, and often specialize in highly narrow sub-fields because they find it impossible to keep track of broader developments.
Education traditionally meant the acquisition of the knowledge people needed for their working lives. Today, however, a college education can only provide an overview of knowledge in a specialized area, and a set of skills for learning new things as the need arises. Professionals need new tools that allow them to access new knowledge as they need it.
The World Wide WebIn spite of this explosion of knowledge, mechanisms for distributing it have remained pretty much the same for centuries: personal communication, schools, journals, and books. The World Wide Web is the one major new element in the landscape. It has fundamentally changed how knowledge is shared, and has given us a hint of what is possible. Its most important attribute is that it is accessible—it has made it possible for people to not only learn from materials that have now been made available to them, but also to easily contribute to the knowledge of the world in their turn. As a result, the Web's chief feature now is people exuberantly sharing their knowledge.
The Web also affords a new form of communication. Those who grew up with hypertext, or have otherwise become accustomed to it, find the linear arrangement of textbooks and articles confining and inconvenient. In this respect, the Web is clearly better than conventional text.
The Web, however, is lacking in many respects.
It has no mechanism for the vetting of knowledge. There is a lot of information on the Web, but very little guidance as to what is useful or even correct.
There are no good mechanisms for organizing the knowledge in a manner that helps users find the right information for them at any time. Access to the (often inconsistent or incorrect) knowledge on the Web thus is often through search engines, which are all fundamentally based on key word or vocabulary techniques. The documents found by a search engine are likely to be irrelevant, redundant, and often just plain wrong.
The Web knows very little about the user (except maybe a credit card number). It has no model of how the user learns, or what he does and does not know—or, for that matter, what it does and does not know.
A Comparison of Knowledge SourcesThere are several aspects to how learners obtain knowledge—they might look at how authoritative the source is, for example, or how recent the information is, or they might want the ability to ask the author a question or to post a comment. Those with knowledge to share might prefer a simple way to publish that knowledge, or they might seek out a well-known publisher to maintain their authority.
While books and journals offer the authority that comes with editors and reviewers, as well as the permanence of a durable product, the Web and newsgroups provide immediacy and currency, as well as the ability to publish without the bother of an editorial process. Table “A” is a summary of the affordances of various forms of publishing.
For institutions, corporations, and governments, failure to keep track of knowledge has consequences that are quite different from those for an individual. Often, institutions make a bad decision due to lack of knowledge on the part of those at the right place and at the right time, even though someone else within the institution may actually hold the relevant knowledge.
Similarly, within a corporation, the process of filtering and abstracting knowledge as it moves through the hierarchy often leaves the decision-maker (whether the CEO, the design engineer, or the corporate lawyer) in a position of deciding without the benefit of the best information. The institutional problem is made worse by the problem of higher employee turnover in the more fluid job market, so that the traditional depository of knowledge—long-standing employees—is beginning to evaporate, just as the amount of knowledge that needs to be kept track of is exploding.
The consequences of not having the right knowledge at the right place and time can be very severe: doctors prescribing treatments that are sub-optimal, engineers designing products without the benefit of the latest technical ideas, business executives making incorrect strategic decisions, lawyers making decisions without knowledge of relevant precedents or laws, and scientists working diligently to rediscover things that are already known—all these carry tremendous costs to society.
The invention addresses the problem of providing a system that has a very large, e.g. multi-petabyte, database of knowledge to a very large number of diverse users, which include both human beings and automated processes. There are many aspects of this problem that are significant challenges. Managing a very large database is one of them. Connecting related data objects is another. Providing a mechanism for creating and retrieving metadata about a data object is a third.
In the past, various approaches have been used to solve different parts of this problem. The World Wide Web, for example, is an attempt to provide a very large database to a very large number of users. However, it fails to provide reliability or data security, and provides only a limited amount of metadata, and only in some cases. Large relational database systems tackle the problem of reliability and security very well, but are lacking in the ability to support diverse data and diverse users, as well as in metadata support.
The ideal system should permit the diverse databases that exist today to continue to function, while supporting the development of new data. It should permit a large, diverse set of users to access this data, and to annotate it and otherwise add to it through various types of metadata. Users should be able to obtain a view of the data that is complete, comprehensive, valid, and enhanced based on the metadata.
The system should support data integrity, redundancy, availability, scalability, ease of use, personalization, feedback, controlled access, and multiple data formats. The system must accommodate diverse data and diverse metadata, in addition to diverse user types. The access control system must be sufficiently flexible to give different users access to different portions of the database, with distributed management of the access control. Flexible administration must allow portions of the database to be maintained independently, and must allow for new features to be added to the system as it grows.
It would be advantageous to provide a system to organize knowledge in such a way that users can find it, learn from it, and add to it as needed.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTIONIn a preferred embodiment, the invention dynamically generates content and presentations for a user by modifying conventional content, e.g. rendering, restructuring, filtering, or supplementing such content, based on information, e.g. annotations, stored in a database. The invention, referred to as the Meta-Web, allows a user at a Web browser, which may be any standard Web browser supported by a standard computing platform, posits a query that is routed to a Meta-Web server. The Meta-Web server routes the query to a search engine that returns search results to the Meta-Web server. The Meta-Web server then routes the results to a Meta-Web registry that, based on the search results and the content of the registry returns annotations and other meta-data to the Meta-Web server. The Meta-Web server uses the annotations and/or other meta-data to generate and route annotated pages to the browser and the user may then explore the results within the annotated pages, for example by clicking on a URL within the annotated pages.
Unique to the invention is the provision of the registry that receives the search results and provides annotations and/or other information to the Meta-Web server. The registry may also accumulate knowledge, meta-knowledge that was created at a time of entry of such knowledge, and meta-knowledge in the form of one or more annotations that accumulate over time, where the annotations include any of, but are not limited to, usefulness of said knowledge, additional user opinions, certifications of veracity of said knowledge, reputation (which may be based on a formal reputation system), commentary by users, and connections between the knowledge and other units of knowledge.
To create the annotated pages, the Meta-Web server either combines both the search results and information from the registry, or operates upon the search results in accordance with information contained in the registry. The search results are thus augmented or modified by the registry information under control of the Meta-Web server, which then builds the annotated pages. The annotated pages are then forwarded to the user's Web browser.
Unique to the invention is the provision of the registry 14 that receives the search results (1010) and provides annotations (1012) and/or other information to the Meta-Web server. The registry may also accumulate knowledge, meta-knowledge that was created at a time of entry of such knowledge, and meta-knowledge in the form of one or more annotations that accumulate over time, where the annotations include any of, but are not limited to, usefulness of said knowledge, additional user opinions, certifications of veracity of said knowledge, reputation (which may be based on a formal reputation system), commentary by users, and connections between the knowledge and other units of knowledge. Such connections comprise typed links between registry objects, where such links may comprise, for example, relationships, such as a person's role in an organization or a place where a person lives, and such objects may comprise, for example, representations of products, people, places, categories, events, organizations, roles, documents, portions of documents, certifications, ratings, dates, and times.
To create the annotated pages, the Meta-Web server either combines both the search results and information from the registry, or operates upon the search results in accordance with information contained in the registry. The search results are thus augmented or modified by the registry information under control of the Meta-Web server, which then builds the annotated pages. The annotated pages are then forwarded to the user's Web browser.
Accordingly, the presently preferred embodiment of the invention comprises four elements, i.e. a standard Web browser and a standard search engine, which are well known to those skilled in the art, and the registry and Meta-Web server. The registry associates metadata with objects, while the Meta-Web server creates Web pages dynamically, which are then sent to the user's Web browser for viewing by the user. While a Web browser is described herein in connection with the presently preferred embodiment, those skilled in the art will appreciate that other access facilities may be used to practice the invention. As well, the search engine may comprise any type of data access facility. Key to the invention is the provision of the Meta-Web server and registry. Further, while the Meta-Web server and registry are discussed herein as separate elements, their functionality may be combined into a single element. Likewise, their functionality may be dispersed broadly across several elements. For example, a knowledge base comprising knowledge, meta-knowledge that was created at a time of entry of said knowledge, and meta-knowledge in the form of one or more annotations that accumulate over time, the annotations including any of, but not limited to, usefulness of said knowledge, additional user opinions, certifications of veracity of said knowledge, commentary by users, and connections between said knowledge and other units of knowledge may comprise an element of the invention, see U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/474,155, filed 10 Apr. 2002.
The Meta-Web server as presently embodied creates two types of Web pages, both of which are described in the discussion below and in the Figures accompanying that discussion. One of the Web pages is a Web page that consists of search results with annotations. The other type of Web page is a Web page that consists of a content page with an annotation tool, such as an annotation bar at the side of the results page. In the preferred embodiment, the annotation bar is incorporated into a standard Web browser, but in other embodiments it may be part of a separate Meta-Web application which runs on the user's computer, or it may be an element that is spawned by operation of the user's Web browser, such as a Java applet or JavaScript.
Content displayed to the user is dynamically extracted from the registry by the Meta-Web server. Known techniques for displaying this information include framing, HTML, cascading style sheets, and the like. As discussed in detail below, the architecture herein disclosed provides annotations, search results, and other information in a standard Web browser, as well as a suite of tools for interacting therewith.
The Meta-Web server constructs a search query page which includes a field into which a user can enter one or more search terms. Standard searching techniques, such as Boolean operations, are supported. The query page is delivered to the user's Web browser as a search form. The search form may resemble well known search forms, such as those provided by Google® or it may be presented in any other appropriate format.
When the user enters a query into the search form, the query is forwarded to the search engine by the Meta-Web server. In the preferred embodiment, a user query is processed by the Meta-Web server. Thus, a Web page is constructed by the Meta-Web Server in response to the query when a query is directed to the Meta-Web server from the user via the user's Web browser. Rather than providing results from the search engine directly to the user, the Meta-Web server examines the search results and then performs a look-up in the registry to determine if there are annotations or other information associated with the search results that might be used, for example, to order the results in terms of relevance or other orderings. Likewise, the Meta-Web server may consult the registry prior to positing the query to the search engine. The Meta-Web server may then modify the query or search space and, thereafter, submit the query to the search engine.
Any annotations or other metadata found in the registry may be added to the search results. The Meta-Web server then dynamically constructs a presentation for the user which is returned to the user. The form of the presentation may be controlled by a preference set by the user in the user's Web browser, based upon a user profile stored in the registry, or any combination thereof.
Metadata may be used by the Meta-Web server to check a query term in the registry and determine if there is a prepared way of presenting the data in connection with the term. For example, if there is a common term, it may be determined that the registry has a standard presentation or query results for that term, and that that presentation is preferred over other presentations. Thus, as an alternative to dynamic assembly of the Web page, the registry may provide the Meta-Web server with a preformed response for the query.
One embodiment of the invention provides a relevance button that may be displayed to the user to create a display item which explains the relevance of a term.
In another embodiment, the user may select an item and instead of returning the Web page to the user, that aspect of the search would be framed in the Web page with an annotation bar as discussed above. Thus, the Meta-Web server adds the annotation bar to the Web page to provide the user with the ability not only to comment on relevance or usability of the search result, but to add annotations as desired. Such annotations are then stored in the registry for further use. The annotations are thereafter linked to that user's search space so that further queries by the user bring up the annotations. Further, the annotations may be linked for all uses of that term so that queries by other individuals also produce the annotations entered by the user through the annotation bar. In this way, a community of annotations is assembled which is associated with a particular query term or search result. These aspects of the invention are discussed in greater detail below.
Thus, the presently preferred embodiment of the invention provides selected content within a frame and provides additional frames for annotations, as well as a tool bar for entering and editing annotations. The Meta-Web server dynamically creates the frame for this page and collects the content and annotations to create the complete page. In another embodiment, HTML or XML may be used to accomplish a similar purpose. Additionally, the Meta-Web server may incorporate active components, such as JavaScript or Java applets to provide additional functionality to the user during the annotation process, and may also employ cascading style sheets.
If the content selected by a user relates to a product, i.e. the URL selected by the user leads to a product node, then the Meta-Web server can perform an independent search to collect data with regard to that particular product and dynamically create a Web page for the user that includes information collected in real time. Alternatively, the additional information may be associated with the product in the registry and the Meta-Web server associates the registry information with the product.
Various schemes are envisioned by which the registry, under direction of the Meta-Web server, may be independently updated to refresh or enhance this information. For example, a particular product may be the subject of additional independent searching under control of the Meta-Web server when a certain number of requests are made for a particular product, or when a particular interval has elapsed since the last query concerning the product. Further, independent events, such as discontinuation of a product, may trigger Meta-Web server activities.
The Meta-Web server may identify products within a Web page provided to a user as a result of a user's request for content. Thus, the Meta-Web server identifies product terms or other terms in a page of content, for example by highlighting or underlining, indicating that additional information is available to the user for those products or terms. For example, the user may be performing a search for a particular class of products and within the content a particular product is mentioned. If that product is highlighted, then the user is made aware that the Meta-Web server has identified related information in the registry. The user may then select that highlighted term and the information in the registry is then provided to the user.
For example, if the name of a product is identified, a product node may be selected and annotations associated with it may be provided to the user. Further, the Meta-Web server may provide a filter for those annotations to determine which annotations are of interest to the user, depending on the user profile or user preferences. These annotations can include offers by various merchants to sell the product and other information that may be of interest in connection with the product.
In the event of a filter being applied, the filter may be based on a user profile that may be stored in one of several places. For example, a Web site visited by the user could store a cookie related to the user. In this case, the user could automatically be logged in to the Meta-Web server or at a site being visited, all as a result of a cookie. The Meta-Web server could also keep a profile of the user in a separate database or it could use the registry database. The profile itself may comprise, for example, trusted reputation systems (see, for example, U.S. Provisional Patent Application entitled “Reputation System,” Attorney Docket No. APPL007CI2PR, filed Dec. 12, 2003, U.S. Serial No. not yet assigned), preferred vendors and areas of specific user competence, interest, or understanding.
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The invention, also includes an annotation bar 21, as discussed above, which is dynamically added to any content, such as search results, that is served to the user by the Meta-Web server. The annotation bar may include user-actuated buttons which provide such functions as allowing the user to comment 24, ask questions 26, indicate that the information is relevant 27, or indicate that the information is not relevant 28. Such buttons may be, for example, special local tools embedded in a browser or part of a separate local tool application, or, they may be incorporated into a modified results page.
The invention is envisioned as having many applications. One application of the invention concerns a product purchase, where the user is looking to buy a product on-line after getting information about it. In this example, the user types in a search expression in the subject field 20. In the example of
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While the examples herein show icons which indicate relevancy by having lighter or darker intensity, the context of indication provided by the icons and the constituency of the icons is a matter of choice for those skilled in the art. Thus, the icons may flash, may be of different colors, may of different shapes, and the like. Further, a user may be alerted by device other than icons, such as audible beeps, and the like.
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If the user selects the manufacturer specifications sheet button 153, the manufacturer's specification sheet 162 is displayed (see
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A further example of the invention is concerned with an information-seeking problem where the user is looking to find information about a more complex product or service. In this example (see
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By selecting the ask button 26, the Meta-Web server spawns an ask window 330 into which the user may enter his question (
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As a result of selecting the buy button 360, the user is presented with a list of vendors 370 (
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Although the invention is described herein with reference to the preferred embodiment, one skilled in the art will readily appreciate that other applications may be substituted for those set forth herein without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention. Accordingly, the invention should only be limited by the Claims included below.
Claims
1. A system, comprising:
- an information server, operable to perform operations comprising:
- receiving a search query from a user device;
- receiving search results responsive to the search query from a search engine;
- determining from a registry that user annotations or other metadata are associated with the received search results;
- ordering the search results according to their relevance, where the relevance is determined based at least in part on the user annotations or other metadata in the registry;
- generating a search results page including the ordered search results and an annotation tool, wherein the annotation tool provides functions that allow a user of the user device to provide annotations for a particular search result, and wherein the annotation tool receives annotations provided by the user for later use in generating search results pages; and
- transmitting the search results page to the user device for presentation.
2. The system of claim 1, wherein the annotations provided by the user for the particular search result include at least one of comments on the particular search result, questions related to the particular search result, indications that the particular search result is relevant, and indications that the search result is not relevant.
3. The system of claim 1, wherein the search results page includes content dynamically extracted from the registry.
4. The system of claim 1, the operations further comprising:
- generating a search query page which includes a field into which a user can enter one or more search terms.
5. The system of claim 1, wherein the search results page further includes a relevance button; and
- the operations further comprising generating a display item which explains the relevance of a term in response to a user selection of the relevance button.
6. The system of claim 1, wherein the search results page further includes means for the user to select an item and for framing the item in a page for purposes of user annotation.
7. The system of claim 1, wherein the annotations provided by the user are linked to a search space of the user so that further queries by said user return said annotations.
8. The system of claim 1, wherein the search results page further includes one or more items that, when selected by the user, lead to a product node for a particular product; and
- the operations further comprising performing an independent search to collect data with regard to the particular product, and generating a web page that comprises information collected in real-time.
9. The system of claim 8, wherein the information collected in real-time includes annotations comprising offers by one or more merchants to sell the particular product and, optionally, other information of interest in connection with the particular product.
10. The system of claim 1, the operations further comprising:
- filtering the search results based on a user profile, where said user profile comprises at least one of user performances and user information, wherein said user information comprises at least one of trusted reputation systems, preferred vendors, and areas of user understanding, interest, or user competency.
11. The system of claim 1, wherein the search results are sorted in a way that is personalized for the user.
12. The system of claim 11, wherein the personalization is based on an endorsement by a personal friend.
13. The system of claim 1, the operations further comprising:
- forming one or more connections based on personal information of the user and other information, all of which reside in the registry or within a realm of resources available to the information server.
14. The system of claim 1, the operations further comprising:
- generating a product node that groups together all information relating to a product.
15. The system of claim 1, the operations further comprising:
- generating a buy button with which the user can enter into a personalized purchase transaction to bring the user to a preferred vendor or list of vendors.
16. The system of claim 1, further comprising:
- updating a profile of the user; and
- generating an updated search results page based on the updated user profile.
17. The system of claim 1, the operations further comprising:
- generating a comment button for allowing said user to add a comment to a document or portion of a document; and
- the operations further comprising adding the user comment to the registry.
18. The system of claim 1, the operations further comprising:
- generating a means for asking a question related to a document.
19. The system of claim 18, the operations further comprising:
- generating multiple instances of action buttons that are presented to the user to help the user judge the relevancy of a particular portion of the document.
20. The system of claim 1, wherein the registry establishes connections between objects stored in the registry, the connections comprising typed lines between the registry objects, the connections optionally comprising relationships between the objects, the objects optionally comprising a representation of at least one of products, people, places, categories, groups, organizations, roles, documents, portions of documents, certifications, ratings, dates, and times.
Type: Application
Filed: Dec 15, 2010
Publication Date: Jun 23, 2011
Applicant: GOOGLE INC. (Mountain View, CA)
Inventors: W. Daniel Hillis (Toluca Lake, CA), Bran Ferren (Beverly Hills, CA)
Application Number: 12/969,567
International Classification: G06F 7/00 (20060101); G06F 17/30 (20060101);