Emotion, Inc.

Corbis Corporation

Donna Romer

Sharon Flank

Ruth Sperer

James Rothey

A system stories digital media records and includes a search engine searching the stored digital media records. It receives search requests from users, logs the search requests, expands the search requests, applies a statistical clustering algorithm, thereby grouping similar search requests together, identifies, using a semantic net hierarchy, a lowest-level term in the hierarchy that subsumes all of the queries in a grouping of search requests, and communicates the identified term to a user.

Method and apparatus for digital media management, retrieval, and collaboration

A system stores digital media records and has a search engine searching the stored digital media records. The system receives first search requests from a plurality of first users. The system performs, by the search engine, searches based upon the first search requests, yielding respective first search results, each first search result defining first selected digital media records. The first search results are logged. Information is received from the first users indicative of subsequent actions by the first users selecting particular ones of the selected digital media records. A second search request is received from a second user. A search is performed, by the search engine, based upon the second search request, yielding respective second search results, the second search results defining second selected digital media records. The second selected media records are then ranked differently, for example upward or downward, based upon the longed first search results.

The software incorporates a glossary management tool that makes it easy for each client to customize terminology to the needs of a particular business. With this tool, termed a glossary manager, a company can customize a number of feature names in the system to provide a more familiar context for their users. A system administrator can also customize the manner in which 'thumbnail' or 'preview' images are presented. The system performs clustering on search queries, and searches media records multi-modally, using two or more approaches such as image searching and text searching. An administrator can tune search parameters. Two or more streams of metadata may be aligned and correlated with a media file, facilitating later searching. The system evaluates itself. It folds popularity information into rankings of search results.

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Houston, TX, United States of America

Donna Romer