Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Other

William P Jones

Sanjeev Katariya

Stephen Albert Brandli

Tsutomu Nanjo

Techniques are described for providing users with aggregate access to and control over information from multiple storing applications and information services, and for enabling developers to integrate such aggregate access and control into applications. Textual markup language may represent the structure of grouping items. Examples using XML and XooML ('Cross Tool Mark-up Language,' an XML schema) are provided, such that users need not change the storing application or service in order for those users' informational structures to be represented.

Aggregated information access and control using a personal unifying taxonomy

A method and system for generating a summary of a document. The summary generating system generates the summary from the sentences that form the document. The summary generating system calculates a weight for each of the sentences in the document. The weight indicates the importance of the sentence to the document. The summary generating system then selects sentences based on their calculated weights. The summary generating system creates a summary of the selected sentences such that selected sentences are ordered in the created summary in the same relative order as in the document. In one embodiment, the summary generating system identifies sets of sentences whose total length of the sentences in the set is less than a maximum length. The summary generating system then selects an identified set of sentences whose total of the calculated weights of the sentences is greatest as the generated summary. The length of a sentence may be measured in characters or words. In an alternate embodiment, the summary generating system selects the sentences with the highest calculated weights whose total length of the selected sentences is less than a maximum length as the summary.

Creating a summary having sentences with the highest weight, and lowest length

A method and system for generating a weight for phrases within each document in a collection of documents. Each document has terms such as words and numbers. Each phrase comprises component terms. Each term frequency represents the number of occurrences of a term in a document, and the phrase frequency represents the number of occurrences of a phrase in a document. To generate the weight, the weighting system first estimates a document frequency for the phrase by multiplying an estimated phrase probability of the phrase times the number of documents that contain each component term. The estimated phrase probability is an estimation of the probability that any phrase in documents that contain each component term is the phrase whose weight is to be estimated. The document frequency is the number of the documents that contain the phrase. The weighting system then estimates a total phrase frequency for the phrase as the average phrase frequency for the phrase times the estimated document frequency for the phrase. The weighting system derives the average phrase frequency from the phrase probability of the phrase and average number of terms per document. The weighting system then combines the estimated document frequency with the estimated total phrase frequency to generate the weight of the phrase.

Method and system for calculating phrase-document importance

A weighting system for calculating the term-document importance for each term within each document that is part of a collection of documents (i.e., a corpus). The weighting system calculates the importance of a term within a document based on a computed normalized term frequency and a computed inverse document frequency. The computed normalized term frequency is a function, referred to as the &ldquo;computed term frequency function&rdquo; (&ldquo;A&rdquo;), of a normalized term frequency. The normalized term frequency is the term frequency, which is the number of times that the term occurs in the document, normalized by the total term frequency of the term within all documents, which is the total number of times that the term occurs in all the documents. The weighting system normalizes the term frequency by dividing the term frequency by a function, referred to as the &ldquo;normalizing term frequency function&rdquo; (&ldquo;&Ggr;&rdquo;), of the total term frequency. The computed inverse document frequency is a function, referred to as the &ldquo;computed inverse document frequency function&rdquo; (&ldquo;B&rdquo;) of the inverse document frequency. The weighting system identifies a computed normalized term frequency function A and a computed inverse document frequency function B so that on average the computed normalized term frequency and the computed inverse document frequency contribute equally to the weight of the terms.

Method and system for calculating term-document importance

Search clips are segments of information which provide a consistent user interface and a consistent set of rules for searching varying web-based search services. Search clips are searchable (i.e. they can be accessed with a keyword search) and are displayed &ldquo;in-place&rdquo; on a web page. The keywords are compared to tags identifying search clips for web-based search services. A list of hypertext links related to the keyword is displayed within a frame on the same web page. The list which is displayed in place includes hypertext links to applicable search clips, predefined topic lists, and conventional web sites where the search clips are placed at the top of the list. Information is displayed in place. Search criteria entered in a search clip are translated based on a predetermined set of search rules and any requirements of the pre-existing web-based search service that will execute the search. A template is provided which allows services to quickly define search clips such that they all have uniform characteristics.

Network search access construct for accessing web-based search services

A method and system for fast indexing and searching of text in compound-word languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, and Arabic. Computer codings of such compound-word languages often contain different character types, e.g. the shift-JIS coding of Japanese represents kanji, katakana, hiragana, and roman characters with different codings in the same character set, to form index terms and search terms. In a preferred embodiment, a content-index search system is invoked in response to a query on a collection of objects. The collection of objects is indexed by the content-index and may, for example, be a corpus of documents indexed by the terms contained in the documents. A content-index search system uses the content-index to generate and store an initial search result in response to the query; a direct search system is used in certain situations. The content-index contains, for each of a plurality of terms, a reference to each object. The content-index is created by first creating a preliminary index term for each plurality of terms delimited by a word separator or a character type transition in a string of characters to be indexed. For each preliminary index term of a first type, e.g. katakana or roman, the preliminary index term is utilized as an index term. For each preliminary index term of a second type, e.g. kanji, the preliminary index term is step-indexed to create a plurality of index terms of a length less than a predetermined step size. The index terms are then added to the content-index in association with the object being indexed. A string of text entered into a search engine as a search term is processed into preliminary search terms and search terms in a similar manner.

Method and system for fast indexing and searching of text in

A method and system for generating accurate search results using a content-index is provided. In a preferred embodiment, a content-index search system is invoked in response to a query on a collection of objects. The collection of objects is indexed by the content-index and may, for example, be a corpus of documents indexed by the terms contained in the documents. The content-index search system uses the content-index to generate and store an initial search result in response to the query. Because the content-index is typically out of date with respect to a dynamically changing collection of objects, the content-index search system invokes search result correction routines to remove from the stored search result references that were incorrectly included and to add to the stored search result references that were incorrectly excluded. References that were incorrectly included include those that refer to objects that no longer exist and those that refer to objects that have been modified since the content-index was last updated and that no longer match the search criteria. References that were incorrectly excluded include those that refer to new objects that were not indexed and match the search criteria and those that refer to objects that have been modified since the content-index was last updated and that now match the search criteria.

Method and system for generating accurate search results using a

This invention is directed to a board game having a playing track comprising a number of distinct areas of different colors. There is also an area for pegs having colors and which colors correspond to the colors of the discrete areas. A person moves and directs a ring toward the peg. With the ring moving over the peg and positioning itself on the peg, the person can advance an indicator to a discrete area of a color corresponding to the color of the peg. It is possible for young children who cannot read or write to play this game as the game is based on color. To assist those who are color blind, there is also a letter indicating the color and a person who is color blind can play the game. The game is such that people of a very young age through people of an advanced age in their seventies and eighties can play the game for amusement and pleasure.

Growing community of inventors

Kirkland, WA, United States of America

William P Jones