US 7,925,993 B2Granted

Method and system for aggregating and presenting user highlighting of content

AssigneeAmazon Technologies, Inc.

InventorBrian R. Williams

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Abstract

Highlighting of content is aggregated across a plurality of users, thus enabling the content to be presented with highlights that represent the collective highlighting of the users. Highlighted content may be presented to the users with varying levels of prominence. Accordingly, depending on the aggregated highlight information, some content may be presented with a highlight that is more or less prominent than highlighting for other content. Prominence data associated with highlighted content may include a score indicative of a strength of the highlight for the highlighted content. A score indicating a stronger highlight causes the highlight to be presented with greater prominence. The score may be incremented, possibly on a weighted bases, to represent the combined highlighting of different users. Highlights may assume many different forms, including visual forms (such as colors, lines, borders, fonts, icons, etc.), audio forms and tactile forms.

Claims84

Dependent claims

A system for presenting highlighted content, comprising:

a storage component configured to store prominence data in association with content, wherein the content comprises a plurality of words, wherein the prominence data includes a score for each word of the content, and wherein the score is set to a predetermined value for each word of the content for which highlight information identifying a portion of the content containing the word has not been received;
a computing component configured to receive highlight information from a user, wherein the highlight information identifies a portion of the content to which a highlight is to be applied;
a reputation component configured to receive feedback from other users comprising indications of usefulness of highlight information received from the user, and to derive a recognized reputation of the user based on the feedback;
and
a processing component configured to aggregate the highlight information of the user with highlight information received from other users for the same content by modifying the score by an increment for at least one word of the plurality of words for each instance in which highlight information identifying a portion of the content containing the at least one word is received, wherein a size of the increment is determined based on the recognized reputation of the user as derived from the received feedback;
wherein the storage component is further configured to store the aggregated highlight information, and
wherein the prominence data is configured to affect a prominence of the highlight when the highlighted content is presented.

4 more elements

A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions stored thereon that, if executed, cause one or more computer processors to:

store prominence data associated with content, wherein the content comprises a plurality of characters, wherein the prominence data includes at least one score for each character of the content, and wherein the at least one score for each character of the content initially is set to a predetermined value for each character of the content for which highlight information identifying the character has not been received;
aggregate highlight information received from a plurality of users who have identified content to be highlighted, wherein the highlight information identifies at least one character of text of the content;
store reputation data associated with each of the plurality of users, wherein the reputation data is derived from feedback received from the users indicating usefulness of highlight information received from identified users;
and
modify the at least one score associated with the at least one identified character of text, based on the received highlight information and the reputation data for each instance in which highlight information identifying the at least one identified character of text is received, to affect a prominence of the highlight when the highlighted content is presented to a user.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.