Systems and methods for personal ubiquitous information retrieval and reuse

Abstract

The present invention relates to systems and methods providing content-access-based information retrieval. Information items from a plurality of disparate information sources that have been previously accessed or considered are automatically indexed in a data store, whereby a multifaceted user interface is provided to efficiently retrieve the items in a cognitively relevant manner. Various display output arrangements are possible for the retrieved information items including timeline visualizations and multidimensional grid visualizations. Input options include explicit, implicit, and standing queries for retrieving data along with explicit and implicit tagging of items for ease of recall and retrieval. In one aspect, an automated system is provided that facilitates concurrent searching across a plurality of information sources. A usage analyzer determines user accessed items and a content analyzer stores subsets of data corresponding to the items, wherein at least two of the items are associated with disparate information sources, respectively. An automated indexing component indexes the data subsets according to past data access patterns as determined by the usage analyzer. A search component responds to a search query, initiates a search across the indexed data, and outputs links to locations of a subset and/or provides sparse representations of the subset.

1 . A system that facilitates concurrent searching across a plurality of sources, comprising: 
 a usage analyzer that determines user accessed items and a content analyzer that stores subsets data corresponding to the items, at least two of the items being associated with disparate sources, respectively; and    an indexing component that indexes the data subsets.    
   
   
       2 . The system of  claim 1 , further comprising a search component that in response to a search query, initiates a search across the indexed data, and outputs links to locations of a subset and/or sparse representation of the subset.  
   
   
       3 . The system of  claim 1 , the disparate sources further comprise local or remote data locations including files, folders, applications, images, audio files, appointments, email, and web information.  
   
   
       4 . The system of  claim 1 , further comprising a filter that extracts portions of the accessed items and creates sparse representations of accessed data in a content index.  
   
   
       5 . The system of  claim 1 , the indexer associates metadata with the accessed items, the metadata employed to retrieve the accessed items.  
   
   
       6 . The system of  claim 5 , the metadata includes at least one of a file path, a hyperlink, and a tag.  
   
   
       7 . The system of  claim 2 , further comprising an implicit query that is derived from the search query.  
   
   
       8 . The system of  claim 1 , further comprising a gatherer component that specifies an interface to different content sources in their native format.  
   
   
       9 . The system of  claim 4 , the filter decodes individual file formats and emits a character stream for further processing.  
   
   
       10 . The system of  claim 9 , further comprising a tokenizer component that breaks the character stream into words and provides linguistic processing.  
   
   
       11 . The system of  claim 10 , the linguistic processing includes at least one of date normalization and stemming.  
   
   
       12 . The system of  claim 1 , further comprising a retriever component supporting a query language for accessing stored information.  
   
   
       13 . The system of  claim 12 , the retriever component provides Boolean functions and best match retrieval on full text and metadata properties that enable at least one of phrase, wildcard and proximity searches.  
   
   
       14 . The system of  claim 1 , further comprising a protocol handler to extract individual messages from exchange mail stores, local mail files, and public folders.  
   
   
       15 . The system of  claim 14 , further comprising a component index attachments to email, which generalizes to other container objects.  
   
   
       16 . The system of  claim 1 , further comprising an event component that monitors user and makes determinations with respect to user actions.  
   
   
       17 . The system of  claim 16 , the event component includes to determine user actions or goals.  
   
   
       18 . The system of  claim 17 , the event component employs evidential patterns of user activity including at least one of: a Focus of attention, an Introspection, an Undesired piece of information, and a Domain-specific syntactic and semantic content.  
   
   
       19 . The system of  claim 1 , further comprising a component to process implicit queries based upon potential interest to a user.  
   
   
       20 . The system of  claim 19 , the implicit queries automatically invoke related information actions directed to a user, the information actions associated with a query at hand or a current context.