Abstract:
A system and method are provided for creating communities based on a semantic understanding of content requested by a number of user devices. More specifically, a mediating server operates to interconnect a number of user devices to destination servers. In operation, the mediating server routes requests from the user devices to the appropriate destination servers. The mediating server examines the responses from the destination servers to gain a semantic understanding of the content requested by the user devices. Thereafter, the mediating server establishes communities for the user devices based on the semantic understanding of the content requested by the user devices. For example, the mediating server may invite users of the user devices that have requested semantically similar content to join a chat session around a common topic.

Description:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION 
     The present application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/471,835, filed on Jun. 21, 2006, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. 
    
    
     FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
     The present invention relates to a mediating server and more specifically relates to a mediating server that generates communities based on a semantic understanding of requested content. 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     Internet users often search for web forums or chat groups related to topics of interest to the users. However, the users must actively search for such communities. Thus, there is a need for a system and method for establishing communities of users that do not require the users to actively search for the communities. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     The present invention provides a system and method for creating communities based on a semantic understanding of content requested by a number of user devices. More specifically, a mediating server located at an intermediary network node operates to interconnect a number of user devices to destination servers. In operation, the mediating server receives requests from the user devices and routes the requests to the appropriate destination servers. The mediating server examines the responses from the destination servers to gain a semantic understanding of the content requested by the user devices. In addition, the mediating server may examine the requests to gain further semantic understanding of the content requested by the user devices. Thereafter, the mediating server establishes communities of the user devices based on the semantic understanding of the content requested by the user devices. For example, the mediating server may invite users of the user devices that have requested semantically similar content to join a chat group around a common topic. 
     Those skilled in the art will appreciate the scope of the present invention and realize additional aspects thereof after reading the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments in association with the accompanying drawing figures. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING FIGURES 
       The accompanying drawing figures incorporated in and forming a part of this specification illustrate several aspects of the invention, and together with the description serve to explain the principles of the invention. 
         FIG. 1  illustrates a system including a mediating server operating to establish communities of user devices based on a semantic understanding of requested content according to one embodiment of the present invention; 
         FIG. 2  illustrates an exemplary ontology for identifying semantically related topics according to one embodiment of the present invention; 
         FIG. 3  illustrates the operation of the system of  FIG. 1  according to one embodiment of the present invention; and 
         FIG. 4  is a block diagram of the intermediary network node hosting the mediating server according to one embodiment of the present invention. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
     The embodiments set forth below represent the necessary information to enable those skilled in the art to practice the invention and illustrate the best mode of practicing the invention. Upon reading the following description in light of the accompanying drawing figures, those skilled in the art will understand the concepts of the invention and will recognize applications of these concepts not particularly addressed herein. It should be understood that these concepts and applications fall within the scope of the disclosure and the accompanying claims. 
       FIG. 1  illustrates a system  10  implementing one embodiment of the present invention. The system  10  includes an intermediary network node  12 , hereafter referred to as the network node  12 , interconnecting a number of user devices  14 - 20  and a number of destination servers  22 - 26 . Note that while four user devices  14 - 20  and three destination servers  22 - 26  are illustrated, the system  10  may include any number of user devices and destination servers. Further, while not illustrated, one of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that one or more additional network nodes may interconnect the user devices  14 - 20  to the network node  12  and, likewise, one or more additional network nodes may interconnect the network node  12  to the destination servers  22 - 26 . 
     The network node  12  may be a mediating server associated with an Internet Service Provider (ISP), a corporate firewall, a Local Area Network (LAN) access point, or the like. According to the present invention, the network node  12  includes a mediating server  28  and an ontology  30 . Alternatively, the ontology  30  may be hosted by a remote server. Also, the mediating server  28  may alternatively be implemented as a number of distributed mediating proxies that collaboratively operate as the mediating server  28  described herein. For example, a load balancing technique may be used where a request may be routed through a first mediating server and the corresponding response may be routed through a second mediating server. The two mediating servers may then collaboratively operate at the mediating server  28  described herein. The mediating server  28  may be implemented in software, hardware, or a combination thereof. As discussed below, the mediating server  28  gains semantic understanding of content accessed by the user devices  14 - 20  and facilitates the formation of communities based on semantic similarities of the content accessed by the user devices  14 - 20 . The communities may be hosted by the mediating server  28 , the network node  12 , or some other network node. The ontology  30  is generally a data model that represents a domain that is used to gain a semantic understanding about the objects in that domain and the relations between them. An exemplary ontology or portion of an ontology is illustrated in  FIG. 2 . As discussed below, the mediating server  28  uses the ontology  30  to identify semantically related topics. 
       FIG. 3  illustrates the operation of the mediating server  28  according to one embodiment of the present invention. In this example, the mediating server  28  routes a request from the user device  14  to the destination server  22  and a corresponding response from the destination server  22  to the user device  14 . First, the user device  14  sends a request for desired content to the mediating server  28  (step  100 ). The desired content may be a web page; a media file such as, but not limited to, an image file or a video file; streaming media content such as, but not limited to, streaming video content; or the like. The mediating server  28  maintains an internal table of all active outbound requests where the table identifies the user devices  14 - 20  making the requests. Upon receiving the request from the user device  14 , the mediating server  28  forwards the request to the appropriate destination server, which in this example is the destination server  22  (step  102 ). 
     The destination server  22  then provides a response including the requested content to the mediating server  28  (step  104 ). In one embodiment, the response may also include semantic metadata. The semantic metadata may be, for example, metadata provided according to the Resource Description Framework (RDF) model semantically describing the requested content. Information describing the family of specifications for RDF can be found at http://www.w3.org/RDF/. An exemplary RDF semantic metadata structure describing an article about Fidel Castro is:
         &lt;rdf:RDF
           xmlns:rdf=http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#   xmlns:dc=“http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/”&gt;   
           &lt;rdf:Description rdtabout=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro”&gt;
           &lt;dc:title&gt;Fidel Castro&lt;/dc:title&gt;   &lt;dc:publisher&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/dc:publisher&gt;   
           &lt;/rdf:Description&gt;   &lt;/rdf:RDF&gt;
 
Other examples of semantic metadata include, but are not limited to, keywords, annotations, location information, or the like within the headers of or associated with a media file, streaming media content, or the like. In addition, the semantic metadata may include a reference to external content or information.
       

     The mediating server  28  then examines the response from the destination server  22  to gain a semantic understanding of the requested content (step  106 ). In one embodiment, the response includes semantic metadata giving semantic meaning to the requested content. The mediating server  28  may gain further semantic understanding of the requested content by mapping keywords from the semantic metadata to one or more nodes in the ontology  30 . In addition, the mediating server  28  may gain further semantic understanding by examining the request. For example, the mediating server  28  may examine a Uniform Resources Locator (URL) and any parameters, such as parameters for a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) GET request, of the request to gain semantic understanding of the requested content. 
     In another embodiment, the mediating server  28  extracts the content from the response using a screen scraping function. Note that different screen scraping functions may be used for different types of content such as, but not limited to, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) files, Microsoft Word documents, Adobe Acrobat PDF files, PowerPoint presentations, and the like. Further, different screen scraping functions may be included for different types of web sites. As an example, screen scraping may be used to extract the text of a web page from a corresponding HTML file. By extracting the text from the web page, the mediating server  28  ensures that HTML tags that repeatedly occur in the HTML file are not interpreted as keywords regarding the semantic meaning of the web page. Once the content is extracted from the response, the mediating server  28  uses an inference engine, such as a natural language inference engine, to gain semantic understanding of the requested content, which is referred to herein as the semantic meaning of the requested content. For example, the inference engine may determine one or more of the most commonly used keywords or phrases in the text of a web page other than common words such as, for example, “the,” “a,” “an,” and the like. As another example, screen scraping may be used to extract text from streaming video content. For example, streaming video content may include scrolling text messages, and screen scraping, or a similar technique, may be used to extract the text messages from the video. 
     Based on the semantic meaning of the requested content, the mediating server  28  identifies a community for the user device  14  (step  108 ). The community may be one of a number of existing communities previously established by the mediating server or a new community. The community may be, for example, a chat group among users of user devices  14 - 20  having requested semantically similar content, a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing community among user devices  14 - 20  having requested semantically similar content, an e-mail list or forum associated with a particular topic related to the semantic meaning of the request content, or the like. 
     In order to identify a community for the user device  14 , the mediating server  28  first determines whether there is an existing community for a topic related to or equivalent to the semantic meaning of the requested content. The mediating server  28  may identify topics related to the semantic meaning of the requested content using the ontology  30 . For example, the requested content may be a web page discussing Ian McKellen. By examining the response passing through the mediating server  28 , the mediating server  28  determines that the semantic meaning of the requested content is “Ian McKellen.” If there are no communities around the topic “Ian McKellen,” the mediating server  28  may query the ontology  30 , thereby determining that the topic “Ian McKellen” is semantically related to the topics “Lord of the Rings” and “Fantasy.” If there is an existing community around the topic “Fantasy,” the mediating server  28  may identify the community around the topic “Fantasy” as the community to which to invite the user of the user device  14 . 
     If there are no existing communities around topics related to or equivalent to the semantic meaning of the requested content, the mediating server  28  may then determine whether there is another active request for content that is semantically similar to, or related to, the content requested by the user device  14 . For example, the user device  14  may request a streaming video related to “Ian McKellen” and the user device  16  may request a web page related to “Harry Potter.” Using the ontology  30 , the mediating server  28  may determine that both of these topics are related to the topic “Fantasy.” As such, the mediating server  28  may identify a new community around the topic “Fantasy” and, as discussed below, invite the users of the user devices  14  and  16  to join the community. 
     If there are no existing communities and no other active requests around topics related to or equivalent to the semantic meaning of the requested content, the mediating server  28  may start a new community, where the user of the user device  14  waits for additional users to join the community. 
     It should be noted that the mediating server  28  may also manage the size of the communities. For example, the mediating server  28  may limit the number of users for each community and create multiple communities around the same topic if desired. The mediating server  28  may additionally or alternatively create narrow or broad topics for communities based on user density around the topic. For example, if there are a large number of users requesting content related to the “Fantasy” topic, the mediating server  28  may create communities around related sub-topics such as “Lord of the Rings,” “Harry Potter,” and “Ian McKellen.” In contrast, if the number of users requesting content related to the “Fantasy” topic is small, the mediating server  28  may create a single community around the topic “Fantasy.” 
     Once the community is identified, the mediating server  28  forwards the response from the destination server  22  to the user device  14  (step  110 ) and invites the user to join the identified community (step  112 ). While in this example the response is not forwarded to the user device  14  until after steps  106  and  108 , the response may alternatively be forwarded to the user device  14  prior to steps  106  and  108  or simultaneously therewith. The invitation to join the community may be provided, for example, by framing the content from the destination server  22  with an invitation to join the community or modifying the response to add a JavaScript pop-up message inviting the user in join the community. The invitation may alternatively be provided by an end-user agent application that receives the invitation message from the mediating server  28  and generates a user interface message that invites the user of the user device  14  to join the community. 
       FIG. 4  is a block diagram of the intermediary network node  12  according to one embodiment of the present invention. In general, the intermediary network node  12  includes a control system  32 ; a communication, or network, interface  34 ; and a user interface  36 . The control system  32  may be implemented in hardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software. For example, the control system  32  may be a central processing unit having associated memory storing software instructing the control system  32  to operate according to the present invention, one or more Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), one or more Digital Signal Processors (DSPs), or the like. The control system  32  includes the mediating server  28 , which may be implemented in hardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software. In this example, the control system  32  also includes the ontology  30 , which may be stored in associated memory. Alternatively, the ontology  30  may be stored by a remote server. The communication interface  34  communicatively couples the network node  12  to the user devices  14 - 20  either directly via wired or wireless communication links or indirectly via one or more additional network nodes. Likewise, the network node  12  communicatively couples the network node  12  to the destination servers  22 - 26  either directly via wired or wireless communication links or indirectly via one or more additional network nodes. The network node  12  may also include the user interface  36 . 
     Those skilled in the art will recognize improvements and modifications to the preferred embodiments of the present invention. All such improvements and modifications are considered within the scope of the concepts disclosed herein and the claims that follow.