Patent Publication Number: US-8538948-B2

Title: Personal mashups

Description:
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
     This application is a continuation of co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/400,687, filed on Mar. 9, 2009, which claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/086,751, filed on Aug. 6, 2008, both of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety for all purposes. 
    
    
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     1. Field of the Invention 
     The present invention relates generally to computers. More specifically, the present invention relates to personal mashups in computer systems. 
     2. Description of the Related Art 
     A mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool. The term “mashup” implies integration, frequently done by access to open APIs and data sources to produce results that were not the original goal of the data owners. An example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source. 
     There have been a number of such mashups created for sources that are available on the Internet. In most cases, the results of mashups are consumed as web pages by end users, although there are other mechanisms such as desktop widgets that are popular. (Widgets are another type of mashup client, apart from the browser. They are dedicated mashup apps.) 
     The existing mashup techniques concentrate on fusing information from multiple data sources on the Internet and presenting them to users in new, interesting ways. In the current state of the art, mashups are typically developed by skilled people and consumed by others. It is necessary to have at least minimal programming abilities in order to create a mashup and, to benefit from a particular mashup service, a user must know about the service and/or must first find the service before using it in the mashup. In addition, current mashup techniques are targeted at commonly-used services. On the other hand, individuals typically have various information needs in various situations. Moreover, when the needs/wants arise, a user often needs/wants the information at the very instant. Currently there are no mashup techniques that allow for the serving of such just-in-time personal information needs. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     In a first embodiment of the present invention, a method for automated creation of a mashup is provided, the method comprising: receiving data needs of a user; identifying sources of data to satisfy the data needs by comparing the data needs to available data sources; retrieving metadata relating to the identified sources of data from a source metadata store; identifying services to satisfy the data needs by comparing the retrieved metadata to available services; retrieving metadata related to the identified services from a service metadata store; and generating a plan for supplying data from the identified sources of data to the identified services based on the retrieved metadata from the source metadata source and the retrieved metadata from the service metadata source. 
     In a second embodiment of the present invention, an apparatus is provided comprising: a source metadata store; a service metadata store; a service engine coupled to the source metadata store and the service metadata store; and a service actuator coupled to the service engine, the source metadata store, and the service metadata store. 
     In a third embodiment of the present invention, an apparatus is provided for automated creation of a mashup, the apparatus comprising: means for receiving data needs of a user; means for identifying sources of data to satisfy the data needs by comparing the data needs to available data sources; means for retrieving metadata relating to the identified sources of data from a source metadata store; means for identifying services to satisfy the data needs by comparing the retrieved metadata to available services; means for retrieving metadata related to the identified services from a service metadata store; and means for generating a plan for supplying data from the identified sources of data to the identified services based on the retrieved metadata from the source metadata source and the retrieved metadata from the service metadata source. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1  is a block diagram illustrating an architecture in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 2  is a diagram illustrating a table illustrating an example of a personal metadata store and a table illustrating an example of data stored within a service metadata store in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 3  is a flow diagram illustrating a method for extracting personal metadata from data source in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 4  is a flow diagram illustrating a method for extracting service metadata from services in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 5  is a flow diagram illustrating a method for generating a service plan from data needs in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 6  is a diagram illustrating an example of two data sources in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 7  is a diagram illustrating an example flow in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF SPECIFIC EMBODIMENTS 
     Reference will now be made in detail to specific embodiments of the invention including the best modes contemplated by the inventors for carrying out the invention. Examples of these specific embodiments are illustrated in the accompanying drawings. While the invention is described in conjunction with these specific embodiments, it will be understood that it is not intended to limit the invention to the described embodiments. On the contrary, it is intended to cover alternatives, modifications, and equivalents as may be included within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims. In the following description, specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. The present invention may be practiced without some or all of these specific details. In addition, well known features may not have been described in detail to avoid unnecessarily obscuring the invention. 
     In accordance with the present invention, the components, process steps, and/or data structures may be implemented using various types of operating systems, programming languages, computing platforms, computer programs, and/or general purpose machines. In addition, those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that devices of a less general purpose nature, such as hardwired devices, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), or the like, may also be used without departing from the scope and spirit of the inventive concepts disclosed herein. The present invention may also be tangibly embodied as a set of computer instructions stored on a computer readable medium, such as a memory device. 
     As an example of the need for the present invention, consider a user who wants to obtain information about movie shows that are playing near the hotel he/she is staying the coming week, with directions to get to that particular place. The current mechanism to accomplish this is to lookup multiple, separate services including: (1) The user will have to provide the address information to a movie database service (such as Yahoomovies.com) (2) Based on the gathered results, the user will have to use a mapping service to get the directions to that place. 
     Using a current mashup service, the user will have to be able to program the mashup service to take the address information from the movie database service and serve it to the mapping service. The user also has to know at the time of programming the precise location of the movie database service and mapping service in order to set up the proper mashup services. 
     The present invention addresses the above problem by providing a way of delivering personalized mashup services at the time of the needs/wants without requiring the knowledge of needed services or requiring search for such services. This invention provides ways for using user&#39;s personal data stored in the Internet or personal devices with existing services to realize new mashup services tailored to the user&#39;s needs. 
     In an embodiment of the present invention, metadata of various data sources is automatically extracted. Metadata from various Internet services is also automatically extracted. Then, the personal mashup is able to identify the data sources that can be used as input a just-in-time mashup service that will produce user specified needed data visualization. A mechanism for constructing the just-in-time mashup service using existing services is provided as well as a mechanism for actuating the just-in-time mashup service. 
       FIG. 1  is a block diagram illustrating an architecture in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Data sources  100  are the data sources available from the user&#39;s perspective. Any data that can be used by an external service can be identified as a data source. Examples of some of the common data sources include the user&#39;s address book data, user&#39;s contact list, IM log, picture library, song library, favorites list, etc., along with data that are available on the Internet such as housing information, movie information, flight schedule, etc. Typically these data sources are semi-structured in nature, meaning that they have metadata that defines their form. These data sources can either be pre-determined, or they can be automatically detected. 
     The source metadata extractor  102  is responsible for identifying information about data sources that can be used to provide dynamic mashups. For example, the information that can be extracted about the contact list data source includes person names, contact descriptions, geographical addresses. Similarly, for the user&#39;s picture collection, the details can be location where the picture was taken, tags associated with the picture, date the picture was taken, etc. For web based sources, for example if we consider housing data, the Source metadata extractor can identify house type, location (geo-coordinates), price range, etc. Some of these sources might need to be identified prior to extraction. Some of the sources might contain meta data that describes the corresponding data (such as through an Extensible Markup Language (XML) specification), which can be used by the source metadata extractor to identify and extract the nature of metadata. 
     Most available data sources have descriptions associated with them (for example, pictures, songs, etc), and/or they are semi-structured in nature (for example, user&#39;s address book data). The Source metadata extractor is equipped with mechanisms to identify various details about the data and classify them into various pre-defined categories. For example, the address book data source may be identified as providing data in (at least) three different categories (person, contact description, geographical address). 
     The result of analysis by the Source metadata extractor is stored in a convenient form within the Source metadata store  104 . An example of such storage can be in a tabular form as shown in table  1  of  FIG. 2 . 
     The service source builder  106  is responsible for identifying various services that can be used by the user. The service source builder  106  can identify services available (e.g., on the Internet, local network, local device, etc) and has the capability to extract service descriptions. These service descriptions can either be obtained directly from the services (as available through service discovery mechanisms) or they can be manually configured by a designer. The service descriptions may contain details such as the location of the service, access mechanism, details about input and output, etc. 
     The services identified through the service source builder are analyzed in the service metadata extractor  108  to extract details about the service. The metadata to be extracted from the services can be pre-configured at the service metadata extractor  108 , or can be dynamically determined (through user interaction, for example). The service descriptions are analyzed to identify the types of data that can be consumed by each service, the access mechanism for each service, and such details of the service. 
     The service metadata store  110  is a repository that contains the result of analysis by Service metadata extractor. An example storage format is shown in table  2  of  FIG. 2 . The repository contains information on the type of data that each service can handle, the location of the service, the access mechanism, etc. 
     Users can access the services though multiple devices. Based on the capabilities of each device, the choice of service, and the choice of data can vary. The device capability descriptions provide details about the user devices that help in filtering the choice among data and services. These descriptions may be stored in the device capability metadata store  112 . 
     The needs of the user are captured through the data need identifier  114 . The user intent can be conveyed to the data need identifier by a user interface that allows users to choose from multiple data and services, or an application designed to consume multiple data and services can express its needs to the data need identifier. The data needs identifier  114  supplies these needs to the Service engine  116 . 
     The service engine  116  is responsible for analyzing the data needs and arriving at an appropriate plan for facilitating the need. The service engine  116  has access to the source metadata store  104 , the service metadata store  110  and the device capability metadata store  112 . The service engine  116  is capable of identifying the nature of the data from the expressed needs, and identifying services that can be used to facilitate the need. As an example, the service plan can be generated by the process depicted in  FIG. 5 , which will be described later. A plan can also be generated by iteratively matching the various details of the needed data (ex: location, person, time, etc) with the known data sources and the services that can produce the data in each iteration until every needed data can be produced by a source. This can be accomplished through a simple lookup on the tables  1  and  2  of  FIG. 2 . The generated plan for accomplishing user needs is then sent out of the service engine. For example, if the data needs are specified with an Instant Messaging (IM) log and song list as the data sources, a new plan can be identified as a timeline visualizer that plots the IM log and the log of listened songs with the help of timeline viewer. 
     An optional user feedback  118  component is responsible for getting the user feedback on the generated plan from the service engine  116 . A simple user feedback component can be realized through a User interface that displays the plan and requests the user to approve it. 
     The plan generated by the service engine  116  is executed by the service actuator  120 . The service actuator  120  looks at the generated plan and identifies the required access mechanisms for the involved services and invokes the services. The service actuator  120  draws the detailed service invocation information from the service metadata store  110 . The required data is also supplied to the services by the service actuator  120  by contacting the source metadata store  104 . 
     The entire system described above can be realized on a single device or can be provided as a service through various implementations. Irrespective of the mechanisms involved the following flow charts depict the steps involved in provisioning various embodiments of the invention. 
       FIG. 3  is a flow diagram illustrating a method for extracting personal metadata from data source in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. At  300 , data sources are identified. At  302 , usable metadata is identified from the data sources. At  304 , metadata information about the sources is extracted from the sources. At  306 , the source metadata is stored in a source metadata store. 
       FIG. 4  is a flow diagram illustrating a method for extracting service metadata from services in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. At  400 , useful service sources are identified. At  402 , details are identified about the services. At  404 , metadata is extracted from the identified services. At  406 , the service metadata is stored in the service metadata store. 
       FIG. 5  is a flow diagram illustrating a method for generating a service plan from data needs in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. At  500 , a data need is inspected (as inputted from a data need identifier). At  502 , sources of data described in the data need are identified. At  504 , properties of identified data are looked up on the source metadata store. At  506 , common axes are identified among identified data sources. At  508 , required axes are identified from the common axes. This may include, for example, prompting a user to select from a list of common axes. At  510 , matching services for the identified data are looked up from the service metadata store. At  512 , a plan is generated for supplying data to the identified services. 
     The following example shows the mashup process detailed above. Table  1  of  FIG. 2  shows a snapshot of a possible Personal Metadata store. Table  2  of  FIG. 2  shows the snapshot of a possible Service metadata store. Consider a data need that expresses that the user is interested in viewing news stories at the locations that he/she has taken photos. 
     The data need identifier looks at the data need and identifies that photos and news feed (RSS) have date, time and location as the common attributes. The identified data are now passed onto the service engine. 
     The service engine looks at the particular attributes in the identified sources (RSS and Photos) and since the data/need specifies that the location is the common attribute to be utilized, it merges the two sources based on location. It also inspects the available services that can consume location information. In this case, it chooses a mapping application that can accept the location parameters and passes it to the service actuator. 
     The service actuator has the knowledge of how to extract the exact parameters from each of the sources and the mechanism for feeding the attributes to the external service (the map service in this case). The service actuator manages the interaction with the external service and presents the generated mashup to the user. 
     While aspect of the above mentioned mashup can be easily constructed by an experienced programmer, any mashup that can be created with the technologies available today would essentially be pre-programmed. In contrast, the present invention can accomplish the mashup construction just-in-time based on the dynamic needs of the user. 
       FIGS. 6 and 7  depict another example of an execution of the personal mashup in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.  FIG. 6  shows two data sources, IM Log  600  and Song book log  602 , each of which have 5 data axes.  FIG. 7  shows the flow according to this example. At  700 , the data need identifier sends in the two data sources. At  703 , the service engine looks up the properties of the identified data sources. At  704 , the service engine identifies common data axes among the data sources. In this case, the common data axes would be time stamp and location. At  706 , required common axes are identified. For example, the user may select time stamp as a required axis. At  708 , the service engine looks up the service metadata store to identify a capable service. in this case, for example, an appropriate service for a time stamp data is a time line visualizer. At  710 , a plan for supplying the data to the identified services is generated. 
     Although only a few embodiments of the invention have been described in detail, it should be appreciated that the invention may be implemented in many other forms without departing from the spirit or scope of the invention. Therefore, the present embodiments should be considered illustrative and not restrictive and the invention is not to be limited to the details given herein, but may be modified within the scope and equivalents of the appended claims.