Patent ID: 8458180

Claim:
A method at an information exploration system comprising: creating a plurality of composite items to be presented on a user interface, the composite items comprising content of at least two different media types; receiving a plurality of gathering terms and repeatedly using one or more of the gathering terms to generate the composite items, each composite item being generated by: generating a first query from at least one of the gathering terms; submitting the first query to a search engine and obtaining at least one search result of a first media type; obtaining a first content associated with the at least one search result of the first media type, the first content being of the first media type; generating a second query from the obtained first content; submitting the second query to the search engine and obtaining at least one search result of a second media type; obtaining a second content associated with the at least one search result of the second media type, the second content being of the second media type; and creating a composite item from the first and second content; receiving a user input selecting content in one of the composite items; identifying the search result used to obtain the selected content; and causing display of further content using the identified search result.