Patent ID: 8078884

Claim:
A user-interface method of selecting and presenting a collection of content items in which the presentation is ordered at least in part based on inferring which user of a relatively small collection of users is using an input device, the method comprising: providing a set of content items; providing a set of preference information for each user of the collection of users, each set of preference information indicating content item preferences of a corresponding user; providing a set of user keypress biometric models, each model representing expected keypress activity for the corresponding user; receiving incremental input entered by a user for incrementally identifying desired content items, the incremental input corresponding to a sequence of keys pressed by the user on the input device; in response to the incremental input entered by the user, monitoring and characterizing keypress activity to biometrically characterize the user, the monitoring and characterizing keypress activity including using a linear combination of at least two statistical distributions to characterize the keypress activity; analyzing the keypress activity to find the closest match to one of the keypress biometric models; using the closest match to infer which user of the collection of users entered the incremental input; selecting preference information corresponding to the inferred user; in response to selecting the preference information and the incremental input entered by the user, selecting and presenting a collection of content items in an order that portrays as relatively more relevant those content items that more closely match the set of preferences of the inferred user.