Patent ID: 8015186

Claim:
An information processing apparatus for retrieving contents from among a plurality of retrievable contents (content A 1 . . . content A n ), comprising: an input unit configured to receive as input a logic operation expression defined by a plurality of retrieval keys designating a plurality of key contents (content KB˜ . . . content KBm), respectively, and logic operators defining logic relationships there between, said input unit being configured to enter weights for the respective feature quantities of the contents; a similarity calculating unit configured to calculate, for each one of the plurality of key contents, a similarity distance (D) between the plurality of key contents designated by the retrieval keys of said logic operation expression and the plurality of retrievable contents, using a plurality of types of feature quantities of at least one of the retrieval contents and the key contents, each type of feature quantity of the retrievable contents being assigned a respective value from within a range of values (V A1 . . . V An ) that indicates a degree of the type of feature quantity occurring in the retrievable contents (content A 1 . . . content A n ) and each type of feature quantity of the key contents being assigned a respective value from within a range of values (V KB1 . . . V KBm ) that indicates a degree of the type of feature quantity occurring in the key contents (content KB 1 . . . content KB m ), such that D=√{(V A1 −V KB1 ) 2 +(V A2 −V KB2 ) 2 + . . . (V An −V KBm ) 2 }, said similarity calculating unit being configured to calculate similarity D between the key contents and the retrievable contents using a plurality of feature quantities of the contents which are weighted by said weights entered through said input unit with respect to all said key contents; a combined score calculating unit, including a processor, configured to calculate a combined score S for each one of the retrievable contents by performing logic operations using said similarity D between the key contents and the retrievable contents corresponding to the retrieval keys such that S=1/(D+α), where α is a predetermined constant; and a presenting unit configured to display on a visual display contents from among said retrievable contents based on said combined score calculated by said combined score calculating unit, the presenting unit being configured to display each of the plurality of combined scores with respect to at least one of the plurality of key contents.