Patent ID: 7647351

Claim:
A computer program product embodied on a computer readable medium for extracting information from a collection of sources, comprising: computer code for displaying an interface that is operable to allow a user to create at least one template associated with at least one source utilizing at least one menu that includes a plurality of options that are capable of being selected by the user, the options of the at least one menu being dynamically generated by automatically generating the options of the at least one menu during creation of the at least one template; computer code for allowing the user to identify persistent text, such that the persistent text becomes part of the at least one template; computer code for allowing the user to identify at least one URL, such that the at least one URL becomes part of the at least one template; computer code for allowing the user to identify at least one region associated with the source by specifying at least two entities associated with the source with respect to which desired information resides, such that a result of the specifying becomes part of the at least one template; computer code for determining at least one relationship to other data, the at least one relationship being part of the at least one template; computer code for processing text of the source to automatically identify at least one data type associated with the text of the source, by identifying at least one first word of the text of the source and automatically identifying at least one different second word that is representative of a type associated with the at least one first word, wherein the computer program product is operable such that the at least one data type is automatically identified based on a format of the text of the source; computer code for gathering or processing data from the source, utilizing at least one of the persistent text of the at least one template, the at least one URL of the at least one template, the at least one region of the at least one template, the at least one relationship of the at least one template, or the at least one data type; computer code for displaying the data from the source; computer code for identifying errors associated with the data from the source; and computer code for reporting the errors for review.