Patent ID: 7970739

Claim:
A method for maintaining profiles of information channels, wherein the information channels are accessed via pull-only protocols, the method comprising: monitoring one or more channels on a data network by a channel pull action at a monitoring rate, determining novel update events in respective ones of the one or more channels during an epoch, by filtering update events occurring during the epoch, wherein filtering comprises disregarding ones of the update events that do not include significant novel information; adapting the monitoring rate responsively to a number of the novel update events in subsequent epochs by iteratively applying reinforcement learning rules, wherein the learning rules comprise a first parameter that controls a tradeoff between an exploration of an observed monitoring rate and an exploitation of a history of the monitoring rate and a second parameter that controls a rate of learning, wherein the learning rules comprise formulas: λ C on ⁡ ( T ) = α T · λ C on ⁡ ( T prev ) + ( 1 - α T ) ·  C W ′   W ′  α T = α 0 · exp - T G , wherein T prev is the previous time epoch; λ C on is the monitoring rate; T is a time epoch; C W , is a set of captured update events between two consecutive polls of channel C occurring between times T prev and T; α T is learning parameter; and G is a parameter that controls the rate of learning; and recording the novel update events in the history in respective channel profiles of the one or more channels, wherein the channel profiles represent dynamic textual content of the channels.