Patent ID: 8065339

Claim:
A method, comprising: selectively pruning nodes from a hierarchy of nodes using a computing device, each node being at least one of (a) associated with at least one item included in a set of items and (b) associated with one of a plurality of categories of information, the pruning including: determining whether a present node in the hierarchy of nodes is associated with one of the plurality of categories of information, and if the present node is associated with one of the plurality of categories of information: (i) determining whether the present node has one and only one child node or no child nodes, and further determining, if the present node has only one child node, whether the child node is associated with a category of the one of the plurality of categories of information or a subcategory of the one of the plurality of categories of information, (ii) if the present node has only one child node, and if the child node is associated with the category or subcategory, associating the one child node with a parent node of the present node, and (iii) pruning the present node from the hierarchy if one of (a) the present node has no child nodes, and (b) the present node has only one child node, the only one child node being associated with the category or the subcategory.