Personalizable information networks
A facility for creating a shareable pinboard collection is disclosed. In various embodiments, the facility receives from a user a selection of one or more search providers, employs the selected one or more search providers to perform a search for information items matching a criteria specified by the user, and receives an indication of information items located by the selected one or more search providers.
1 . A method performed by a computing device for creating a shareable pinboard collection, comprising:
receiving from a user a selection of one or more search providers, each of the search providers for searching an information source;
employing the selected one or more search providers to perform a search for information items matching a criteria specified by the user; and
receiving an indication of information items located by the selected one or more search providers, each located information item indicating a result.
2 . The method of claim 1 including employing multiple search providers to concurrently perform a search for information items based on the query.
3 . The method of claim 1 including transforming the result into an internal form.
4 . The method of claim 3 wherein the internal form is RSS.
5 . The method of claim 3 wherein the transforming includes creating an extract of the result.
6 . The method of claim 1 wherein the receiving includes receiving an indication of a single action performed by a user.
7 . The method of claim 1 wherein the employing includes retrieving information from the selected one or more search providers relating to how to employ the search provider.
8 . The method of claim 1 wherein the information includes an application program interface.
9 . The method of claim 1 wherein one of the search providers is a third-party search provider that is indicated in a shareable pinboard collection.
10 . The method of claim 1 further comprising creating the pinboard collection comprising at least the indicated information items.
11 . The method of claim 10 wherein the pinboard collection indicates links between the pinboard collection and the indicated information items.
12 . The method of claim 11 further comprising storing a link associating the indicated information items with the pinboard collection.
13 . The method of claim 12 further comprising retrieving other pinboard collections with which the indicated information items are associated.
14 . The method of claim 1 further comprising dynamically adding a search provider that can be selected by the user.
15 . The method of claim 1 further comprising filtering the information items.
16 . A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing a method of creating a shareable pinboard collection, the method comprising:
employing multiple search providers to perform a search for information items matching a criteria specified by a user;
merging results provided by the search providers into an internal form; and
providing an indication of the merged results to a user.
17 . The computer-readable medium of claim 16 including transforming the merged results before providing the indication of the merged results to a user.
18 . The computer-readable medium of claim 17 wherein the transforming includes creating an HTML document.
19 . The computer-readable medium of claim 16 including receiving an indication to pin some of the merged results.
20 . The computer-readable medium of claim 16 wherein the internal form is RSS.
21 . The computer-readable medium of claim 16 including employing a provider description that is indicated by a search provider.
22 . The computer-readable medium of claim 21 wherein the provider description is an application program interface.
23 . The computer-readable medium of claim 16 wherein a merged result contains a back link wherein the back link is an indication of a previously stored pinboard collection that also contains one of the results.
24 . The computer-readable medium of claim 16 wherein the merging includes overlaying a result wherein the overlaying includes combining results from multiple search providers and removing duplicate attributes to provide a single result that has unique attributes from some of the multiple search providers.
25 . The computer-readable medium of claim 16 wherein a result indicates a search provider.
26 . The computer-readable medium of claim 25 further comprising dynamically registering the search provider and employing the search provider to perform the search.
27 . The computer-readable medium of claim 16 wherein at least two search providers provide different types of results, each type of result viewable using a different viewing component.
28 . The computer-readable medium of claim 16 wherein the merged results are overlaid with results from a second search.
29 . The computer-readable medium of claim 16 further comprising transforming the results from the internal form into a form that is provided to the user.
30 . The computer-readable medium of claim 16 wherein a location is specified for an information item and wherein the location identifies a point within the information item.
31 . The computer-readable medium of claim 30 wherein the location is specified using a bookmark anchor tag.
32 . The computer-readable medium of claim 30 wherein the information item is pinned to a pinboard collection.
33 . The computer-readable medium of claim 32 wherein the pinboard collection has an annotation associated with the pinned information item.
34 . The computer-readable medium of claim 32 wherein another pinboard collection has an annotation relating to the pinned information item.