SEARCH FOR RELATED ITEMS USING DATA CHANNELS
Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, for a search for related items using data channels. A method includes, in a computing system having a processor and memory, processing data channels, each data channel defining a set of criteria against which to match items, receiving an input item, and applying the data channels to identify one or more additional items related to the input item.
1 . A method comprising:
in a computing system having a processor and memory, processing data channels, each data channel defining a set of criteria against which to match items, each of the items selected from the group consisting of a text document, an audio clip, a video clip, an image, a set of text documents, a set of audio clips, and a set of video clips, the set of criteria selected from the group consisting of search words, metadata criteria, and generated metadata criteria;
receiving an input item in the computing system; and
applying the data channels to identify one or more additional items related to the input item.
2 . (canceled)
3 . The method of claim 1 wherein the data channels comprise a Boolean tree of criteria.
4 . The method of claim 1 wherein processing data channels comprises analyzing trending topics on the world wide web (WWW).
5 . The method of claim 1 further comprising applying the data channels to identify a degree of relatedness between the input item and the one or more additional items.
6 . The method of claim 5 wherein applying the data channels to identify a degree of relatedness comprises determining a number of data channels in common to which the input item and the one or more additional items belong.
7 . The method of claim 6 wherein the degree of relatedness is refined by a relevance score for the number of data channels in common with the input item and the one or more additional items.
8 . The method of claim 7 wherein the relevance score is derived from a number of nodes matched in a Boolean tree representation of the data channel set of criteria.
9 . The method of claim 7 wherein the relevance score is derived from a number of matches in the input item for a match criterion.
10 . The method of claim 6 wherein the degree of relatedness is refined by metrics involving metadata of candidate items.
11 . The method of claim 1 wherein the set of criteria further includes an output of natural language processing or statistical classification.
12 . The method of claim 1 wherein applying the data channels to identify one or more additional items related to the input item comprises applying speech to text to determine words from speech in an audio/video item in order to determine data channel match.
13 . The method of claim 1 wherein applying the data channels to identify one or more additional items related to the input item further comprises other machine learning or statistical techniques.
14 . (canceled)
15 . The method of claim 1 wherein processing data channels further comprises a user input of criteria.
16 . The method of claim 1 wherein the data channels are automatically generated.