Method and apparatus for electronically extracting application specific multidimensional information from documents selected from a set of documents electronically extracted from a library of electronically searchable documents

Abstract

An apparatus and method is disclosed for providing application specific multi-dimensional information to an application running on a user computing device, wherein at least one dimension of the information is a category, from a plurality of member documents electronically extracted from a library of electronically searchable documents, which may comprise an application specific multidimensional information extractor adapted to extract occurrences of prospective representations of dimensions of application specific multidimensional information from the member documents, and to extract occurrences of non-application specific multidimensional information from the member documents; and, an encoder adapted to encode the occurrences of prospective dimensions of application specific multidimensional information and non-application specific multidimensional information contained in member documents according to a dimension specific coded representation of each dimension of application specific multidimensional information and a non-application specific coded representation of each non-application specific multidimensional information element. The apparatus and method may further comprise a member document identifier adapted to determine whether a member document contains coded formatting, and if not, whether the member document is a dense document, and if not, for rejecting the document from further processing, and the coded formatting may comprise network markup language coding. The apparatus and method may further comprise an application specific multidimensional information verification unit adapted verify the extraction of application specific multi-dimensional information from the member documents, and may further comprise a database for storing the application specific multi-dimensional information adapted to provide an application running on a user computing device access to the application specific multidimensional information. The application specific multidimensional information may be scheduled events having the dimensions of time, location and event identity, and the application running on the user computer can be an electronic calendar or other similar scheduling software program.

Description

[0001] This application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 10 / 026,065, filed Dec. 19, 2001, the entirety of which is incorporated herein by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION

[0002] The present invention relates to the field of electronic searching of libraries of searchable documents, for example, pages of documents maintained on web-pages accessible over a communication network, e.g., the Internet, in order to extract application specific multi-dimensional data. RELATED APPLICATIONS

[0003] The present application is related to concurrently filed applications by the same inventors, assigned to the same assignee the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated reference. SOFTWARE SUBMISSION

[0004] Accompanying this Application as an Appendix thereto and incorporated by reference herein as is fully incorporated within this Application is a media copy of the software currently utilized by the applicants in the implementation of some or all of the presently preferred embodime...

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