US 7,581,184 B2
System and method for visualizing the temporal evolution of object metadata
Micah Joel Dubinko, Sunnyvale, Calif. (US); Shanmugasundaram Ravikumar, Cupertino, Calif. (US); Joseph Andrew Magnani, San Francisco, Calif. (US); Jasmine Novak, Mountain View, Calif. (US); Prabhakar Raghavan, Saratoga, Calif. (US); and Andrew Tomkins, San Jose, Calif. (US)
Assigned to Yahoo! Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif. (US)
Filed on May 19, 2006, as Appl. No. 11/437,415.
Prior Publication US 2007/0283290 A1, Dec. 06, 2007
Int. Cl. G06F 3/00 (2006.01); G06F 3/048 (2006.01); G06F 17/30 (2006.01)
U.S. Cl. 715—719  [715/867; 707/7] 19 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A computer system for visualization of metadata in a user interface, comprising:
a computer processor;
a visualization engine for generating a visualization in a user interface depicting the temporal evolution of metadata describing objects in an object store over a plurality of time intervals;
a river visualization engine operably coupled to the visualization engine for marshaling a sequence of metadata items by staggering placement of the metadata items into randomly selected rows of a display of the user interface in order to animate the metadata items to move across the display until disappearing off an edge of the display; and
an animation engine operably coupled to the visualization engine for animating the metadata items to move across the display until disappearing off the edge of the display.