CS298 Proposal

Improving Yioop! User Search Data Usage

Tarun Pepira Ramaswamy(tarun.pepira@gmail.com)

Advisor:Dr.Chris Pollett

Committee Members:Dr. Mark Stamp and Dr. Soon Tee Teoh

Abstract:

In the prior work of Vijaya Pamidi[1], Dr.Pollett's previous student wrote a Firefox extension for Yioop which captures the URL's visited and sends these to the Yioop Search Engine. One of the disadvantages of this extension is the lack of user benefit for sending the data to Yioop. This led to non usage of the extension. Also, the relevance of the URL data sent by the extension is computed in an ad hoc way.

The main goal of my project is to add a visualization component to this Firefox extension encouraging the users to use this extension. The visualization will show the user navigation across the visited urls providing user benefit. The extension will also have a preference pane to accept user configurable data like username and password. Currently, the user clicks on the Yioop search result page are not captured. This extension should capture the user clicks on Yioop search result page and send it to the Yioop Search Engine. My project will also implement a theoretically sound way of computing the relevance of these data, based on modern web reputation systems.

CS297 Results

Created a Firefox Extension with preference pane that helps to store user provided data
Implemented Force Based Algorithm in javascript and used canvas to draw a simple graph
Modified Vijaya's code to index the user clicked URL's in the Yioop search result page

Proposed Schedule

Week 1: 01/26/2012 - 02/1/2012Write CS298 proposal
Week 2-3: 02/02/2012 - 02/15/2012Work on creating the visualization graph
Week 4: 02/16/2012 - 02/22/2012Deliverable 1 due: Visualization graph of the visited URL's
Week 5: 02/23/2012 - 03/1/2012Study existing indexing system
Week 6-7: 03/2/2012 - 03/15/2012Research and implement a new way to calculate the relevance of the user data
Week 8: 03/16/2012 - 03/22/2012Deliverable 2 due: Indexing the newly added user data
Week 9-10: 03/23/2012 - 04/05/2012Work on the preference page and integrate all the features
Week 11: 04/06/2012 - 04/12/2012Deliverable 3 due:Demo of the complete working solution
Week 12: 04/13/2012 - 04/19/2012Test all the extensions created and write a document on the tests and results
Week 13: 04/20/2012 - 04/26/2012Work on CS298 Report
Week 14: 04/27/2012 - 05/03/2012CS298 Report first draft- Submit to Advisor and Committee
Week 15: 05/04/2012 - 05/10/2012CS298 Report final document- Submit to Advisor and Committee
Week 16: 04/11/2012 - 05/17/2012Defense

Key Deliverables:

Software

Deliverable 1:Create a visualization graph for the user visited pages
Deliverable 2:Indexing of newly added user data based on modern reputation system
Deliverable 3:Integration of all features: FireFox extension that captures the user clicked data in Yioop search page, a canvas graph showing the user clicked data and the new indexing technique for for these new clicked data

Report

CS298 Report
Project Code and Test results Documentation

Innovations and Challenges

Indexing the new search data requires extensive research on how to calculate the relevance of the new data
It is challenging to create a visualization tool that captures user clicked data and displays in an aesthetically pleasing way

References

1. http://www.cs.sjsu.edu/faculty/pollett/masters/Semesters/Fall10/vijaya/CS 298 Project Report.pdf

2. https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Building_an_Extension

3. [RANDY2010]Building Web Reputation Systems: By Randy Farmer, Bryce Glass, March 2010

4. [AMY2006]Google's PageRank and Beyond: The Science of Search Engine Rankings: by Amy N. Langville and Carl D. Meyer

5. https://developer.mozilla.org/en/SVG

6. https://developer.mozilla.org/en/HTML/Canvas