An information retrieval system allows a user to search a database of informational items for a desired informational item, and presents the search result in the form of matching index entries in the order of relevance. The information retrieval system in accordance with the principles of the present invention assigns a relevance rating to each of the index entries without requiring an explicit input from the user with respect to the usefulness or the relevance of the retrieved information corresponding to the respective index entries. When the user selects and retrieves an informational item through a list of index entries presented by the retrieval system, as a result of a search, the relevance rating of the selected informational item is increased by a predetermined amount. The relevance rating of the selected informational item is further adjusted based on any actions the user takes subsequent to the initial selection of the informational item if the subsequent act indicates that the relevance of the selected informational item may be less than what is reflected by the rating increase by the predetermined amount. Ratings of the informational items in the database are determined from implicit suggestions from the usage of the retrieval system and the database by the user rather than from an explicit user input. In another aspect of the present invention, the ratings are allowed to decay over time to minimize the tendencies for historical usage biased rating, and to provide more temporally accurate ratings. The most recently accessed time of each of the informational items in the database is compared to a predetermined stale access time threshold, and if the most recently accessed time is older than the threshold, than the rating of the corresponding informational item is decreased to reflect the dated nature of the information contained within the item.

A system and computer-based method are disclosed for use in mining data from communications filtering requests. The system and method accept from a delivery point a filtering request, which includes an identification of a sender from which the delivery point does not wish to accept communications. Data from the filtering request is stored in a database and information from the database is provided to a requester. The system and method may receive a communication, determine from the communication its source and its delivery point, access the database to determine if the determined delivery point wishes to accept communications from the determined source and, if it does, deliver the communication to the delivery point. Otherwise, the system and method discard the communication. In the case of traditional mail, the system and method may determine the source and delivery point from one or more bar codes.

A method for managing a collection of objects, comprises selecting a property which is common to all of the objects; creating a plurality of exemplar structures, at least one exemplar structure for each object; prototypically categorizing the exemplar structures; and using the exemplar structures to access information regarding said collection. Each exemplar structure comprises an exemplar, which is a good example of the property; a broader term, which provides context to the exemplar; an object identifier, which identifies one of the collection of objects; and at least one attribute, which describes the exemplar.

A user can easily organize computerized document folders by associating a few sample documents in the document database with each folder. The present invention learns folder profiles based on the sample documents and moves the remaining documents into the folders accordingly. In this way, the user can construct new folders, or rearrange existing folders, or cause the computer to automatically rearrange and maintain the folders. This is particularly useful for managing a database of perhaps thousands of emails.

A system and method for generating a list is provided. The system includes a seed item input subsystem, an item identifying subsystem, a descriptive metadata similarity determining subsystem and a list generating subsystem that builds a list based, at least in part, on similarity processing performed on seed item descriptive metadata and user item descriptive metadata and user selected thresholds applied to such similarity processing. The method includes inexact matching between identifying metadata associated with new user items and identifying metadata stored in a reference metadata database. The method further includes subjecting candidate user items to similarity processing, where the degree to which the candidate user items are similar to the seed item is determined, and placing user items in a list of items based on user selected preferences for (dis)similarity between items in the list and the seed item.