Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Avigad Oron

Ron Jack Karidi

Ittai Doron

Keren Master

Omer Har

Chen Ari Kirsch

Kfir Karmon

Adi Diamant

Eugene (John) Neystadt

Roy Varshavsky

Kira Radinsky

Gal Lavee

Rotem Bennet

Noga Amit-Miller

Yitzhak Tzahi Weisfeild

A ranked set of users may be calculated from an expertise categorization for each user and a person's trust in the users for specific categories. The ranked set of users may be used for presenting search results, recommendations, social marketing, or other uses. A person's reputation may be determined through various online activities. A person's trust in another person may be related to their proximity and activity in one or more social networks.

Social network based contextual ranking

A data channel transmission can be used to authenticate a voice channel transmission. An authentication server can authenticate the identity of one or more parties to a call where at least one of the parties to the call is using a mobile device. A PKI authentication methodology or other symmetric or asymmetric encryption/decryption methodology can be used in a mobile network environment to identify and authenticate a first user to a second user. The authentication request sent to the third party trusted server can be encrypted, signed and transmitted over a data channel (such as an internet connection or SMS or MMS connection), concurrent with the voice channel transmission. In response to validation by the third party trusted server, the third party trusted server can send an authentication indication to the second user's device, which can display identification information and other (optional) data associated with the first user.

User authentication in a mobile environment

A data channel transmission can be used to authenticate a voice channel transmission. A third party trusted authentication server can be used to authenticate the identity of one or more parties to a call where at least one of the parties to the call is using a mobile device. A PKI authentication methodology or other symmetric or asymmetric encryption/decryption methodology can be used in a mobile network environment to identify and authenticate a first user to a second user. The authentication request sent to the third party trusted server can be encrypted, signed and transmitted over a data channel (such as an internet connection or SMS or MMS connection), concurrent with the voice channel transmission. In response to validation by the third party trusted server, the third party trusted server can send an authentication indication to the second user's device, which can display identification information and other (optional) data associated with the first user.

A movie browsing system may use a combination of long term and session based preferences to help a user browse movies using microcategories. The user preferences may be stored as microcategory weights, where the session based weights may change during a session as the system learns the types of movies a user wishes to see at that time. The long term microcategory weights may change at a slower rate than the session weights. The system may present a diverse set of microcategories to a user in an effort to diverge the search and learn the user's current interest, and may refine the weights as the user browses to converge to a desired movie. A user interface may operate on a television screen with a minimum of user input controls to navigate the browsing system while still collecting user preferences.

Movie discovery system

Topical affinity badges in information retrieval is described, for example, where graphical elements are presented together with ranked search results from a search engine, to indicate a degree of association between an author of a document and a topic. In various embodiments, a measure of an author's affinity to a topic is predicted using a machine learning system that takes as input author features derived from documents of the author. In various examples topical affinity scores or labels are used to generate badges and/or to index documents at an index of a search engine. For example, badges may be presented with ranked search results, in pop up displays or in other ways. In examples author features relating to any of recency, frequency and presentation of an author's documents are generated, where presentation features may relate to biographical information such as experience, qualifications, and previous documents.

Topical affinity badges in information retrieval

Growing community of inventors

Tel Aviv, Israel

Avigad Oron