Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Walmart Apollo, LLC

Bin Li

Yue Liu

Hitoshi Sekine

Patrick Harrington

Tao Zhu

Fnu Manasi

Thanh Ngo

A system and method for optimizing marketing campaigns is presented. Two marketing campaigns are received. Each is presented to a subset of users. The conversion rates of both marketing campaign are used to determine weighting of the two marketing campaigns. The weighting is determined using a range of conversion rates and maximizing the minimum expected value through the range of conversion rates. The process can be iteratively performed to converge upon an optimum weighting of the first and second conversion rates. More than two marketing campaigns can be used. The marketing campaign can be an email marketing campaign, a web marketing campaign, or an advertising keyword campaign. Other embodiments also are disclosed.

System for providing a robust marketing optimization algorithm and method therefor

An image forming apparatus executing a job based on authority of an account and capable of controlling a job instructed by an authorized user is disclosed. The image forming apparatus includes a certification ticket generation unit generating a certification ticket corresponding to the job and account information of the account instructing the execution of the job; a job information generation unit generating job information of the job; a certification ticket validity determination unit determining whether the certification ticket is valid; a job validity determination unit determining whether the execution of the job by the account is valid based on the job information corresponding to the certification ticket that has been determined valid by the certification ticket validity determination unit; and a job control unit executing the job, the execution of the job having been determined valid by the job validity determination unit.

Image forming apparatus and job request control method instructed by authenticated users

Methods and structure for improved client/server program communication by transmitting dynamically maintained service capabilities information from the server program to the client program. The client program generates a service request based on the received service capabilities information. Since the service capabilities information is retrieved from the server program and is dynamically maintained by the server program, the client program need not be updated when available services from the server program are modified. In one exemplary embodiment, the client program may be a print application client program and the server program may be a print server program. The print client program retrieves the current printer device capabilities (service capabilities information) and generates a print job ticket (service request) based on the retrieved, dynamically maintained printer device capability information. The job ticket is then transmitted to the server program to cause the printing of the document specified by the job ticket.

Methods and structure for utilizing dynamic capabilities in client/server software interaction

A disclosed encryption key restoring method enables restoration of an encryption key in the event of inability to use the encryption key stored in a secure memory of an information processing apparatus, in which data encrypted by the encryption key is stored in an internal storage unit. A disclosed information processing apparatus includes a key management module that checks the validity of the encryption key. If the encryption key is not valid, the key management module acquires a restore key for the encryption key from outside the information processing apparatus, and checks the validity of the restore key. If the restore key is valid, the key management module stores it in the secure memory, and reboots the information processing apparatus in a normal mode.

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Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Bin Li