Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Craig Reeves Brookes

Seth Daniel Micarelli

Joseph Spencer King

Andrew Scott Craft

Lutz Gerhard

Michael Patrick Bacus

Alla Taborisskaya

Seth Gershom Goldstein

Amanda Font

Jennifer Ann Abts

Christine Wang

Imran S Patel

Andrew Olcott

Eric Allen Menninga

Wainwright Gregory Siady Yu

Brandon LaBranche Watson

Charles Conroy Moore

Arthur John Grauer, Jr

Umesh Kumar

Gabriel E Yeung

Tamal Saha

Ad hoc forums may be created and updated to enable users to easily share information, collaborate, track reading progress, coordinate events, and/or exchange other information related to reading of a book or other written work. The ad hoc forum may be accessible via a uniform resource locator (URL), which may be provided to users without requiring user registration and without a need for a dedicated reader device. A service provider may receive information from contemporaneous readers to update the forum, such as to update reading progress information, add messages, add comments, add annotations, and/or other add or modify other collaborative information. The service provider may exchange information with user devices of users via communication channels other than the forum, such as via email and/or text messages, as well as dedicated reader devices, while using this information to update the forum.

Co-reading group ad hoc forum

Virtual bookmarks can be set in digital content to enable a user to quickly locate a portion of interest. A user can provide an input to enter into an overview mode wherein multiple pages of content are displayed concurrently. The user can navigate through the pages, and when a bookmarked page is caused to no longer appear on the display an overlay element such as a thumbnail of the page can be positioned near the edge of the display, representing the current relative location of the page in the overview. A user can select one of the displayed pages to view, or can select the bookmark overlay element to return to the current page. A user can perform an action to cause the bookmarked page to be updated, or can perform various actions to cause multiple bookmarks to be created with respect to the content.

Bookmark overlays for displayed content

Some implementations include identifying conflicts between multiple layers of supplementary content associated with a digital work (e.g., an electronic book). For individual conflicts between layers of supplementary content at one or more locations within the digital work, conflicts between layers may be resolved in favor of a higher priority layer. Upon resolution of the conflict, information associated with the higher priority layer for supplementing content at a particular location in the digital work may be determined. A visual identifier of the higher priority layer may be displayed along with content associated with the digital work at the particular location.

Supplementary content layers

Described herein are techniques for initiating item fulfillment at least partly in response to the users performing gestures on touchscreens of client devices. For instance, a user may operate a client device that renders content associated with an item offered by an offering service. The user may thereafter request to acquire the item by performing a gesture on a touchscreen of the client device. The offering service may receive the request and a representation of the gesture and, in response, may determine whether or not to initiate fulfillment of the item at least partly with reference to the received representation of the gesture.

Acquiring items using gestures on a touchscreen

Various embodiments enable a user to provide an input to an application by covering or otherwise obscuring one or more cameras of a computing device in a predetermined sequence. For example, as content is displayed by a computing device, image information is captured with multiple cameras. Upon detecting a portion of a hand of a user, such as a finger, passing over two or more of the cameras, a sequence in which the hand passes over the cameras is compared to sequences stored by the computing device. In this example, each sequence stored by the computing device corresponds to an input to an application to launch the application, cause a function to be executed using the application, and the like. Accordingly, in response to the sequence matching one of the stored sequences, an input is provided to an application corresponding to the sequence.

Obscure cameras as input

Growing community of inventors

Seattle, WA, United States of America

Craig Reeves Brookes