Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

David J Lee

Kyle G Peltonen

Dmitriy Meyerzon

Richard D Prologo

Joshua Debner

Stacia L C Scott

Benjamin J Smith

Chunkit Jacky Chan

Alexander Sabo Brodie

Chadd Creighton Merrigan

Ankur Khator

Stefan Isbein Larimore

Joseph M Sherman

Owen W Paulus

Mark Sievert Larsen

Joshua Bryan Weisberg

Mircea Neagovici-Negoescu

Michal Gideoni

Smita Oiha

Michael M H Cheng

Systems and methods for selecting representative photos for a photo album are described. An example computing device may include a display, a logic device, and a storage device storing instructions executable by the logic device to, for each known individual recognized in one or more photos of the album, determine an affinity score for that known individual indicating a connection of that known individual to a) a user of the computing device and b) a context corresponding to the album. The instructions may be further executable to select one or more known individuals based on the affinity score to be included in a subset of the known individuals recognized in one or more photos of the album, and select a representative photo of each of the subset of the known individuals to be included in one or more of a highlight photoset and a cover photo for the album.

Visual representations of photo albums

Media files may be prioritized based on user behavior data and social data associated with individual media files. A process of prioritizing media files may include accessing user behavior data associated with individual media files in a set of media files that are stored on a client device of a user or in a cloud-based storage location associated with the user, accessing social data associated with one or more media files of the set of media files that are determined to have been shared on a media file sharing service, and ranking the set of media files based at least in part on the user behavior data and the social data.

Prioritizing media based on social data and user behavior

Media files may be curated for a user based on a location of a client device associated with the user. A user carrying a client device may arrive at a particular location on a given day. A computer-implemented process may include determining whether the given day and/or the particular location is 'unique' to the user in some fashion, which may be based on one or more criteria used to quantify or otherwise evaluate uniqueness of the day or location. At least partly in response, media file sharing service may be queried to identify shared media files that were created at the particular location, wherein the shared media files are associated with one or more entities having social connections to the user. A curated subset of the identified media files may be automatically created and a notification may be issued to the user.

Curating media from social connections

A set of index keys is included in an index search system that are associated with the scope of the search rather than the content of the documents that are the target of the search. These scope related index keys, or scope keys allows the scope of the search to be selected, reducing the number of documents that a search is required to sift through to obtain results. Furthermore, compound scopes are recognized and stored such that an index of complex search scopes is provided to eliminate rehashing of the searches based on these complex search scopes.

System and method for scoping searches using index keys

A system and method for facilitating full text searching utilizing inverted keyword indices in shared memory are provided. An inverted keyword index and an inverted keyword attribute index are created from keyword tokens from a set of documents. The keyword indices are stored in a shared memory buffer and accessed by a query processing component. Shared memory pointers corresponding to the indices are dynamically adjusted according to the addressing schema of the query processing component. The query processing component then processes data queries from the keyword indices stored in the shared memory buffer.

System and method for facilitating full text searching utilizing inverted keyword indices

A process takes advantage of a structure of a server hosting a network site that includes a change log stored in a database to batch index documents for search queries. The content of the site is batched and shipped in bulk from the server to an indexer. The change log keeps track of the changes to the content of the site. The indexer incrementally requests updates to the index using the change log and batches the changes so that the bandwidth usage and processor overhead costs are reduced.

System and method for batched indexing of network documents

Methods and computer-readable media are provided for performing a search on a relational database. According to one method, a query class is provided that includes properties that specify how a query is to be performed and how results from the query are to be returned, and an execute method that is called to perform the actual query. A keyword query class derived from the query class is also provided that includes keyword query properties and an execute method for performing the keyword query. In order to perform a keyword query of an SQL database, an instance of the keyword query class is created, the properties set on the instance, and the execute method called. When the execute method is called, the specified properties are translated into an equivalent SQL statement and the search is performed on the identified relational database by a search service.

Simplified search interface for querying a relational database

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

David J Lee