Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Dean Alan Slawson

David Earl Heckerman

Joshua T Goodman

Robert L Rounthwaite

John D Mehr

Nathan D Howell

Eric L Brechner

Micah C Rupersburg

Colin Ray Anthony

Tjeerd Hoek

Krzysztof J Cwalina

Eric Fisk

David A Vest

Glen Iwasaki

John J Thrall

A Visual Thesaurus program is provided that allows a user to find media clips through successive queries by example. Clips similar to the example clip may be retrieved based on artistic style, color and shape, or keywords. Clips retrieved based on keywords may be found based on a single keyword, multiple keywords, or all keywords associated with the example clip. The keyword may be the clip format (e.g., 'mpeg' or 'gif').

Visual thesaurus as applied to media clip searching

The subject invention provides for a feedback loop system and method that facilitate classifying items in connection with spam prevention in server and/or client-based architectures. The invention makes uses of a machine-learning approach as applied to spam filters, and in particular, randomly samples incoming email messages so that examples of both legitimate and junk/spam mail are obtained to generate sets of training data. Users which are identified as spam-fighters are asked to vote on whether a selection of their incoming email messages is individually either legitimate mail or junk mail. A database stores the properties for each mail and voting transaction such as user information, message properties and content summary, and polling results for each message to generate training data for machine learning systems. The machine learning systems facilitate creating improved spam filter(s) that are trained to recognize both legitimate mail and spam mail and to distinguish between them.

Feedback loop for spam prevention

A method and system for creating and using an embedded search link document. Embedded search link documents are search-enabled through the use of a wizard. The wizard initially prompts a user to open an HTML-formatted genesis document in an editing pane. Once the genesis document is loaded, the user may add and manipulate search links by customizing the relevant search parameters. The invention permits a user to tailor a search by selecting various search parameters describing the search objective. Once the search parameters are specified, the search engine finds documents meeting the search criteria from a catalog that was built by crawling World Wide Web sites. These documents are filtered for relevance and compiled into a results list. The documents comprising the results list are placed into one of a set of site catalogs, depending on which of the search criteria are embodied in the individual document. The results list is returned to the user, who may designate certain links as preferred links. These preferred links will be compressed and stored, and will always show up at the top of the search results list. Similarly, the search criteria are compressed and stored as a portion of the search link embedded within the genesis document. Once the user has created all desired search links, the genesis document is saved as an embedded search link document. Later users may initiate searches by accessing an embedded search link.

Method and system for creating an embedded search link document

A style identifier is associated with each of a plurality of media clips stored in a database, based on a subjective evaluation of various characteristics of each media clip by an expert. The style represented by the style identifier corresponds to an impression on the expert regarding various qualities of the media clip and is not constrained by the subject of the media clip. Media clips with which style identifiers are associated can be any form of digital media, such as clip art files, sound files, photographs, animation files, fonts, etc. Also associated with each media clip in the database is an absolute ranking value for each of a plurality of different attributes based on a subjective evaluation of each media clip by an expert. A user can search the database for media clips associated with a specific style identifier and can sort the media clips that were identified by a search, based upon the absolute ranking value for a selected attribute. In one application of this invention, the database is maintained at a web site accessible over the Internet, and users can browse or search the database based upon a selected category, a keyword, or a style. The results of browsing or searching the database can be selectively sorted in regard to a selected attribute. Thus, with this invention, a user can more readily identify an appropriate media clip that is suitable for an intended use.

Searching and sorting media clips having associated style and attributes

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Redmond, WA, United States of America

Dean Alan Slawson