Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Elizabeth Picchietti Salowitz

David Grochocki, Jr

Jeff West

Joseph Spencer King

Albert Peter Yih

Ana Lilia Otero Diaz

Kshitij Sethi

Kshitij Mehta

Anshul Rawat

David B Perry

Sharath Viswanathan

Aaron Naoyoshi Sheung Yan Woo

Mohammed Samji

Richard Fang

Lee Dicks Clark

John Heinrich Lueders

Raju Jain

Myron C Thomas

Robert Paul St Pierre

Leo Tian Yue

Michael Neil Loholt

Hadley Meryl Griffin

MerryJane M Fosdick

Mansi Rajkondawar

Nan Yang

Sha Viswanathan

Alisha Dilip Gala

Aaron R Teetor

Steven Nabil Bathiche

Michael John Novak

Vivek Pradeep

Eric Chris Wolfgang Sommerlade

John Edward Gallardo

Hanna Mclaughlin

Shawn Patrick Henry

Nathan James Luquetta-fish

Hanna McLaughlin

Carlos A C Pessoa

Vikas Chandra Bhatia

Jose Antonio Lara Silva

David Ben Perry

Mohammed Amirali Samji

Robert P St Pierre

John H Lueders

Machine learning techniques are leveraged to provide personalized assistance on a computing device. In some configurations a timeline of a user's interactions with the computing device is generated. For example, screenshots and audio streams may be saved as entries in the timeline. Context—the state of the computing device when the entry is created, such as which documents and websites are open—is also stored. Entries in the timeline are processed by a model to generate embedding vectors. The timeline may be searched by finding the embedding vector that is closest to an embedding vector derived from a search query. The user may select a query result, causing the associated context to be restored. For example, if the query is 'show me all documents related to my upcoming trip to Japan', the query result may open documents and websites that were open when booking a flight to Japan.

User activity history experiences powered by a machine learning model

Technologies are disclosed for providing visual feedback during touch-based operations on user interface ('UI') elements. Through implementations of the disclosed technologies, visual feedback can be provided to users during certain touch-based operations on UI elements presented by virtual reality (“VR”) devices. The visual feedback can provide confirmation to users that certain operations on UI elements were performed successfully. The visual feedback provided by the disclosed technologies can make it easier for users to select a UI element, to understand that actions taken to select a UI element were successful, and to successfully perform operations on UI elements once they have been selected. These benefits can reduce the number of times users need to attempt certain operations on UI elements. This, in turn, can reduce the utilization of computing resources, such as memory and processor cycles, by devices implementing the disclosed technologies.

Providing visual feedback during touch-based operations on user interface elements

In non-limiting examples of the present disclosure, systems, methods and devices for executing gesture operations are provided. A touchpad gesture manager and a touchscreen gesture manager may be maintained. Both managers may comprise the identities of gesture operations and conditions for executing the gesture operations. The conditions for one or more touchscreen gesture operations may be the same as the conditions for one or more corresponding touchpad gesture operations. The gestures that have same conditions for the touchscreen and the touchpad may comprise application window operations and virtual desktop transition operations. In some examples, one or more display elements, animations, or intermediate operations may be different in executing the touchscreen operations than for executing the touchpad operations.

Coherent gestures on touchpads and touchscreens

Techniques for adjusting a posture of an operating system mode for a touch-enabled computing device based on combinations of user preferences and user input modality signals. Various adjustments to the posture of the operating system mode do not impact whether particular user interface elements are present but rather alter characteristics with which these particular user interface elements are rendered. Posture adjustments to an operating system mode occur based on combinations user input modality signals and user preferences not to enter another mode in which particular user interface elements are no longer displayed within a task bar along a peripheral edge. An object of designing an operating system mode to have multiple different postures with common user interface elements displayed in the task bar while adjusting the characteristics thereof is to preserve the user familiarity across postures while optimizing graphical layouts to accommodate for a current user input modality.

Adjusting operating system posture for a touch-enabled computing device based on user input modality signals

Technologies are disclosed for providing visual feedback during touch-based operations on user interface ('UI') elements. Through implementations of the disclosed technologies, visual feedback can be provided to users during certain touch-based operations on UI elements presented by touch-enabled computing devices. The visual feedback can provide confirmation to users that certain touch-based operations on UI elements were performed successfully. The visual feedback provided by the disclosed technologies can make it easier for users to select a UI element, to understand that actions taken to select a UI element were successful, and to successfully perform operations on UI elements once they have been selected. These benefits can reduce the number of times users need to attempt certain touch-based operations on UI elements. This, in turn, can reduce the utilization of computing resources, such as memory and processor cycles, by touch-enabled computing devices implementing the disclosed technologies.

Natural language directions are received and a set of maneuver/context pairs are generated based upon the natural language directions. The set of maneuver/context pairs are provided to a routing engine to obtain route information based upon the set of maneuver/context pairs. The route information is provided to an output system for surfacing to a user.

Translation of verbal directions into a list of maneuvers

Described herein is a system and method for using object references as a data type. In response to a request for an object reference for an object by a consuming application, the object reference is generated by a source application. The object reference comprises a data structure comprising an activation uniform resource identifier for activating the referenced object, information for visually representing the object reference, and, optionally, metadata that describes the referenced object. The generated object reference is provided to an operating system component by the source application which provides the object reference to a consuming application. The consuming application can display information regard the object reference in accordance with the information for visually representing the object reference included in the object reference. The user can request reactivation of the object referenced by the object reference.

System and method for using object references as a data type

Examples are disclosed that relate to providing information regarding nearby locations that may be familiar to a user to help inform the user of a current location within an area. One disclosed example provides a computing device comprising a display, a logic subsystem, and a storage subsystem comprising instructions executable by the logic subsystem to form a list of familiar locations for a user based upon a user history regarding the familiar locations, determine that the user is within a threshold proximity to a nearby familiar location on the list of familiar locations, and in response, output directional information indicating a relative position of the nearby familiar location on the list of familiar locations.

Providing familiarizing directional information

A navigation device is provided that includes one or more input devices configured to receive starting and ending locations for route navigation, and a processor configured to retrieve user route preferences. The user route preferences may indicate one or more preferred route characteristics. The processor further may be configured to receive a request for a route from a starting location to an ending location via the one or more input devices, to read stored map information including a plurality of route segments. Each route segment may include route segment data indicating one or more route characteristics of that route segment. The processor may further be configured to generate a personalized route that includes at least one route segment having route segment data indicating at least one of the one or more preferred route characteristics of the user, and to display the personalized route to the user.

Generating personalized routes with user route preferences

A computer file system includes a storage manager configured to allocate data storage space for a plurality of computer files having different filetypes. A location and context application programming interface (API) of the computer file system associates location and context metadata with any of the plurality of computer files regardless of filetype. The location and context metadata includes one or more filetype-agnostic geographic locations associated with the computer file, each of the one or more filetype-agnostic geographic locations having a shared predefined format assigned by the location and context API. The location and context metadata also includes, for each of the one or more filetype-agnostic geographic locations associated with the computer file, a location context describing a relationship between the filetype-agnostic geographic location and the computer file.

Location and context for computer file system

Methods and devices for verifying whether to send a message may include delaying, at an operating system executing on the computer device, sending of a message to at least one recipient based at least upon an associated delay period for the message. The methods and devices may include verifying a completion of the delay period and determining whether at least one override condition exists. The methods and devices may include altering a sending of the message when the at least one override condition occurred.

Delaying sending and receiving of messages

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Elizabeth Picchietti Salowitz