Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Jason Evan Schleifer

John R Burkhardt

Ransom Lloyd Richardson

Steven E Lees

Richard Zack Speyer

Raymond Edward Ozzie

Gary William Hall

Matthew S Augustine

James P Chen

Brian M Lambert

Eric M Patey

Garry K Tan

Juan Vicente Esteve Balducci

George P Moromisato

Paresh S Suthar

Zhidong Yang

Preethi Ramani

Mike A Foster

Byrisetty Rajeev

Methods, systems, and computer-readable media are provided to allow multiple server resources to share a single connection to a client device. The single connection may be maintained between a notification queue on the server side and the client device. Multiple server resources share the notification queue. When a resource changes or a service wants to communicate information to a client, corresponding messages are sent to the notification queue over a connection within the data center. Once in the notification queue, the updates are communicated to the client device.

Subscribing to multiple resources through a common connection

One or more techniques and/or systems are disclosed herein for relaying a request to a process running on a computing device from a web client and receiving a response from the process. A bridge message client disposed in a web application, running in a browser on a computer, opens a local connection to a process running outside the browser. The bridge message client comprises a communication channel ID that identifies a communication channel to host the local connection to a bridge server, and a bridge message client ID facilitates communications from the bridge server to the web application. The bridge server is disposed outside of the browser environment, and can receive a request from the bridge message client and forward it to the process, and/or can receive a response to the request from the process and forward it to the bridge message client over the local connection.

Communication channel between web application and process outside browser

Methods, systems, and computer storage media are provided for communicating with client devices by way of a proxy device. An indication is received that multiple client devices are attempting to communicate with a shared service over a wide area network, such as the Internet. A server provides a first client device with a list of other client devices that are currently in communications with the shared service. Once a proxy device has been selected, the server receives an identification of that proxy device from the first client device so that the server knows that future communications from the first client device will be received through the proxy device. Data is then communicated to and from the shared service by way of the proxy device.

Selection of proxy device for connection pooling

A technique and mechanism to effect cross-pollination synchronization of PIM (personal information manager) data to multiple sources. Additionally, a novel feature of the subject invention is the ability to effect cross-pollination synchronization with any number of devices and sources in a network. The invention provides for a user to employ a mobile device or set of devices as a central repository for PIM data (e.g., calendar, contacts and tasks) synchronized from multiple sources (e.g., multiple PC's (personal computers), an exchange server). The invention provides for synchronization of PIM data from multiple types of server sources to multiple devices regardless of the synchronization protocol versions and different schemas.

Cross-pollination synchronization of data

Methods, system, and computer storage media are provided for moderating actions performed on shared data objects. Rule enforcement logic is received for an application that is associated with one or more data objects shared between various clients. The rule enforcement logic is stored at a data server that also stores data associated with data objects. A moderator, also stored on the data server, is used to enforce the rule enforcement logic corresponding to the application when a client attempts to perform an action to a data object associated with the application.

Moderation of shared data objects

One or more techniques and/or systems are disclosed herein for assigning familiar pseudonames to anonymous user members in a shared online environment. Creation of a name pool is provided for using a programmed processor disposed in a computing device. The name pool includes familiar names that may be contextually relevant to a group of user members in the shared online environment. A name from the name pool is provided for assignment to an anonymous user member in the shared online environment, where assignment of the name is, at least in part, based on characteristics of the anonymous user member relative to the shared online environment.

Pseudonaming anonymous participants

A data sharing mechanism may allow programs to share access to data collections. The mechanisms that implement the sharing may allow programs written in any language to read and write a shared collection. The mechanisms may make the shared nature of the collection relatively transparent to the program and to the programmer, by allowing a program to operate on the data more or less as if it were purely local data. The sharing of collections may be managed by a shared object runtime on each machine on which a collection is used, and by a shared object server. The shared object server maintains the true state of the collection, and deterministically resolves collections when programs operate on the same collection without knowledge of each other's operations. The mechanisms by which collections are shared may be implemented so as to be agnostic as to the kind of data in the collection.

Shared data collections

Users of various devices may participate in communication sessions, but only if the interfaces and components of such devices feature a minimum set of capabilities involved in the communication session type; e.g., in order to participate in a teleconference, the device of every user has to be capable of sending and receiving audio. Instead, a communication session server may automatically convert session items received from each user into interface-specific representations for each other user, based on the capabilities of the interface and device of the other user. For example, speech recognition may transform speech to text output; speech synthesis may transform text input to speech; and video recognition may identify individuals and gestures in a video stream and represent this information as text. The server may therefore host a 'mixed' communication session, where each user may fully participate irrespective of the capabilities of the chosen device and interface.

Communication sessions among devices and interfaces with mixed capabilities

Large scale internet services may be implemented using multiple discrete server instances. Some tasks of the large scale internet services may be singleton tasks, which may be advantageously processed by a sub-set of the server instances (e.g., merely one instance). Accordingly, as provided herein, a singleton task may be processed in a reliable manner based upon one or more instances of a protocol executed across a set of arbitrary autonomous server instances. In one example, the protocol may determine whether a lease for a singleton task is valid or expired. If the lease is expired, then an attempt to claim the lease may be performed by updating a current lease expiration with a new lease expiration. If the attempt is successful, then the singleton task may be processed until the new lease expiration expires.

Processing singleton task(s) across arbitrary autonomous server instances

Methods, systems, and computer-readable media for manipulating in-memory data entities are provided. Embodiments of the present invention use a Representational State Transfer ('REST') web service to manipulate the in-memory data entities. In one embodiment, a 'snap shot' is taken of the in-memory data entities at a point in time to create representations of the entities. A hierarchy of the representations is built. The hierarchy is used to make the entities addressable via a URI. Embodiments of the invention may then map the entity representations in the hierarchy to the entities. An embodiment of the invention uses handlers to process a REST style request addressed to an entity representation. The handler reads the command and determines whether the command is authorized for performance on the entity and performs that command, if appropriate.

Providing access to shared state data

Methods, system, and computer storage media are provided for enabling cross-language object sharing by providing shareable typename information agreed upon by clients that wish to share object with each other. A first client creates an object by communicating a create request, which includes typename information associated with the object. The object is created and the typename information, along with data and properties associated with the object, is stored. A second client requests to open that object. The data, properties, and typename information stored in associated with the object is communicated to the second client so that the second client is able to create a correct instance of the object.

Cross language object sharing

Sharing of objects may be implemented in a way that allows programs to use shared objects in much the same way that they would use local objects. In one example, a program creates an object and sets properties through normal instructions that would be used to create a local object. The program then registers the object with a shared object model, which may be maintained by a shared object server. For each machine on which the object may be used, a shared object runtime monitors for changes to the objects, and notifies the server of these changes. The server updates the object, and notifies other machines of changes to the state of the object. The shared object runtimes on those machines receive notification of the changes, and update the local copies.

Sharing and synchronization of objects

The present invention allows a user to synchronize a device with at least two data sources that may cross-pollinate. The user's device is used to shuttle changes between the sources and resolves conflicts when changes are made to an item on multiple sources concurrently. The user's device keeps track of which version of the item each sync source has and synchronizes each of the sources to the latest version of an item.

Growing community of inventors

Seattle, WA, United States of America

Jason Evan Schleifer