Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Jeffrey L Allen

Dan B Kroymann

Jerry Alan Johnson

Jeffrey David Henshaw

Brendan Reville

Daniel M C Caiafa

Alan Thomas Shen

Jason A Gold

James Mason Boswell

Harris Thurmond

Fabrice Odero

Techniques to enable parental control for a media console are described. One such technique involves enabling user-specific security (or rights) settings. This technique includes first receiving a user identifier from a user interface of a media console. The technique includes next determining a first security profile for the media console based on the user identifier. In this technique, the first security profile defines a supervised operating configuration for the media console that is specific to the user identifier, and which is controlled by an authorized party, such as a parent. Finally, the technique includes enabling use of the first media console subject to the first security profile. In this technique, the first security profile thereby defines parental control choices regarding use of the first media console by the first user, e.g., a child.

Parental controls for a media console

The present invention is direct to a Live Network Explorer (LNE) which allows users to graphically navigate through a web of interconnected friends on a gaming console. The LNE provides a real-time graphical representation of friend-of-friend relationships, with the currently-viewed user as a visual node in the screen center. The center node is surrounded by nodes representing that user's friends. Real-time animation is used to represent transitions as the user navigates from person to person. The LNE also represents groups as a visual node in this graphically interconnected web so that the user can travel to a group that a person belongs to, and can see all the people inside the group by connections. The user can navigate to any of these people in the group. The user can click on a person to bring up their digital identity details.

Tool for real-time graphical exploration of interconnected friends and groups

In accordance with certain aspects of the intelligent message deletion, a system includes a message queue and an intelligent deletion module. The intelligent message deletion module adds a newly received message to the message queue and deletes a previously received message from the message queue based at least in part on a sender of the newly received message.

Intelligent message deletion

Graphical identification element for a display screen

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Sammamish, WA, United States of America

Jeffrey L Allen