Fourthwall Media, Inc.

Jeffrey William Johnston

Louis P Slothouber

Aaron Ye

Disclosed herein are systems and methods for providing companion services to customer premises equipment (CPE) using an IP-based service infrastructure. The infrastructure allows IP-enabled devices such as tablet PCs, smart phones, PDAs, and laptop computers to provide supplementary services to target systems and devices located at customer premises. Target systems and devices (CPE) may be TVs, PCs, set-top boxes, digital video recorders, or other electronics. An embodiment is disclosed which allows a mobile device to provide companion services to a television through a link with a set-top box in a cable TV network using the Internet.

Systems and methods for providing companion services to customer equipment using an IP-based infrastructure

Disclosed herein are systems and methods for reducing the amount of data associated with user events. The systems and methods are particularly applicable to cable TV, satellite TV, and other networks where user event data (e.g., clickstream) must be sent from customer premises equipment (CPE) to centralized servers and the data transmission channel is narrow. In various exemplary embodiments, CPE such as television set-top boxes may reduce requirements for data storage and network bandwidth by replacing portions of channel-number/timestamp streams with abbreviated codes representing common meta-events such as 'channel surfing events' and 'previous channel events.' The original channel-number/timestamp streams can be reconstituted on centralized servers. Other common sequences of events, including those involving activation of other buttons on remote controls (i.e., buttons not related to changing channels), keyboard keys, mouse pointing device controls, and the like may constitute meta-events and be similarly replaced by abbreviated codes.

Systems and methods for user event data reduction

Disclosed are systems and methods of building a default set of parameters into a software application by defining a widget template having associated parameter schema and then instantiating a widget by substituting a new set of application parameters for the built-in defaults such that the new parameters meet the same constraints defined for the default parameters. Aspects of the invention also include testing the original application containing the default parameters, along with the parameter substitution process itself, using a Statistical Software Testing Methodology (SSTM) to ensure the application meets a pre-determined level of quality.

System and method of substituting parameter sets in self-contained mini-applications

A system for and method of targeting a broadcast message to a subset of potential electronic receivers in a broadcast network is presented. The system and method may comprise collecting identifying information associated with designated electronic receivers of a targeted broadcast message, generating, using a computer processor, a data set structure using the identifying information, associating the data set structure with the targeted broadcast message, and broadcasting the targeted broadcast message and the data set structure to a plurality of electronic receivers, wherein the data set structure provides information allowing at least one of the plurality of electronic receivers to determine whether the targeted broadcast message is targeted to the at least one electronic receiver.

System for and method of targeting broadcast messages

A method and system for providing personalized information to applications executing on consumer devices by: building a consumer preferences profile on a consumer device using predefined associations between consumer preference attributes and application events (including user input); summarizing the consumer preferences profile into a profile summary when applications require a new personalized data resource; requesting a personalized data resource from a centralized database of data resources over the broadband network by including application context information along with the profile summary in the request; analyzing data resource groups in the centralized database to find a candidate set of data resources according to resource rules in the resource groups; selecting a personalized data resource from the candidate set of data resources that matches the profile summary and context information; and delivering the selected personalized data resource to the requesting application over the broadband network. Personalized data resources may include resource selection information, graphic images, text content, formatting information, video clip data, click-to-call data, and scripts and procedures.

Providing personalized resources on-demand over a broadband network to consumer device applications

A embodiment is disclosed for learning user interests based on user actions and then applying the learned knowledge to rank, recommend, and/or filter items, such as e-mail spam, based on the level of interest to a user. The embodiment may be used for automated personalized information learning, recommendation, and/or filtering systems in applications such as television programming, web-based auctions, targeted advertising, and electronic mail filtering. The embodiment may be structured to generate item descriptions, learn items of interest, learn terms that effectively describe the items, cluster similar items in a compact data structure, and then use the structure to rank new offerings.

Growing community of inventors

Charlottesville, VA, United States of America

Jeffrey William Johnston