Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Microsoft Corporation

Micorsoft Corpration

Kamal Jain

Eric J Horvitz

Lili Qiu

Philip Andrew Chou

Alexander G Gounares

Lili Cheng

Venkata N Padmanabhan

Michael J Connolly

Kunal Talwar

Xuedong D Huang

Gary William Flake

Jitendra Dattatraya Padhye

Milind V Mahajan

Mohammad Mahdian

Ranveer Chandra

Ramarathnam R Venkatesan

David Maxwell Chickering

Kristin E Lauter

Yunnan Wu

Denis X Charles

Christian Herwarth Borgs

Amin Saberi

Seyed Vahab Mirrokni

Jeffrey R Hemmen

Paramvir Bahl

Craig J Mundie

Darko Kirovski

Patrice Y Simard

Ramachandran Ramjee

Arun Sacheti

George P Moromisato

M Kivanc Mihcak

Dinesh Garg

Navjot Virk

Jennifer Tour Chayes

James Knox Russell

Vishnu Navda

Leonard Smith, Jr

Mehmet Kivanc Mihcak

Mathew James Dickson

Reid Andersen

Nikhil Devanur Rangarajan

Amit Prakash

Vijay Vazirani

Laszlo Lovasz

John E Hopcroft

Vahab Mirrokni

Shang-Hua Teng

Aaron Schulman

Yossi Azar

Neal Freeland

Mallesh M Pai

Elissa Es Murphy

Rakesh Vinay Vohra

Mohammadtaghi Hajiaghayi

Brad Ward

Sidharth Jaggi

Xiaojie Gao

Leonard J Schulman

Balasubramanian Sivan

Christopher A Wilkens

A content provider may provide public access to a content item set, but may be unable to achieve sufficient revenue to sustain the administrative costs and ongoing development of the content item set. Instead, the content provider may develop relationships with one or more referrers (e.g., search engines.) When a user requests a content item, the content provider may determine whether the request results from a referral by a sponsoring referrer, and based on this determination may provide either a full version or a limited version of the content item. The referrer benefits by providing its users with free access to the content item set, which may be unavailable from non-sponsoring competitors, and in exchange may share advertising revenue with the content provider. This arrangement achieves sustaining sponsorship of the content provider while extending full and free access to the content item set to users of sponsoring referrers.

Referral-based sponsorship of access to content item sets

An archive of items, which are computing data accessed by a user, is created at a semantic object level. The object archiving may group seemingly disparate items as a composite object, which may then be stored to enable retrieval by the user at a later point in time. The composite object may include metadata from the various items to enable identifying the composite object and providing retrieval capabilities. In some aspects, an archiving process may extract item data from an item that is accessed by a computing device. Next, the item may be selected by a schema for inclusion in a composite object when the item data meets criteria specified in the schema. The composite object(s) may then be stored in an object store as an archive.

Backup and archival of selected items as a composite object

Mobile communication devices, such as mobile phones, may be capable of recommending to a user various providers of one or more solicited services, e.g., by identifying a user location and identifying providers near the user location that provide the services, and by initiating a call between the user and a selected provider. However, the equipment and service costs of such devices may be prohibitive, particularly for mid-range mobile communication devices that may appeal to cost-conscious users. The prohibitive costs may be diminished by redirecting part or all of the cost of providing the recommendation service from the providers, e.g., by charging the provider a service cost upon initiating a call from the user to the provider, or upon representing the provider in a provider database. In one such embodiment, all service costs may be borne by providers, providing to the user a free recommendation service via the mobile communication device.

Commercially subsidized mobile communication devices and services

Various embodiments provide offline algorithms for resource allocation. A known set of 'offline' requests may be matched to available resources using an online resource allocation algorithm that models the offline resource allocation problem as though the requests were received stochastically. Requests may be scaled and then sampled to provide random, stochastic input for the online resource allocation algorithm. For each request, resources are allocated to the request by evaluating multiple options based upon shadow costs assigned to resources associated with the different options. After each request is processed, an adjustment is made to the shadow costs for remaining resources to reflect differences in rates for allocation and/or consumption of the resources and the updated shadow costs are used for a subsequent request. A scaled resource allocation determined using sampled requests in this manner may be scaled back up to obtain a solution for the offline resource allocation problem.

Offline resource allocation algorithms

The claimed subject matter can provide a mechanism that facilitates market segmentation among search engines. A segmentation mechanism is provided that displays a plurality of search engines that can be employed in connection with a plurality of search types. Thus, an Internet search query can be analyzed, e.g., by keywords to determine a type of search being performed, and subsequently directed to the search engine selected for that type rather than all search queries going to a single search engine. The routing of a query can be based upon a user's choices, which takes advantage of the fact that some search engines perform better than others based upon the type of search. The segmentation mechanism can be built into, e.g., an operating system, a browser and the like, and can be easily configured.

Search engine segmentation

The claimed subject matter relates to an architecture that can facilitate verification or feedback in association with consumer transactions. In particular the architecture can image a transaction receipt, translate the image into text-based data, and extract relevant transaction data there from. Such relevant transaction data can be saved to a data store maintained or supervised by the customer and/or transmitted to authorized components that can benefit from data related to transaction histories, verification, and/or feedback.

Feedback loop for consumer transactions

The claimed subject matter relates to an architecture or extension to an operating system (or component thereof) that can facilitate extensible themes for or advertising integration with a desktop that is managed by the operating system. In particular, the architecture can acquire advertisement content such as ads or advertiser skins, select suitable content for display, and configure the operating system to display the selected content. The architecture also provides mechanisms for identifying suitable locations as well as appropriate time for displaying the content.

Ad integration and extensible themes for operating systems

The claimed subject matter provides an architecture and associated schema for facilitating advantageous solutions the generalized online matching problem. The architecture can employ a blended schema that includes distinct aspects of both primal-dual schema and dual-fitting schema. In accordance therewith, the blended schema can provide algorithms that yield solutions in accordance with a competitive ratio of 1&#x2212;1/e. In addition, the blended schema can be extended to provide for rich risk management features. Further, an addition of stochastic information can be employed in connection with the blended schema to improve the results beyond the competitive ratio.

Generalized online matching and real time risk management

The claimed subject matter relates to a computer-implemented architecture that can facilitate computer-assisted haggling and/or negotiation between multiple parties simultaneously. For example, various proxies associated with both buyers and sellers can be configured to negotiate with other proxies to buy or sell an item. The negotiations can be required to be progressive and during the negotiations a buyer or seller is, typically, allowed to withdraw his or her proposals. The architecture can include a registration component that can resolve concurrency and facilitate a registration of an agreement between two of the parties. The registration of an agreement can create a binding obligation between the parties after which other outstanding proposals can be terminated.

Multiparty computer-assisted haggling

Disclosed is a method for determining the placement of ITAPs in wireless neighborhood networks. The method disclosed provides for efficient integration of multi-hop wireless networks with the Internet by placing ITAPs at strategic locations. Initially the method provides for the formulation of the ITAP placement problem under three wireless models. For each model, methods are developed to efficiently place ITAPs in the networks. The methods aim to minimize the number of required ITAPs while guaranteeing users' bandwidth requirements. Next, a fault tolerance version of the placement method is presented that provides bandwidth guarantees in the presence of failures. Finally the methods are extended to take into account variable traffic demands by developing an approximation algorithm to simultaneously optimize ITAP placement based on demands over multiple periods.

Method for determining placement of internet taps in wireless neighborhood networks

A method scheduling outgoing communication in a mobile device is provided. The method includes receiving a signal quality profile for an area in which the device is located. The method further includes receiving a signal from a user application stored on the device that requests the mobile device to make the outgoing communication. Additionally, the method includes determining a current location, a speed, a direction, and a signal quality associated with the device and determining whether the signal quality is above a certain threshold. If not, the method includes predicting a future time at which the signal quality will be above the threshold based at least on the current location, the speed, the direction, the signal quality, and the signal quality profile. Finally, the method includes scheduling the outgoing communication from the mobile device at the future time.

Scheduling communications in a mobile device

Growing community of inventors

Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Kamal Jain