Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Lawrence Brian Ripsher

Feridoon Malekzadeh

Robert Scott Dietz

Sarthak D Shah

Douglas William Herman

Brook John Durant

William Wagner

Philip Andrew Rogan

Marguerite R Loader

Melroy Edwin D'Souza

Anthony Adam Hanses

Severan Sylvain Jean-Michel Rault

Joseph K Ollis

Scott E Seiber

Severan Rault

David Abzarian

Todd L Carpenter

Zhaowei Charlie Jiang

Greg D Schechter

Graham Arthur Wheeler

Gary Voronel

Sameer Bhangar

Loic Deniel

Marc Benjamin Phillips

Roman Waupotitsch

Samir Lakhani

Jason Peter Johnson

Hui Leng Caren Quah

Sarthak Deepak Shah

Melroy Edwin D'souza

A technique is described herein for controlling equipment in a local environment. The technique can use a conversational interface component to receive messages from any user in a group of users. In a media-related context, a media BOT receives each message and determines whether it contains a command to play a particular media item. If so, the media BOT formulates the message as an input query and sends the input query to a search system, with instruction to perform a domain-specific search. The search system identifies a top-ranked media item based on the input query, selected from among a curated media-specific corpus. By virtue of the use of the scoped search system, the technique can successfully leverage preexisting linguistic processing mechanisms. The technique can also generate group profiles associated with users who interact with the conversational interface component, and then use the group profiles to automatically select media items.

Control system using scoped search and conversational interface

Results of a search on one body of data are enhanced by performing the same search, or a related search, on another body of data. A first body of data is pages (or other content) on a web site, and a second body of data is pages (or other content) on another web site. When a user enters a query to perform a site-specific search on the first web site, that web site performs a related search on the second web site. When results are obtained from the second web site, it is determined whether the first web site has any pages that correspond to the received results. The first web site then uses the corresponding pages in the results that it provides to the user.

Augmenting search results

One or more techniques and/or systems are provided for tagging search results, organizing tagged search results for later access from various devices, public sharing of tagged search results, and/or providing targeted content based upon search results tagged by a user. That is, a user may tag a search result (e.g., a website, an image, a social network profile, etc.), such as through a one-click user input, with a tag to create a tagged search result. The tagged search result may be organized into a public tag collection for sharing and/or exploration of tagged search results by other users. The tagged search result may be organized into a personal tag collection for later access by the user from any device. Because the tagged search result may be indicative of an interest of the user, targeted content associated with the tagged search result may be provided to the user.

Search result organizing based upon tagging

Search result tagging

A search engine database is utilized to identify 'entities', or things for which there exists associated discrete, objective information. For hosted information that is independently available, the entity detector independently accesses such information and identifies entities. For information that has defined potential entities, such as entertainment or lifestyle information such defined potential entities are provided to the entity detector to verify, with reference to the search engine database, whether they are entities. Once entities have been identified, a related task generator, with reference to the search engine database, identifies tasks that are related to the identified entities. Such tasks include informational tasks, economic tasks, time-sensitive and location-sensitive tasks. The identified entities and related tasks are provided to applications, with metadata quantifying confidence, relationship, importance, location and time sensitivity, and the like, thereby enabling those applications to proactively provide selects ones of that information to users.

Proactive delivery of related tasks for identified entities

Tagged search result maintainance

Targeted content provisioning based upon tagged search results

Providing context to a target minimizes the amount of information that a user must input. Context transfer pages receive context and reformat for the target. Selection of links to such pages provide context which is then reformatted and provided to the target to pre-populate information for the user. A return link can be specified to enable the target to return further context upon user interaction completion. The return link can specify further context transfer pages which can use the returned context to direct the performance of convenience actions, including invoking other applications on the user's computing device and entering information into them. The context transfer pages can themselves collect information from the user to provide appropriate interfaces without requiring resource investment from the target.

Automated target specific format conversion of context information from a user query

Search results responsive to a query are generated by a search engine. If the query is 'location relevant', the results are provided to a ranker component. If the query is an entity search, then entities matching the query are ranked by distance from the user. If the query is not, and if it is not semantically charged, the entities are ranked either according to distance from the user or by search relevance. If the query is semantically charged, a semantic score is calculated for each entity. One or more threshold semantic scores are determined that divide the search results into multiple parts. The results within each part can then be ranked independently. The results within a first part are ranked according to their distance from the user, while the results in a subsequent part are ranked according to their semantical relationship to the query. The re-ranked parts are concatenated together.

Multi-part search result ranking

Techniques described herein describe a proxy used in an instant messaging system. The proxy, upon receiving an instant message (IM) from a first mobile device and addressed to a second mobile device, dynamically determines whether, and for how long to store the IM on a local proxy. Otherwise the IM is forwarded to a server.

Local loop for mobile peer to peer messaging

Growing community of inventors

Seattle, WA, United States of America

Lawrence Brian Ripsher