Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Nikolay Smolyanskiy

Dharma Kiritkumar Shukla

Abolade Gbadegesin

Eric Fleischman

David Richard Reed

Thomas A Galvin

Roman Batoukov

Zhengyou Zhang

Christian F Huitema

Cha Zhang

David A Nichols

Lin Liang

Sean Eron Anderson

Alexander E Mallet

David R Quick

Tevfik Sinan Ingec

Mohamed M Battisha

Michael Patrick Mroch

A deployable computing environment may facilitate interaction and data sharing between users and devices. Users, devices, and relationships between the users and devices may be represented within the deployable computing environment. A relationship between a user and a device may specify that the device is owned by the user and that the device is authorized to perform operations within the deployable computing environment on behalf of the user. Secure authentication of devices and users for interaction within the deployable computing environment is achieved by authenticating tickets corresponding to the user, the device, and the relationship. A device identification ticket and a user identification ticket are used to authenticate the device and user for interaction within the deployable computing environment. A device claim ticket allows the device to perform delegated operations (e.g., data synchronization, peer connectivity, etc.) on behalf of the user without the user's credentials (e.g., user identification ticket).

Device authentication within deployable computing environment

A three-dimensional shape parameter computation system and method for computing three-dimensional human head shape parameters from two-dimensional facial feature points. A series of images containing a user's face is captured. Embodiments of the system and method deduce the 3D parameters of the user's head by examining a series of captured images of the user over time and in a variety of head poses and facial expressions, and then computing an average. An energy function is constructed over a batch of frames containing 2D face feature points obtained from the captured images, and the energy function is minimized to solve for the head shape parameters valid for the batch of frames. Head pose parameters and facial expression and animation parameters can vary over each captured image in the batch of frames. In some embodiments this minimization is performed using a modified Gauss-Newton minimization technique using a single iteration.

Computing 3D shape parameters for face animation

Both search criteria and a friends list associated with a user are obtained. One or more data items that satisfy the search criteria are identified as search results. An order of the search results is adjusted based at least in part on multiple additional friends lists, each of which is associated with a data item of the one or more data items. Each of the multiple additional friends lists can also be updated to reflect changes in the friends lists made by users associated with the friends lists.

Social distance based search result order adjustment

A ticketing system adapted for use with a cloud-based services platform is provided by a ticket-based authorization model in which the authorization requirements for traversing one or more meshes of resources associated with a cloud service are annotated in links included in a resource that refer to other resources. The meshes are thus self-describing with respect to the association among the resources (i.e., the links) as well as the authorization required to access resources. Resource access requires a principal ticket which asserts that a caller at a client (e.g., a security principal representing a device or identity associated with a user) is authenticated, plus zero or more claim tickets. The claim tickets make additional assertions about the caller that the cloud service may use to check that the caller is authorized to access the resource.

Self-describing authorization policy for accessing cloud-based resources

Search result interleaving may be provided. First, a first list comprising online results may be received. Next, a second list comprising local results may be received. Then a subsequence common to the first list and the second list may be determined using a longest common subsequence algorithm. Next, an interleaved list may be created using the determined subsequence and a smart merge interleave algorithm to interleave the first list and the second list without hurting relevance.

Interleaving search results

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Seattle, WA, United States of America

Nikolay Smolyanskiy