Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Philip Lawrence Garrett

Shyamalan Pather

Holly Knight

Praveen Seshadri

Robert F Blanch

Charles Tete Mensa-Annan

Chih-Lung Lin

Ming-Chieh Lee

Thomas W Holcomb

Stacey Spears

Xiping Zuo

Amy Jennifer Beauford

Anil Murching

Niranjan Nilakantan

Vincent H Curley

Michael Anthony Faoro

Robert H Gerber

Richard Dievendorff

Shahaf Abileah

Darryn Owen Lavery

Lon Eugene Fisher

Quality settings established by an encoder are adjusted based on information associated with regions of interest ('ROIs'). For example, quantization step sizes can be reduced (to improve quality) or increased (to reduce bit rate). ROIs can be identified and quality settings can be adjusted based on input received from a user interface. An overlap setting can be determined for a portion of a picture that corresponds to an ROI overlap area. For example, an overlap setting is chosen from step sizes corresponding to a first overlapping ROI and a second overlapping ROI, or from relative reductions in step size corresponding to the first ROI and the second ROI. ROIs can be parameterized by information (e.g., using data structures) that indicates spatial dimensions of the ROIs and quality adjustment information (e.g., dead zone information, step size information, and quantization mode information).

Regions of interest for quality adjustments

The present invention relates to a system and methodology to facilitate subscription, delivery, processing, and reception of notification services. A global service framework is provided that operates in conjunction with a notification platform architecture to deliver information from one or more event sources to one or more notification sinks that receive information from the services. The global framework includes discovery and description components that provide information relating to available notification services. Subscriptions can be obtained via subscription events, whereby notifications can be delivered via notification events, wherein such events can be modeled as part of the global service framework. Various communications protocols can also be provided to facilitate communications with the notification services and global services framework. Furthermore, various notification delivery protocols can be provided that operate with structured database technologies to facilitate bulk message delivery and service in a reliable manner while mitigating network problems such as delivering notifications under power-interrupting conditions.

System and method for providing notification(s) in accordance with middleware technologies

The present invention relates to a system and methodology to facilitate automated delivery of notifications according to various applications that can be employed with the framework of a notification platform. The applications are described by models that enable users to easily/conveniently interact with the notification platform. The application models can be incorporated within and/or associated with the notification platform. Moreover, the models can be employed to enhance subscription experiences for users, whereby users can easily and economically subscribe and unsubscribe to one or more notification services. In addition, subscriptions can be dynamically adjusted based upon explicit commands from the user, inferred from contextual user states, and/or based upon incentives or other factors directed to the user.

Framework for providing a subscription based notification system

The present invention relates to a system and methodology to facilitate development, debug, and deployment of a notification platform application. This includes providing various editor and display tools that interact with diverse components of the application in the context of a dynamic framework and development environment adapted to the nuances of the components. Visual displays and interfaces are provided that depict the various components of an application along with the relationships between the components. Developers are then directed though the components of the application in a visual manner, wherein various editors can be invoked to design a portion of the application relating to the selected component. Other aspects include providing a debug environment for troubleshooting a notification application along with deployment options to install and execute the application.

User interface system and methods for providing notification(s)

The present invention relates to a system and methodology to facilitate timely delivery of notifications and performance of automated actions for users in the framework of an ad-hoc rules processing environment. An information agent operates as a distributed application to perform automated actions for users in accordance with user preferences and context. Various rules can be executed to delay, inhibit, and/or enable an action such as sending notifications according to the preferences and current user states as determined from the context. The rules can include data centric matching logic, set-oriented execution rules, rule ordering/interaction hierarchies, and ad-hoc Boolean combinations, for example.

Expression and flexibility framework for providing notification(s)

Growing community of inventors

Woodinville, WA, United States of America

Philip Lawrence Garrett