Kodak Alaris Inc.

Apple Inc.

Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Eastman-kodak Company

Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC

Ron Barzel

Ronald S Cok

Felix S Hsu

Jon Allyn Campbell

Mark S Cook

Jonathan Hui

Manish Kulkarni

A plurality of server computers connected to computer network processes tasks that are unequally distributed among the server computers. A server sends a task-available message over the computer network to the remaining server computers to request assistance. The received task-available message is processed by some of the servers while others of the servers do not process the message because they are too busy. The servers that process the message respond by requesting a task from the message sending server.

Method for distributing heavy task loads across a multiple-computer network by sending a task-available message over the computer network to all other server computers connected to the network

A method of dynamically presenting temporally ordered image events includes providing a pre-determined presentation rate and a corresponding pre-determined presentation period; using a processor to receive at irregular intervals a plurality of temporally ordered image events at an average image event rate less than the presentation rate; storing the received image events in an ordered list corresponding to the order in which the image events were received; accessing, according to a pre-determined rule, stored image events from the ordered list; sequentially presenting the accessed image events for the presentation period; and interrupting the sequential presentation of the stored image events when a new image event is received and presenting the received new image event for the presentation period and resuming the sequential presentation of the accessed image events.

Presenting images from slow image-event stream

Server computers send requests over a network for an allocation of server tasks and processing tasks, the processing task requests having an associated expiration time. The plurality of server computers process received server tasks provided to the server computers in response to the requests, and process processing tasks within the expiration time in response to the requests for processing tasks. The server computers perform the allocated processing tasks only if there are no pending server tasks.

Task allocation in a computer network

Allocating tasks by sending task-available messages requesting assistance with an image processing task from a server with a heavy task load to all other servers connected to the computer network

A method of allocating computing tasks in a communication network comprises providing a server that sends a request with an expiration time over the network to one or more processor computers for an allocation of a processing task to be performed by the server computer. The server computer performs the allocated processing task to completion if it's received within the expiration time and only if a higher priority task is not received before processing is completed.

A method of storing and retrieving digital files from a storage system comprising requesting one or more files through a server which compares the timestamp of each file to the present time to determine an elapsed time for each file. The server then requests a storage system for each file having an elapsed time less than or equal to a pre-determined time limit using an internal-retry request and requests from the storage system each file having an elapsed time greater than a pre-determined time limit using a fail-fast request.

Efficient method for handling storage system requests

A file storage system that uses a server to communicate between a client and a storage system. The server receives a file storage request pertaining to a file, generates and stores a file record for the request and forwards the request to a file storage system. The server performs either an internal retry or forwards a no-file response from the storage system to the client computer in response to receiving a no-file file status from the storage system depending on an amount of elapsed time from the time the server initially receives the file storage request.

System for handling storage system requests

Compression for color values of pixels in a raster image of pixels, in which pixels are selected in a checkerboard-like pattern. Pixels selected by the checkerboard are not compressed at all, whereas pixels not selected by the checkerboard are compressed by using the color of the closest one of adjacent selected pixels and of a few predetermined colors.

Growing community of inventors

Truckee, CA, United States of America

Ron Barzel