Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Timothy David Sharpe

Cameron Ali Etezadi

Stephen Russell Falcon

Richard St Clair Bailey

Kirk Shoop

Charlton E Lui

Chee Heng Chew

Jyh-Han Lin

Kathryn L Parker

Sarah E Zuberec

Jeffrey R Blum

Greg A Keyser

Elizabeth A Bastiaanse

Gang Zhao

Justine Coates

Eric J Horvitz

Alexander G Gounares

Jason Garms

Mary P Czerwinski

Brett David Brewer

Bo Thiesson

Milind V Mahajan

Melissa Wood Dunn

Eric Norman Badger

Karim Taji Farouki

Kenneth Ward Church

David B Wecker

John S Holmes

Christopher R Rice

John R Selbie

Alexandra K Heron

Aravind Seshadri

Darrell Leroy Blegen

Jayaram Nm Nanduri

Raghuveer Simha

Stacia Scott

Duoc Nguyen

Jeffrey D Morris

Ram Aringunrum

Ahmed Azmy Hassan

Leah Pearlman

Managing use of a location sensor on a computing device for energy efficiency. The location sensor is briefly initialized to measure the signal quality. The measured signal quality is compared to pre-defined signal criteria values. The signal criteria values correspond to acceptable energy consumption, for example. If the signal criteria values are satisfied, location information for the computing device is obtained. Otherwise, the location sensor is disabled without obtaining the location information. In some embodiments, a lower-energy location sensor is used to obtain location information to determine whether to enable a higher-energy location sensor based on expected energy consumption.

Adaptive energy-efficient location determination

The claimed subject matter relates to an architecture that can mitigate privacy concerns in connection with ad targeting or data collection. In particular, architecture can be included in a personal mobile communication device such as a cell phone. During communication transactions between the host device and a peer device, shared information can be extracted either from content included in the communication or from metadata. Based upon the shared information, a social graph maintained on the host device can be updated. In addition, the host device can receive a large set of ads and select or tailor a custom ad from the set based upon the social graph.

Privacy-centric ad models that leverage social graphs

An interactive call disposition system that may operate on a mobile telephone independently of any remote or network-based information or functionality is provided. Upon receiving an incoming telephone call, the interactive call disposition system may automatically dispose of the call (e.g., call forwarding, voicemail, etc.), or the interactive call disposition system may conduct an interactive exchange with the calling party via an interactive voice response (IVR) system or via dual-tone, multi-frequency (DTMF) key input from the calling party. The interactive exchange between the interactive call disposition system and the calling party may accomplish disposition of the call based on calling party and called party information, such as calendar data, free/busy data, contacts information, and the like.

Mobile telephone interactive call disposition system

Pronunciation correction for text-to-speech (TTS) systems and speech recognition (SR) systems between different languages is provided. If a word requiring pronunciation by a target language TTS or SR is from a same language as the target language, but is not found in a lexicon of words from the target language, a letter-to-speech (LTS) rules set of the target language is used to generate a letter-to-speech output for the word for use by the TTS or SR configured according to the target language. If the word is from a different language as the target language, phonemes comprising the word according to its native language are mapped to phonemes of the target language. The phoneme mapping is used by the TTS or SR configured according to the target language for generating or recognizing an audible form of the word according to the target language.

Pronunciation correction of text-to-speech systems between different spoken languages

Automated unique call announcements for incoming telephone calls are provided. When a call is received at a mobile or wired telephone, a variety of data about the calling party, for example, caller identification and profile data for the calling party and data associated with the called party, for example, scheduling data, contacts data, and contextual data, such as time of day, may be used for generating a text-to-speech message that may be played to the called party as a unique call announcement. If desired, a standard or customized ring tone may be played before, after, or before and after presentation of the unique call announcement. In addition, voice command functionality may be provided for allowing a called party to direct a disposition of an incoming telephone call without answering the incoming telephone call.

Automated unique call announcement

A method for determining location of an observer device is disclosed. The method includes receiving basestation distance data for the observer device and applying a location algorithm to the basestation distance data to determine a computed location of the observer device. The method further includes determining whether the basestation distance data correlates to any of a plurality of observer device conditions. Upon determining the basestation data correlates with one of the observer device conditions, a location bias associated with that observer device condition is employed to correct the computed location of the observer device and produce a corrected location.

Location determination with geographic and bias tuning

Depiction of a speech user interface via graphical elements is provided. One or more bits of a graphical user interface bitmask are re-designated as speech bits. When a software application processes the re-designated speech bits, a window manager responsible for generating and rendering a graphical user interface for the application passes information to a secondary window manager responsible for generating and rendering a speech user interface. The secondary speech window manager may load a text-to-speech engine, a speech recognizer engine, a lexicon or library of recognizable words or phrases and a set of 'grammars' (recognizable words and phrasing) for building a speech user interface that will receive, recognize and act on spoken input to the associated software application.

Depicting a speech user interface via graphical elements

Asynchronous voice messaging is employed to enable individuals to send voice clips back and forth over a network. In at least some embodiments, the voice clips reside in the form of discrete, manageable objects that can be easily managed by the user. In addition, some embodiments described provide hand-free/eyes-free functionality that can permit a user to create and send (or receive and play) a voice message without having to physically enter an intended recipient's address or otherwise digitally manipulate the device over which the message is sent or received.

Asynchronous discrete manageable instant voice messages

The claimed subject matter provides systems and/or methods that expand input data. An interface can obtain input data and a wildcard insertion component can modify the input data to include at least one implicit wildcard inserted at an end of each intended word. Additionally, an expansion component can generate a candidate list of expanded data based at least in part on the input data including the at least one implicit wildcard utilizing a language model that provides likely expansions of wildcards. Further, the expansion component can evaluate the input data at a server side.

Server side search with multi-word word wheeling and wildcard expansion

Systems and methods are described for providing a standard list function to create a graphical user interface list and list manager while allowing the graphical user interface to vary by appearance. An application developer can include a list manager control in an application. Properties are set that link the list manager to display controls, a data source and a scrolling behavior source. The list manager provides the appropriate content to the display controls in response to user selections of the display controls. The display controls and a user interface that contains them may vary without altering the basic functionality of the list manager.

Systems and methods for creating and managing graphical user interface lists

Systems and methods integrate various types of scheduling information to create a single spatial view of a schedule. The spatial view enables observation of one's schedule at a glance and reduces the need for accessing additional information from other sources in order to comprehend scheduling information. Thus, users can access information regarding the time, location, and subject matter of appointments and/or events in a single location without the hassle of looking back and forth between various information sources. This helps users meet their scheduled appointments and events in an on-time and prepared manner.

Integrated spatial view of time, location, and event schedule information

A user interface for a hand-held device is provided that allows users to activate the full 'card' for an entry using one gesture on a button while also giving the user the ability to reach a menu of context dependent commands using a second gesture on a button. In particular, certain button inputs are recognized as context menu gestures. When these gestures are made, a context menu appears. The user is then able to select a command in the context menu that is to be performed. A user is also allowed to open context menus while only using one hand to operate and hold the device.

Method and apparatus for providing context menus on a hand-held device

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Timothy David Sharpe