Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Other

Walter Manching Tseng

Michel Leonard Goldstein

Adam J Iser

Abhishek Patnia

Martin Robert Frank

Blair Livingstone Hotchkies

Sarah Graham Williams

Brent Mills

Daniel R Parshall

Jason P Patrikios

Alexandru I Indrei

Paul Daniel Jaye

Sachin Birendra Singh

Max Lee Kanter

John Michael Nilles

Sean Phillip Forde

David Charles Couvrette

Christopher Michael Ellis

Alice Chu

Carl N Meister

Hilliard Bruce Siegel

Brent Russell Smith

Andrew Olcott

Peter Thomas Killalea

Jeffrey Craig Kunins

Sikandar Saifullah

Ashish Singh

Seth Gershom Goldstein

Robert Wayne Roth

Wainwright Gregory Siady Yu

Otis Yeager Chandler

Randall Winston Puttick

Brian David Rosenblat

Jason Shih Shen Chein

Ankur Jain

Eric Michael Franklin

Janna Hamaker

Lokesh Joshi

Manigandan Natarajan

Palanidaran Chidambaram

Venkata Krishnan Ramamoorthy

Julie Lynne Teodorescu-Badia

Shanmugarasa Muhunthan

Arjun Subramanian

Charles Groom

Fred Farhad Sadaghiani

Jay Prashant Subhash

Kathirvel Thannasi

Ravi Shankar Thangavel

Sikander Saifullah

Martin R Frank

Charles E Groom

In some examples, a computing device may receive an indication that a first user and a second user are located in a zone of an interior space or other surrounding environment. Settings of one or more controllable devices may be controlled based on user profiles including implicit or explicit user preferences, such as for controlling lighting, ambient temperature, entertainment, security, etc., in the zone. When there is conflict between the user preferences, the conflict may be resolved, such as by determining a hierarchy between the users, by averaging the preferred settings, or based on other techniques. Further, a portable computing device may be associated with a user and may provide sensor information. The sensor information may include biometric sensor information that is indicative of a bodily condition of the user and that can be used for determining a context of the user or the zone.

Computing device interaction with surrounding environment

Described herein are techniques for identifying and displaying key excerpts of a digital work and related key excerpts of other digital works. Key excerpts are identified by evaluating (a) the number of interactions by human readers within each of the key excerpts and (b) the number of reviews that reference each of the key excerpts. Related excerpts from other books can be identified by comparing the key excerpts of the other books. Excerpts can be displayed by subject, and links are provided to move from one subject to another.

Digital content excerpt identification

A metadata item may be generated that includes metadata content corresponding to a selected portion of digital content stored on a first device, the metadata item may be associated with a first user profile, and the metadata item may be distributed to a second user device storing the digital content such that the metadata item can be accessed via a second user profile and rendered on the second user device in association with the digital content. In this manner, metadata content corresponding to digital content may be shared across user profiles that access the digital content. In addition, a collaborative content item may be generated that includes collaborative content associated with a word or phrase in digital content and that is editable by multiple user profiles.

Generation and distribution of collaborative content associated with digital content

Certain embodiments herein relate to dynamically displaying related information based on a current location in content. Various types of content may include characters in a story, places, events, or other objects. Relationships associated with these objects may be determined, along with a location in the content at which the relationships exist. Such information may facilitate presentation of the relationships by a reader device based on a current location in the content displayed by the reader device.

Determination and presentment of relationships in content

Distribution of user-generated annotations associated with digital content

Some examples include determining a proximity between a first user device and a plurality of other user devices based at least in part on comparing location information of the first user device with location information for the plurality of other user devices. Additionally, a commonality may be determined that is associated with at least some user profiles of the other users, but is unassociated with a user profile of the first user. For example, the commonality may have a frequency of occurrence among the user profiles of the other users that is greater than the frequency of occurrence among user profiles associated with a larger population. In other examples, a first portable computing device may receive profile information from a nearby second portable computing device for determining a compatibility between a first user profile and a second user profile.

Determining user commonalities and differences

A user device receives a user input that causes an electronic publication to have a modified state. The user device generates data that, when used to render the electronic publication, causes the electronic publication to have the modified state. The user device transmits the data to a server.

Synchronizing electronic publications between user devices

In some implementations, one or more words from a digital work are used to generate a game to be displayed on an electronic device. For example, the electronic device may include a library of one or more digital works. A word or knowledge game may be dynamically generated based on objects, such as characters, topics, places, organizations, things, etc., identified in at least one digital work in the library. As one example, a crossword puzzle may be created to include words and clues based at least in part on the objects identified in at least one digital work and supplemental information associated with the objects. The clues for the crossword puzzle may be generated automatically based, at least in part, on a desired level of difficulty. Further, in some cases, the game may be generated from words drawn from multiple digital works in the library.

Generating a game related to a digital work

A system is described which allows a user to define a relational tag. The relational tag describes how a first item is related to a second item within an identified qualifying context. For instance, the relational tag may state that the first item is ranked higher than or lower than the second item. When utilized by many users, the system forms a graph of interconnected items. The system can perform comparative analysis within this graph. For instance, based on the relational tags, the system can determine which item is the top-ranking item or bottom-ranking item within the graph.

Creation and utilization of relational tags

Effective color-aware search of a collection of content associated with one or more images is enabled. Content and/or its associated images may be automatically associated with representative palette colors in a suite of color palettes. Color palettes may be of a variety of types and have a hierarchical structure in which lower levels enable increasingly subtle distinctions between shades of color. Color palette hierarchies may be effectively presented, and appropriate portions emphasized based on associated search result sets. Search result sets may be refined and/or reordered in accordance with color palette selections and/or representative confidences of color palette selections for items at least referenced therein.

Color palette maps for color-aware search

Interactive color palettes for color-aware search

Tools and techniques for converging terms within a collaborative tagging environment are described herein. Methods for converging divergent contributions to the collaborative tagging environment may include receiving respective contributions from users within the environment. The methods may identify at least some of the contributions as divergent, and enable the users to converge the divergent contributions.

Convergence of terms within a collaborative tagging environment

Growing community of inventors

Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Walter Manching Tseng