Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Yogananda Rao

Derek Turner

Pierre P N Greborio

Suresh P Babu

In some scenarios, devices may execute applications that are configured to monitor a set of conditions (e.g., geographic coordinates detected by global positioning system (GPS) receivers), and to execute actions upon detecting the fulfillment of the conditions. However, in such architectures, each application may be responsible for polling the sensors of the device to detect condition fulfillment, and it may be difficult to specify rules in a hardware-independent manner involving multiple applications and/or devices. Presented herein are techniques for configuring devices to perform actions by receiving a rule set from a rule server; registering a set of condition tests for respective conditions of a rule with the sensors of the device; upon being notified by the sensor that a condition test has been fulfilled, evaluating the conditions of the rule; and upon determining a fulfillment of the conditions, executing one or more actions (optionally involving multiple devices and/or applications).

Server-managed, triggered device actions

Predictive popular content replication is described. In an embodiment service node(s) can provide media content when requested by client devices. Previous requests for the media content can be trended to forecast its popularity prior to receiving additional requests for the media content. Replication of the media content can then be initiated such that the media content is available and can be rapidly accessed to serve the additional requests for the media content. The media content can be replicated into cache memory for faster access than from disk-based media to serve the additional requests for the media content.

Predictive popular content replication

Adaptive content load balancing is described. In an embodiment, client requests for media content are received and service node(s) are determined that can provide the requested media content to a client. Each client request is registered to correlate client sessions with requested media content provided from a service node, and a determination is made as to whether to replicate the requested media content for each received client request to optimize session capacity over the service node(s).

Adaptive content load balancing

A method for providing assets includes providing information to a user regarding at least one asset from a pool of assets, where the pool of assets includes a subset of available assets and a subset of unavailable assets, and then receiving a user's request for an asset from the pool of assets to define a requested asset. The method further includes determining whether the requested asset is: (a) within the subset of available assets; or (b) within the subset of unavailable assets. The method further includes, when the requested asset is within the subset of available assets, immediately providing the requested asset to the user. Further, the method includes, when the requested asset is within the subset of unavailable assets, offering to provide the requested asset to the user when a number of requests for the requested asset exceeds a threshold.

Growing community of inventors

Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Yogananda Rao