Digital Commons Network^™

Out-Of-Band Management On Uefi System Firmware, Hui-Chin Cheng, Yun-Cheng Chang, Shang-Ching Hung

Defensive Publications Series

The modern Redfish is a specification that utilize RESTful interface semantics to access data defined in model format to perform out-of-band (OOB) management through specific OOB software or hardware (such as Baseboard Management Controller, BMC). The OOB management allow users to configure system remotely when the system is in either power-off or power-on state. Industry can expect there are more and more pre-boot firmware drivers (like UEFI drivers) and system peripherals (such as PCI devices, PCI add-on-card and so on) support Redfish Schema/Configuration data model in the near future. This article describes the method to abstract the data communication/synchronization between …

Isolation Of Networking Process In A Browser, Kinuko Toyama, Matthew Menke, Scott Graham, John Abd-El-Malek, Yuzhu Shen, Randall Smith

Defensive Publications Series

Computer programs and applications are often designed such that sub-tasks of a program are executed by a separate process spawned by the main program or application. An advantage to such a design is resilience, e.g., even if one process fails, the remaining processes continue execution, even as the failed process is started anew. In the context of web browser applications, networking requests are typically not spawned as separate processes but rather handled by the main browser process itself. This can lead to problems of stability, security, and resilience. The techniques of this disclosure spawn the networking tasks of a web …

Measurement Of Impact Of Product Placement Advertising, Justin Lewis, Thomas Price

Defensive Publications Series

Online content creators, e.g., video creators, earn revenue from product or brand in their content. However, there are no current techniques to measure the impact of such content. This disclosure describes techniques described to measure the impact of content viewership. For example, the techniques can be implemented to measure the search lift generated by such content. The content is selectively withheld from a subset of viewers. The difference in search volume for content related keywords from viewers in this group is compared with that from viewers that were exposed to the content. The advertiser is provided with the measurement and …

Conversion Funnel Optimization Using Machine Learning, Gang Wang, Yiran Mao

Defensive Publications Series

Conversion funnels represent the journey of a consumer through a marketing campaign resulting in a sale. The described techniques incorporate marketer inputs and apply machine learning to optimize conversion funnels in online advertising. The techniques incorporate initial inputs from marketers and apply machine learning techniques to optimize conversion funnels in the context of advertising. The initial inputs include definitions of states and optimal actions to move consumers to next states of a funnel. With user permission, a machine learning model, e.g., that uses reinforced learning is randomly applied to try other actions defined by marketers (e.g., for other states) to …

Polite Mode For A Virtual Assistant, Thomas Deselaers, Pedro Gonnet

Defensive Publications Series

The use of imperative statements and commands for a voice-activated virtual assistant can set an inappropriate example to children and can potentially lead them to imitate such language in normal conversation. However, current voice-activated virtual assistants are not configured to recognize polite language which can lead to unintended responses. This disclosure describes a virtual assistant that can be configured in a polite mode. The disclosed techniques may be utilized to configure a virtual assistant such that it is responsive only to polite queries. Polite mode is enabled by use of voice stress analysis, sentiment analysis module and natural language understanding …

Application Live-Upgrading And Error-Recovery Using Code-Data Decoupling, Till Smejkal, Dejan Milojicic, Paolo Faraboschi

Defensive Publications Series

When applications have critical bugs that present security vulnerabilities or may result in serious failures with potential massive business level impact, these applications have to be updated as fast as possible to minimize the harm of the bug. However, mission-critical or other user-facing applications may maintain critical internal state that has to be serialized and restored during the update process introducing signi1cant cost and delay.

Instead of serializing the internal state we propose to implement applications in such a way that the application state is fully decoupled (e.g. in a different address space or shared memory segment) from the application …

Audio Output Devices For Head Mounted Display Devices, Leonardo Kusumo, Andrew Nartker, Stephen Schooley

Defensive Publications Series

A head mounted display (HMD) device may include a first audio output device, or speaker, installed at a first side of the housing, and a second audio output device, or speaker, installed at a second side of the housing. The first and second audio output devices may be mounted proximate to optical components of the HMD, with audio output respectively directed toward the user’s ears. This may allow the user to be immersed in the sound output by the audio output devices. An HMD equipped in this manner may provide for a mobile, portable electronic device that can output an …

Automatic Detection Of Sensitive Content, Gang Wang, Yian Gao

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes techniques to automatically identify text content is inappropriate or likely in violation of organizational policy. A user interface is provided that enables users to make suitable corrections to written material. The described techniques can be implemented in software (e.g., in document authoring or communications applications).

Spreadsheets With Programmatically Accessible Version History, Tal Cohen

Defensive Publications Series

Spreadsheets enable users to store and track values of a variable. To graph changes in values of a variable over time, a user typically stores in the spreadsheet values of the variable at different time points. Retaining all values in individual, visible cells of a spreadsheet can make the spreadsheet difficult to read and/or maintain.

Modern spreadsheet programs include features to track changes made to the cells of a spreadsheet, e.g., as a version history. The version history enables a user to revert to a prior version. Techniques of this disclosure enable programmatic access to historical values stored in the …

Notifications Management Across Devices, Kyle Schumacher, Jason Sanio

Defensive Publications Series

It is common for an individual user to own multiple electronic devices, e.g., laptop, smartphone, etc. Applications on these devices often provide notifications even when not explicitly opened or accessed by the user. Notifications that have been dismissed by the user on one device may continue to persist as zombie notifications on other devices, leading to a suboptimal user experience. Techniques of this disclosure manage notifications across devices such that notifications are synchronized across devices. With user permission, the techniques enable targeting a notification to an active device and/or a device that is appropriate for the user to act on …

Managed Health Care Billing, Douglas Simpkinson

Defensive Publications Series

A centralized billing system receives medical bill information associated with a patient from one or more medical service providers and/or from a mobile device associated with the patient. The centralized billing system communicates with one or more insurance systems associated with the patient to submit insurance claims and/or reconcile insurance claim resolution information provided by each respective insurance company with the medical bill information. The centralized billing system communicates with the mobile device to provide organized medical bills comprising an itemization of reconciled medical bill information for each medical bill associated with a single medical event for convenience of the …

Inventory Location And Retrieval System, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes scalable techniques to locate and retrieve inventory items or components from an inventory. Remote modules are co-located with inventory containers and deployed in a warehouse. The remote modules are constructed from low-cost, off-the-shelf equipment and communicate wirelessly with a central server. The central server publishes wirelessly a list of inventory items to remote modules. The module displays the number of items to be picked up using, e.g., color-coded and/or seven-segment LED displays. Once a worker picks up or places an item from a container, the corresponding remote module updates the count of items and returns status to …

Spherical Light Field Capture With Rotating Camera Array, Paul Debevec, Jessica Busch, Xueming Yu, Daniel Erickson

Defensive Publications Series

A light-field capture apparatus is provided that includes a camera housing having a plurality of cameras, each camera providing a different viewpoint of a scene. The apparatus may also include a drop-string mechanism coupled to a top portion of the camera housing and a rotary table pivotably coupled to a portion of the camera housing different than the top portion. The drop-string mechanism includes a string having a first end coupled to the top portion of the camera housing and a second end wound around a center column. The rotary table is rotatable around a center column to change horizontal …

Mapping Walkable Spaces Using Activity Recognition, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure describes systems and methods that use activity recognition detection (e.g., step detection) and machine-learned course prediction models to generate user path approximations from sensor data obtained by a user computing device, which is particularly beneficial when GPS devices are unavailable. User paths generated from a plurality of different mobile computing devices can be utilized collectively to build maps of walkable spaces. Keywords associated with the present disclosure include: mapping; locations; walkable spaces; machine learning; model; training; GPS; sensors; activity recognition; sensor fusion; crowdsourcing; collaborative learning; user path; path generation; course prediction.

Incremental Sharing Using Machine Learning, Victor Cărbune, Sandro Feuz, Daniel Keysers, Thomas Deselaers

Defensive Publications Series

Generally, the present disclosure is directed to incrementally sharing resources, e.g., documents, media, etc., using machine-learned models. In particular, in some implementations, when the user provides permission to access user data, the systems and methods of the present disclosure can include or otherwise leverage one or more machine-learned models to suggest files on a device or in the cloud that a user can share based on documents or other media that the user has already shown intent to share.

Machine learning is used to determine resources, e.g., documents, media, links, etc., that have features with correlation with the resource the …

Automatic Management Of Multiple Contexts, Jt Dimartile Iii, Benny Schlesinger

Defensive Publications Series

Users interacting with computing devices often multi-task across and navigate between multiple contexts. Users often report distraction and fatigue due to such switching of contexts. For example, it is hard for users to remember an earlier context and resume work at a later time. It has been argued that a user is better off focusing on one context at a time to improve productivity. However, current computers are blind to the different contexts for a user. Applications and programs relating to several current contexts are displayed without taking into account potential for distractions.

Techniques of this disclosure enable automatic grouping …

Selective Notifications Based On Message Priority Determination, Annika Matta, Hannah Keiler, Carmen Klett-Wilkinson, Jacob Bank, Timothy Sohn, Kaushik Roy, Yi Zhou

Defensive Publications Series

Users of computing devices, e.g., smartphones, wearables, tablets, personal computers, etc. that choose to be notified about incoming messages, e.g., email are often overwhelmed with notifications. Currently, there is no differentiation between notifications for high priority and low priority messages. Too many notifications can overwhelm or distract users. The techniques of this disclosure selectively provide notifications about email messages that are determined to be of priority or importance. The techniques utilize a trained machine-learning model that determines notification thresholds based on user preferences and user-permitted factors. Implementation of these techniques can reduce interruptions and distractions.

Automatic Annotations In Communication Applications, Matthew Sharifi, Jakob Foerster

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes techniques to insert hyperlinks into user communications (e.g., email, chat, etc.) that can provide a ready reference to other communications relevant to the context. With user permission, contents of email and chat messages are analyzed and classified according to the topics of the messages, e.g., with the use of a trained machine learning model. When a new message is received, it is analyzed and hyperlinks are automatically inserted that enable the user to navigate to other relevant messages.

Emergency Behavior For A Connected Smartphone, Noah Coccaro, Adam Champy

Defensive Publications Series

Smartphones today are capable of being connected to one or more devices via wireless communication technologies, such as Bluetooth®. While a smartphone is connected (or “paired”) with a device, an audio-distribution profile of the smartphone governs routing of audio to and from mechanisms (e.g., speakers, microphones) of either the smartphone or a device to which the smartphone is paired. A protocol that routes audio, based on an input telephone number being an emergency telephone number, is described.

Intelligent Routing Methodology For Iot, Grace Priscilla Nambi

Defensive Publications Series

There is a rapid shift to the internet of things in the fast moving world of technology and there could be billions of heterogeneous entities communicating to one another within a span of 10 years. The IOT market is still evolving initiating changes that is triggering growth in various aspects for virtualization and cloud computing. In spite of all the progress made thus far, it is tough to get into the various operational fields and complexity involved in multiple divergent areas of intercommunication.

The purpose of action involving these field also vary. In this situation it will become hard to …

Connection Quality Analysis For Live Video, Thomas Price, Justin Lewis

Defensive Publications Series

Video chat or streaming applications depend on the availability of reliable and high-speed network connections to maintain quality. When the quality is poor, it is often difficult for users to diagnose the cause, and hence, the poor quality of experience may be misattributed to the video chat or streaming application. This disclosure describes use a trained classifier model to detect low quality during a video call or video streaming session. With user permission, the classifier model is trained using data from prior video calls or sessions. When low quality is detected, the classifier model determines one or more likely causes …

Online Meeting Assistance, Nishant Redkar, Sures Kumar Thoddu Srinivasan, Anubha Verma, Chhavi P. Gupta, Arijit De, Chanchal Agarwal

Defensive Publications Series

Online meetings sometimes offer a poor user experience to participants. Participants benefit from being able to access prior portions of an ongoing meeting, e.g., that they missed due to connectivity problems or because of interruptions. This disclosure describes a meeting helper that, with user permission, records and transcribes meeting content. The content is made available during and after the meeting. The meeting helper eliminates the need for participants to take notes during a meeting and offers improved user experience.

Omni-Directional Catadioptric Acquisition System, Andreas Nowatzyk, Andrew I. Russell

Defensive Publications Series

An omni-directional catadioptric acquisition system (ODCA system) is provided to address the problem of producing real time, 360°, stereoscopic video of remote events for virtual reality (VR) viewing. The ODCA system is a video image-capture assembly that includes a cylinder with multiple apertures arranged around its circumference to admit light as the ODCA system rotates about a central axis. Inside the cylinder, there is a mirror on the left and right side of each aperture that reflects light rays into the cylinder from different angles. As the cylinder rotates, the light rays are admitted through the apertures and reflected from …

Redirected Walking For Cord Management, Josh Weaver

Defensive Publications Series

A player immersed in a virtual reality environment often interacts with a virtual reality scene while he is physically located in a virtual reality room. The player typically views the scene through a head-mounted display, which is connected to a host device or a network port via a communicative cord. When interacting with the virtual reality scene, the player may physically change and rotate his position in the virtual reality room in response to what is being displayed as part of the virtual reality scene. As a result, the communicative cord can wrap around and become entangled with itself or …

Cylindrical User Interface With Infinite Scrolling, Michael Alger

Defensive Publications Series

Techniques are described that enable a cylindrical user interface with infinite scrolling. The cylindrical user interface enables a user to scroll through content that is arranged in a self-refreshing loop around the user. The user may remain stationary and rotate the cylinder to view and select content. As the content circles the user, already-viewed content is temporarily destroyed behind the user and new content is provided, allowing the user to scroll in one direction and have new content continuously presented. In other implementation, the user can turn around in the center of the cylinder and as the user makes a …

Location Assisted Network Search Algorithm For Mobile Devices, Ming Sun

Defensive Publications Series

Standby power consumption of a mobile device is an important component of its overall power consumption. During standby, mobile devices periodically wake up to communicate with the network to exchange information pertaining to serving base stations, neighboring base stations, etc. which consumes power without any actual call or data activity. This disclosure describes techniques to reduce the standby power consumption of a mobile device. Location (latitude and longitude) information derived from a geolocation receiver such as GPS, GLONASS, or BeiDou is used by the mobile device to modify the frequency for performing network search, e.g., the frequency of network search …

Systems And Methods For Performing Geo-User Content Provision Experiments, Penelope Chu, Wiesner Vos, Henry Jackson, Ashish Saxena, James Koehler

Defensive Publications Series

Systems, methods, and computer-readable storage media that may be used to conduct geo-user advertising experiments. One method includes determining a set of content items and filtering an activity log based on one or more characteristics of the set of content items to determine a subset of users. The method further includes retrieving geo-based data from the subset of users over a first timeframe. The method further includes designating one or more geographic regions associated with the subset of users as a treatment group and one or more geographic regions associated with the subset of users as a control group. The …

Notification Presentation Across Multiple Devices, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

Systems, methods and computer readable media for notification delivery to multiple devices are described. The format, content and any actionable presentation features of notification messages can be tailored for each device associated with a user’s account. The tailored notification messages can then be delivered to each corresponding device. The notification messages can include actionable user interface items (or elements) that are tailored to receive input in a form appropriate for each device based on device capabilities. Also, the notifications can be tailored based on priority, where the priority tailoring is also based on device capability. Low-priority notification messages can be …

Notification Platform, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

Systems, methods and computer readable media for notification platforms are described. Some implementations can include a method. A method can include receiving one or more notification messages and determining at least one recipient associated with each notification message. The method can also include generating a social affinity score for each notification message. The method can further include ranking the notification messages for each recipient based on the social affinity score of each notification message and delivering the notification messages to each recipient according to the rank for each notification message. The method can also include determining that a notification is …

Automatic Creation Of Communication Channels Around Detected Events, N/A

Defensive Publications Series

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for receiving user data, the user data including digital content generated by one or more users of one or more computer-implemented services, detecting, based on the user data, an occurrence of an event, identifying a plurality of users associated with the event, generating a communication channel based on the detected event, the communication channel providing a distribution for sending digital content, adding user identifiers to the communication channel, each user identifier being associated with a user of the plurality of users, and distributing digital content associated with …