Digital Commons Network^™

Tunable Automatic Placement Finder For Third Party Content, Matthew Burriesci, Thomas Long

Defensive Publications Series

This document describes a technique for performing tuning in automatic content slot placement process. A data processing system can send a script to a client device for automatic content slot placement. The script can be executed by the client device to obtain a chunk size report and to transmit the chunk size report to the data processing system. The data processing system can analyze data in the chunk size report and perform tuning based on the analysis. Parameters for how long to hold the main execution thread at the client device can be modified. The data processing system can also …

Burst Notifications, Michael Cardosa

Defensive Publications Series

A burst notification system can temporarily disable notifications at a user’s electronic device. The burst notification system receives notification settings for an electronic device from the user of the electronic device. The system disables wireless communications notifications as well as any other notifications (in-app notifications) received from applications installed on the electronic device. For power savings, the system may temporarily disable the electronic device’s onboard cell transceivers and WiFi transceivers which are used to receive incoming phone/voice calls, data packets, text messages, etc.

Payment Card Image Backup, Owen Jones, Juancheng Rong

Defensive Publications Series

In concert with applications that tokenize payment cards, an image of the card can be

stored to allow use of the payment card outside an electronic payment process.

Adapting Ad Creative Text To Match A User's Communication Style, Jakob Foerster, Matthew Sharifi

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method for adapting the content of an ad-based on a user's communication style is disclosed. The content adaptation may be performed on the user's device or on a central server. On-device personalization can work best for mobile devices which are used as a primary means of communication. The method includes the steps of A) building a representation of the user’s communication style, B) when an advertisement is to be shown to the user, customizing the ad by rewriting it according to the user’s communication style and C) serving the optimized advertisement to the user. Building a representation …

Ad-Driven Self-Driving Car, Christopher Farrar, Steven Ross

Defensive Publications Series

A system and a device are disclosed for a self-driving car that is funded by advertising revenue. The car has large touch-screen displays highly visible and accessible to all its seats. A person may summon the car through a mobile or web app that is linked with a trusted user ID, and the car will come and pick the user(s) up where they specify. The destination could be deduced by the car (processed using machine learning) or entered manually. The users are then shown a continuous stream of ads, with the option to search, if required. The destination could be …

Dynamic Throttling Of In-App Promotions To Reduce Marketing Spend Based On Machine-Learning, Bo Fu, Sourabh Bansod, Kunal Jain, Thomas Price, Deepak Ramamurthi Sivaramapuram Chandrasekaran, Prachi Gupta, Sarvjeet Singh, Sue Yi Chew, Jierui Xie

Defensive Publications Series

This document describes a technique of dynamically throttling a promotion or content item placement to reduce marketing spending using machine-learning. A data processing system can determine a click score or an auction score based on various factors. The data processing system can further determine a threshold, for example, by predicting an annoyance effect of showing the promotion or the content item to a user. If the click score or the auction score is below the threshold, the data processing system can throttle the promotion or the content item placement such that the promotion or the content item is not shown …

Full-Session Auction For Video Ads, Tuna Toksoz, Thomas Price

Defensive Publications Series

A video monetization system and method are disclosed to run an auction to maximize the revenue from a sequence of multiple video ads, while minimizing the impact on the user's watch time. The system uses two predictive models, implemented with a machine learning algorithm that also takes into account user behavior/history. The method uses whole-commercial session features like the number of ads shown, the length of each ad, and the sequence of ads for selecting optimal commercial breaks to display to a user. Online video platforms may use full-session auction to optimize the entire sequence of video ads that they …

Password Checking System, Omri Amarilio, Albert Bodenhamer

Defensive Publications Series

A password checking system can be used to log into a device or service by entering a password in the form of a character sequence on a first keyboard layout. In case a user enters a password that does not match the correct password, the system retrieves a list of alternate keyboard layouts. Then the system uses the user’s touch location pattern from the password entry on one of the alternate keyboard layouts in the list, and the system converts the touch location pattern to another character sequence. The system then checks whether the converted character sequence matches the correct …

Targeting Brand Advertisements In Content Feed, Ruxandra Davies, Justin Lewis

Defensive Publications Series

A brand advertisement system targets brand advertisements in a content feed. The brand advertisement system identifies a media item in the content feed. If the system detects a brand mark in the media item, the system identifies an advertisement associated with the detected brand mark. The system can modify the ranking of the media item and present the media item based on the modified ranking in the content feed. Further, the system places the advertisement adjacent to the media item in the content feed.

Smart Data Saver Based On Predicted Information Needs, Matthew Sharifi, Jakob Foerster

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes techniques to manage consumption of network bandwidth, e.g., by a mobile device. Dynamic classification of mobile device applications is performed based on permissions and levels of background data usable by an application. Background data requests from an application are selectively permitted or denied access to the network, based on device state such as content displayed on screen, text input state, application usage information, etc. Such selective permission or denial of network access results in savings in network bandwidth consumption while allowing the mobile device to access the network for important tasks, e.g., to receive updates.

Browser Based Multi-Account Notifications, Justin Lewis, Joseph Cohen

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method are disclosed for accurately delivering notifications to devices with multiple users. The system uses a notification server and operates using cookies on the user device. When a user enables notifications, the device is registered with the server backend. Such info is then copied to the client device and stored in a cookie. At the time of notifying a particular user, the notification service will retrieve a list of devices registered to that user id. It then sends a notification fingerprint indicating the notification payload and intended account to the device. When the client device receives the …

Analyzing Crowdsourced Location Data To Trigger Actions, Michael Greene

Defensive Publications Series

Knowledge of the occupancy of campuses or buildings is important in order to deploy and distribute resources. Likewise, knowledge of the directions and types of movement of people and vehicles is important for urban planners, governments, facilities managers, etc. This disclosure describes techniques to derive real-time and long-term occupancy and people-movement data based on information received from devices. Such data can be utilized by a variety of customers, such as insurers, facilities managers, urban planners, governments, property owners, etc.

Event-Based Photo Rediscovery And Resurfacing, Jingyu Cui, Ramin Zabih, Xiaofeng Liu, Teresa Ko, Sanjiv Kumar

Defensive Publications Series

Social networks, online photo-sharing services, messaging services, etc. include feature that provide a user with reminders of photos that may be of interest. For example, such services may resurface photos taken on the same day in the past, e.g., a year ago. Resurfacing past photos allows the user to relive memories. Viewing resurfaced photos has become a popular online activity. However, some periodic events do not occur on exactly the same day each year. For example, an annual football game may occur on different days across years (e.g., the first Monday of October, which may be a different day in …

Systems And Methods For Controlling In-App Promotional Campaigns In Content Platforms Based On Content Consumption, Sue Yi Chew, Thomas Price, Prachi Gupta, Deepak Ramamurthi Sivaramapuram Chandrasekaran, Kunal Jain

Defensive Publications Series

Third-party content can be provided to users as in-app popups, push notifications, or email. A data processing system can identify a first group of client devices and a second group of client devices. The first and second groups include client devices installing a given application or accessing a given content platform (e.g., YouTube). The data processing system can set (or adjust) one or more settings parameters of an ad campaign such that content items (or a specific content item) of the ad campaign are provided for display to the second group of client devices but not to the first group …

Memory Enclaves With Software Configuration Information, Uday Savagaonkar

Defensive Publications Series

Software guard extensions (SGX) allow an application to instantiate within memory a protected container, referred to as an enclave. An enclave is an area in the address space of an application that provides confidentiality and integrity even in presence of software of higher privilege, even if such software is malicious. The protection is achieved by restricting non-enclave accesses to code/data resident in the enclave, and by enforcing execution integrity for the enclave. An enclave has an identity, which comprises, for example, a hash of the code resident in the enclave, hash of a key with which the enclave was signed, …

Advertising Bidding Involving Overlapping Bids, Justin Lewis, Scott Davies

Defensive Publications Series

An improved advertising bidding system can be used to determine a winning advertising bid in a situation with overlapping advertising bids. The system also determines a price, i.e., cost per click, of the winning advertising bid. The system receives advertising bids for an advertising space from one or more advertisers. The advertising space can be, for example, a part of a website or a series of webpages devoted to online advertisements. Each advertiser is associated with an advertiser ID. The system ranks the received advertising bids based on a value of each advertising bid. The system identifies a first highest …

3d Environment For Interacting And Viewing Photospheres, Joel Valli, Devin Mancuso

Defensive Publications Series

ABSTRACT

This disclosure presents a system and method for permitting users to interact with images as three-dimensional objects. In that regard, an aspect of the system and method relates to displaying a world space to a user based on a three-dimensional model. The world space includes a collection of spherical images upon which equirectangular images are projected. When a user selects a sphere for increased interaction, the size of the sphere increases until it appears as if the user is inside of the sphere. The user may then view and interact with a photosphere that corresponds with the equirectangular image …

Smooth Fly-To-Orbiting Animation For Viewing Points Of Interest In 3d, Jingyi Fang, Sean Askay

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure describes systems and methods that combine two or more CameraSource objects to create a smooth fly-to-orbit animation within a three-dimensional user interface. More particularly, an algorithm is used to blend a fly animation CameraSource with and an orbiting animation CameraSource over an interpolation time period to create a CameraSource object that allows a smooth, user-friendly transition between the animations for use in a user interface (e.g., presenting three-dimensional data). Keywords associated with the present disclosure include: mapping; user interface; three-dimensional; point of interest; geographic area; virtual camera; navigation; camera source; animation; fly; orbit, blending; transition; interpolation.

User Activity-Based Reminders, Charles Huyi

Defensive Publications Series

A system and a method for setting reminders triggered by user activities are disclosed. The system includes at least one computing device and at least one application that runs on the device. The computing device can be a phone, a vehicle’s computer, a laptop, a tablet or a wearable like a watch. The method allows the user to specify the activity to trigger a reminder, such as opening of an app, calling a friend, or setting an alarm in a phone. The system detects the particular user activity and triggers the reminder received by the user. The system and method …

Replay Real World Network Conditions To Test Cellular Switching, Weihua Tan, Vijay Thurimella, Jeffrey Palm, Michael Rowland

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method for capturing real-world conditions for designing test cases for testing of network switching algorithms is disclosed. Two devices working on different communication networks are taken while commuting from home to office or vice versa. Different real-world conditions like time, network type: e.g. LTE, 3G, etc. signal strength, location, device state, e.g. moving or stationary etc. are continuously captured on the way. These pieces of information are captured by an app installed on the respective devices. It is feasible to capture additional information that a test case designer is interested in. In the end, the device will …

Improving Audio Conditions Of Audio And Video Conferences, Sara Basson, Dimitri Kanevsky

Defensive Publications Series

ABSTRACT

Disclosed herein is a system for improving audio quality in video conferencing or teleconferencing involving a small digital figure or a robot associated with a microphone which is remote-controlled by participants. The robot automatically detects poor audio quality that interferes with intelligibility. Using automatic speech recognition, the robot processes and interprets incoming speech at the microphone to establish pre-determined acceptable levels of accuracy in audibility. The system enables participants to signal the robot when experiencing difficulty in understanding the discussion during the course of the meeting. The robot then demonstrates the level of difficulty through gestures in a number …

Pricing Airline Optional Services, Stavros Macrakis, Michael Leen, Daniel Burkhard

Defensive Publications Series

A pricing system receives a request for a price of one or more optional services for a flight. The pricing system determines, for each ATPCO S5 record (“S5 record”) associated with each corresponding requested optional service, whether the S5 record comprises a formula table. If the pricing system determines that the S5 record does not comprise a formula table, the pricing system identifies ATPCO S7 records (“S7 record”) associated with the S5 record and sequentially evaluates pricing conditions stipulated by each of the S7 records until finding a first S7 record comprising a pricing condition that is satisfied by the …

Shopping Expedition Planner, Sajid Siddiqi, Philip Henderson

Defensive Publications Series

A shopping system generates a shopping route based on a wish list of a user, shopping route preferences, and location information received from a plurality of merchant systems, and inventory information. The shopping system determines one or more offers associated with the shopping route and combines the offers with the shopping route.

Auto-Selection Of Package Delivery Location Based On Estimated Time Of Delivery, Tuna Toksoz, Tutku Gulkaya, Thomas Price

Defensive Publications Series

A delivery location for a specific package delivery is chosen based on an estimated order fulfillment time, an estimated shipping time to each of several possible locations, and history of successful deliveries (or a user preference) during various time windows.

Securing Automatic Package Delivery Through Building Call Box System, Thomas Price, Anurag Agrawal

Defensive Publications Series

A user places an order for delivery in a building that uses a telephone-based call box

system installed at the common door or gate to the building. When the order is placed, the user selects an option to authorize automatic delivery of the package and grants an ecommerce application authorization to temporarily intercept phone calls from the user’s building call box system. The user computing device application communicates the authorization to the account management computing system, which stores the user’s authorization and manages the delivery process. Upon receipt of a delivery update, an application on a delivery computing device transmits …

Executable Knowledge Base For Virtual Chat System, Wen-Ying Yang, Rui Han, Ding-Jun Chen, Xun Wang, Yuan-Chun Liao

Defensive Publications Series

A virtual chat system enables the end user to interact with knowledge base by chatting with a virtual assistant. Besides knowledge article, a virtual assistant can also perform automation flows such as restart a virtual machine, reset the password for a PC. In many virtual chat systems, AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) is used to train the virtual agent to interact with human beings. It is also possible to integrate knowledge system and automation flow system with AIML interpreter to quickly empower virtual assistances with various domain knowledge. The disclosure provides a method to convert or link an automation flow …

System And Method For Maintaining Consistent Container-Specific Counters In A Distributed Eventually Consistent Storage System Containing Billions Of Objects/Files, Dhanwa Thirumalai

Defensive Publications Series

Conflict-free replicated data types, CRDTs, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-free_replicated_data_type) are used to maintain consistent metadata/counters (file-share/folder/container-specific space used, iops served etc..) in an eventually consistent system. These counters need to be strongly consistent (compared to the user data) since they will be used management actions like user billing, quota enforcement. For the client-initiated data path, a straightforward application of CRDTs suffices, each proxy that serves a client request stores the counter under a key corresponding to the node on which the proxy runs.

For system maintenance, a distributed system can generate background writes/deletes that are often duplicates and separated over a period of …

Method Of Password Entering And Storing, Dimitri Kanevsky, Marcel Yung

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method are disclosed in which a user adds random characters or produces random gestures while s/he enters a password/pin. The password/pin input string becomes a combination of substrings--some of which are part of the valid password string and some of which consist of random characters or gestures. The correct password characters are then easily detected by a security password extracting system that matches characters in the correct password string to those that appear in the garbled string. The method disclosed can be performed with touchscreen gesture passwords, security questions, voice passwords or similar security lock. The method …

Smart Local Map Displays With Integrated Localized Advertisements And Extended Applications To Users’ Devices, Ryan Shea, Ben Miller

Defensive Publications Series

A technique is provided for providing local advertisements and maps to users. An example display device broadcasts advertisements to users in the vicinity of the device. When a user interacts with an example interactive display device, the image on display changes from an advertisement to an interactive local map. An example interactive display device shows users directions to products, places, or events that have been advertised on the device and allows the user to receive or download the directions and information to the user’s personal device so that the directions or map can be used offline or away from the …

Broad Match Cpc Adjustment, Justin Lewis, Gavin James

Defensive Publications Series

A broad match cost per click (CPC) adjustment system can be used to calculate an overall impression bid based on impression bids from a keyword and its broad matched keywords. The system determines broad match keywords corresponding to an original keyword specified by an advertiser. The system further displays the broad match keywords to the advertiser. The system then identifies and differentiates between the impression bids for the original keyword and each of the broad matched keywords determined from the original keyword. The system further generates an overall impression bid based on impression bids from the broad matched keywords and …