Digital Commons Network^™

Sampling Without Replacement: Durstenfeld-Fisher-Yates Permutation For Very Large Permutation Sizes, Martin Harriman

Defensive Publications Series

We present a modification of the Durstenfeld-Fisher-Yates random-permutation algorithm for use in sampling without replacement from a large population.

A Simplified Method For Securing Bluetooth Communication, Van Tu

Defensive Publications Series

Disclosed herein is a simplified Bluetooth communication mechanism that is secure and enables configuration of the security settings when paired with another Bluetooth device. Once paired, the system prompts the user to select either a normal or a secure access mode. The normal mode allows access to normal as well as sensitive or personal data available in the phone, while the secure access mode restricts access to sensitive data. Data access requests are handled by the system to permit access based on the security mode settings. This mechanism provides a single toggle that prevents personal data being synced to any …

Multiple Input Modes Without Specific Mode Selection, Thomas Deselaers, Emmanuel Mogenet, Victor Cărbune

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method are disclosed that enables multiple text input modes for a device without explicitly specifying the desired mode. A machine learning (ML) model is used to handle and interpret the inputs (text, voice, handwritten, etc.). The ML model analyzes sequences of data, and trains itself so that the correct final output sequence is given to the application requiring the text input. A decoder is used to combine the output of the sequence interpretation model with other knowledge sources such as character or word recognition models. Then, a language-model is used in a decoder to obtain the most …

Translation On-The-Fly Add-On Based On Existing Translation Files And Machine-Translation, Yi-Qun Ren, Uriel Lustig, Kai Hu

Defensive Publications Series

A new method for translating webpage on-the-fly is disclosed. This method use a browser add-on to auto localize the newly developed webpage or web application using existing translation files or machine-translation, so that web UI developer can detect & fix potential layout issues (including bad layout and truncation) during development time.

Crowdsourced Selection Of Payment Instrument, Tuna Toksoz, Thomas Price, Tutku Gulkaya

Defensive Publications Series

A payment instrument for a pending transaction using a digital wallet system is selected based on data obtained from crowdsourced responses to selection requests sent to interested users.

Selective Connection To Wi-Fi Networks, Alex Zheng, Kyle Lemons, Tianyu Wen, Eric Enslen

Defensive Publications Series

Devices such as mobile phones, tablets, wearables, head mounted displays, and computers auto-connect to a wireless network (e.g., a Wi-Fi network) regardless of the speed or quality of the connection offered by the network. In some instances, a Wi-Fi network can deliver lower speed and can be less reliable than a cellular data connection. In such instances, the cellular data connection can be preferable to the Wi-Fi connection. Testing connection speeds of various available connections require connecting to the network first, can cause delays in connection, and requires extra network usage and battery power. This disclosure describes techniques that utilize …

A Method Of Providing Meaningful, Self-Descripting Metadata To Rest Return Json Data, Lee A. Preimesberger, Sean Pope, Jasmit Tarang

Defensive Publications Series

A method of providing meaningful, self-descripting metadata to REST return JSON data

This document describes a method where REST data can be wrapped in a well-defined metadata format which enables convenient self-documenting return values and also enables programmatically discovering and utilizing new REST service entry points.

Automatic Wireless Activation In The Presence Of Saved Networks, Alex Zheng, Christian Sonntag, Evan Charlton, Tyler Williams, Joseph Lapenna, Amin Shaikh

Defensive Publications Series

Mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptop computers, wearables, head mounted displays, etc. have the capability to access a wireless local area network as well as a cellular data network. Users often turn off the wireless local network access capability, e.g., by turning Wi-Fi off. Turning off such Wi-Fi capability has benefits such as avoiding automatic connections to slow, unreliable or potentially malicious networks, conserving battery, etc. In some instances, users do not remember to turn Wi-Fi back on, which leads to the device utilizing the cellular data network and potentially higher bills, because of charges for cellular data usage. …

Graphical Interface To Create And Suggest A Travel Day Plan To A User, Aleksandra Mirisola, Simon Schuler, Markus Clermont, Stefan Frank, Lucia Terrenghi, Alessandro Cerruti, German Kopytkov, Thomas Wittek, Dario Cazzaro, Duc Dung Nguyen, Volodymur Grachov, Yurii Samsoniuk, Margaret Lisowiec

Defensive Publications Series

A graphical user interface provides a suggested travel day plan and allows a user to create or modify a suggested day plan. The user may select and pin sites of interest that are then generated in an itinerary for the day. The plan can be updated and refreshed by the user to add or delete pinned sites in the generated day plan until a satisfactory plan is provided.

Efficient Externalized Audio Reverberation With Smooth Transitioning, Ian Kelly, Marcin Gorzel, Alper Güngörmüsler

Defensive Publications Series

Audio for immersive or simulated environments such as virtual reality (VR) matches the acoustics of the environment being simulated. Reverberative effects of a simulated environment are reproduced in a manner consistent with a corresponding real-world environment. For example, in a VR game, a user moves between a cathedral and a small room which are virtual environments that have substantially different acoustics. Providing audio reverb that matches a current virtual environment and smoothly transitions between virtual environments is essential for a quality VR experience. Providing smooth audio requires implementing a change in reverberation settings, e.g., filters, synchronously with gameplay which imposes …

Summarizing Existing Conversation For Newly Added Participants In Online Communication, Victor Carbune, Sandro Feuz, Thomas Deselaers

Defensive Publications Series

Systems and methods of assisting a user newly added to a communication thread are disclosed. The system includes one or more users connected through a server in a network. The system further includes various machine learning models running on the server to summarize a conversation and to identify user-specific content. The method includes providing a customized summary to the newly added user with previous discussion points, other users involved, action items assigned, attachments added, etc. in the form of an easily readable short snippet of text. The method may also include suggesting adding one or more other users to the …

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 …

Modeling Thin Structures From Images And Point Clouds, Aleksey Golovinskiy, Rongqi Qiu, Veselin Dikov, Brett Allen

Defensive Publications Series

A method for creating a 3D model of thin objects is disclosed. This method creates 3D models of each such thin object from cues taken from posed source images and 3D point clouds (which can come from depth maps of these images). The cues could be a vertically aligned line feature or discontinuity in a background image. The 3D models of the thin objects are then added to the input 3D point cloud, and a mesh reconstructed from this augmented point cloud. The above method allows easy creation of 3D imagery of near vertical or thin objects like poles or …

Volumetric Framework For Third-Party Content Placement In Virtual 3d Environments, Siddhant Mehta

Defensive Publications Series

A content distribution system facilitates the placement of third-party content in virtual, three-dimensional (3D) environments. The third-party content may be shown on virtual, 3D objects. The system defines a technical and financial framework by which developers of 3D environments can monetize their environments by allotting space for the display of third-party virtual objects. In some aspects, the content distribution system determines an amount to charge a third-party content provider for placing their content on a virtual object in a 3D environment based on the volume of the virtual object.

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.

Rendering Native Ads From Other Networks In Html For Mediation Purposes, Stephen Norum, Tuna Toksoz, Priyanshu Jain

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method are disclosed with an ad format that aims to give the publisher almost full control of rendering the ad. The method runs an algorithm which aims to unify the ad format from any ad network. The method involves making a request via the ads SDK to receive the HTML for an ad that is styled by the publisher. The system then makes a request to the third party network to get the ad information such as ad title, description and image bytes. The ads SDK then invokes a JavaScript function to render HTML. The HTML code …

Accelerated Mobile Pages Advertisement And Cascading Style Sheet Merging, Richard Rapp, Justin Lewis

Defensive Publications Series

This document describes a technique for cloaking cascading style sheet rules in accelerated mobile pages so that they can be embedded within a web page without interfering with the page’s layout and without using inline frames to separate rules. With the present technique display advertisements shown on the accelerated mobile pages will be able to be embedded within a host page contents itself without causing any conflicts due to same rule names used on a host page and an advertisement page. Additionally instead of simply using a full image the advertisement accelerated mobile pages can be composed of cascading style …

Position Of A Height Sensor In The Chassis

Defensive Publications Series

No abstract provided.

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 …

Method For Using Photos As Contextual Information For Ad Targeting, Courtney Hampson, Jason Sanio

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method are disclosed for identifying items, objects, and activities in photos taken by a user, of a user, or shared with a user to target ads. The method works as follows. The user takes photos relating to an interest (interest-1) that he stores in photo library. If a user visits a website relating to another interest (interest-2), and if the website shows ads, the website visit triggers an ad auction. For targeting ads, the system accesses the user’s contextual information relating to interest-2, and additionally the photo library for other interests, identifying interest-1 from the photo library. …

Blocking Mobile In-App Monetized Ad Engagements On Device Lock State, Tuna Toksoz, Priyanshu Jain, Spencer Johnson

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure presents methods implementing blocker code on a mobile device for preventing a monetized ad engagement event from being triggered when a mobile is in the locked state. When ads are visible on mobile devices in a locked state, the user that clicks the ad has to additionally open the lock screen and unlock the device to view the ad landing page or activity. However, when clicks take place organically and advertisers are charged, and the user does not open the lock screen and unlock the device, the user never experiences the landing page of the ad. This disclosure …

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 …

Time-Value Auction, Tuna Toksoz, Thomas Price

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method are disclosed to allow users to make a micropayment to skip remaining ads in a commercial break of online media. The system shows video content with an option to skip the ads shown on a small button or other user interface (UI) element overlaid on the video. The method calculates the ad cost using simple or multi-video auctions. It also creates incentives for advertisers to improve ads by increasing cost-per-impression of ads that users may dislike. The system also includes a mechanism to provide feedback to the advertiser regarding quality score of the ads and uses …

Method Of Block Chain Verification To Authenticate Advertising Payment Chains, Alex Jacobson

Defensive Publications Series

A block chain method of verification to authenticate advertising payment chains is disclosed. The online advertisement transactions are registered on a public ledger so that the middle reselling layers are available. Cryptographic validation is used here. The information in the public ledger could be used to establish reselling nodes between advertisers and content publishers. The computation is done either by the advertisement network or the advertisers themselves. The method is intended to establish valid ownership chains for advertising. The advantages of the method are that this method can be performed across the entire advertisement ecosystem and there is no restriction …

Crowdsourced Road Structure Condition Data, Gabriel Diniz De Faria

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method are disclosed for developing an accurate and free system for providing data on road structure conditions and to let users know what obstacles drivers encounter along their ride. The accelerometer data from multiple smartphones mounted on vehicles traveling along a road is fed back to data centers. The vibration data of dash mounted phones are identified, possible potholes are detected as peaks in the accelerometer data and registered with the user's location. The location of the device is derived from the current system of combining GPS, Wifi and Bluetooth data to identify precise location. Data from …

System Of Server-Side Resource Updates And Customization On Mobile Apps, Alok Talekar

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method of providing server-side resource updates for a mobile application (“app”) are disclosed. The system includes an app server that would allow installation and customization of the app. When the user installs the app in a mobile phone, the server may provide the app with only the essential resources without rolling out the entire app. The user may then place a customization request to the server. The server would then supply the essential resources required for customization. The app may use locally stored resources or those fetched from the server to effect the customization. The method may …

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 …