Abstract: Recommendations are provided to users of social network site for a set of audiovisual items; the sequence of recommendations is optimized to increase an overall expected ratings from such users.

Abstract: Recommendations are provided to users based on their location within selected commercial establishments as well as their observed preferences expressed during live item sampling. The recommendations can take a number of forms, including electronic promotional offers communicated to the user's portable device.

Abstract: Electronic documents are classified and compared according to their temporal qualities. The content of a document relating to an event is analyzed to identify temporal components. These components can be compared with corresponding counterparts in other documents to identify a relative temporal order. The invention can be used in environments such as automated news aggregators, search engines, and other electronic systems which compile information having temporal qualities.

Abstract: Advertising and search is performed using temporal parameters of stories, events, topics and electronic documents. The contents of a document relating to an event/topic is analyzed to identify temporal components. These components can be compared with corresponding counterparts in other documents to identify a relative temporal order, and to help drive an advertising engine or search engine.

Abstract: Items—including gourmet products—are evaluated and rated by participants in a controlled event, which can be coordinated by software locally or at a dedicated website. Event data, including item scores and participant scores can be shared with vendors, merchants and other commercial entities associated with the products. Promotional incentives from such entities for the products (and related products) can then be directly targeted and provided to participants and other members of the public. The participant's activities can also be collected and disseminated to affiliates/friends of the participants through social networking sites, personalized web pages, etc.

Abstract: A system and method is disclosed for presenting relevant advertising to web pages, including web logs. The ads can be selected by reference to an underlying content presented in web logs, based on extracting topics from the pages, and using these topics as the basis for a search query. Ads can then be matched against another set of topics derived from web pages forming the search results to the query.

Abstract: An electronic competitive challenge is disclosed. A prompt is presented to a group of participants. A computer system with a speech recognition module listens for multiple, simultaneous speech utterances from the group of participants. Each speech utterance is decoded, assigned a priority or timing, and associated with one of the participants. Based on the priority or timing, the content of the utterances, and a predefined rule set, one of the participants is identified as the competitive challenge winner. The prompt may be an electronic image, and the utterances may relate to a concept associated with or reflected in the image. The image may be drawn by a human and presented in a visual sequence that tracks its original creation, or it may be an image that is automatically degraded using image processing to disguise its content.

Abstract: A system and method is disclosed for presenting relevant advertising to user search queries. The ads are based on content which is derived from a set of documents/pages from websites forming a collective.

Abstract: A speech recognizer on a portable computing device is trained and configured to reject machine articulations of utterances attempting access to resources on such device. The recognizer is trained with scoring feedback from human listeners identifying articulations as originating from a machine.

Abstract: A system and method is disclosed for altering a relevance ranking for a web accessible document or page containing target content. A set of pages containing the content in question are intentionally imbued with spam features (or other characteristics indicative of low value relevance) so that a search engine is less likely to index or retrieve such page in response to a query.

Abstract: A recommendation system is used to provide suggestions in environments such as message boards, RSS aggregators, blogs and the like by comparing member interests and creating recommendation items corresponding to categorized topics or other members. In some instances, a natural language can assist in processing content to sort it into the appropriate topic bin. An advertising module cooperates with the system to provide content based ads relevant to the recommended items.

Abstract: Methods of creating a corpus of spoken CAPTCHA challenges are disclosed. The methods involve training a computing system with samples of human voices and computer synthesized voices articulating a set of reference challenge items, scoring the reference challenge items based on differences in articulation between human and machine articulation of each challenge item, and selecting suitable challenge items from among the reference challenge items based on the score.

Abstract: A search engine considers events and stories described in electronic documents, a location of a searcher/reviewer, and a situs associated with a query and content of the document to determine how/if they should be presented to users as part of relevant search results.

Abstract: A search system generates customized search results for social network members. The results are responsive to queries and are personalized based on members' explicit and implicit interests derived from user actions, content selections, etc.

Abstract: Electronic documents are classified and compared according to their temporal qualities. The content of a document relating to an event is analyzed to identify temporal components. These components can be compared with corresponding counterparts in other documents to identify a relative temporal order. The invention can be used in environments such as automated news aggregators, search engines, and other electronic systems which compile information having temporal qualities.

Abstract: A system and method is disclosed for presenting relevant advertising to user search queries. The ads are based on content which is derived from a set of documents/pages from websites forming a collective.

Abstract: Temporal qualities of electronic documents are verified using a variety of techniques, including human based feedback. The invention can be used in environments such as automated news aggregators, search engines, and other electronic systems which compile information having temporal qualities.

Abstract: A CAPTCHA system uses images/pictures and/or motion for granting access to a computing system. The images can be culled from examples used in pictorial games, and can progressively presented to increase the strength of the CAPTCHA challenges. Speech recognition, motion and touch sensing can also be employed as parts of the challenge.

Abstract: A recommendation system generates customized recommendations for social network members. The outputs for recommended content are personalized based on members' explicit and implicit interests derived from user actions, content selections, etc.

Abstract: Temporal qualities of electronic documents are verified using a variety of techniques, including automated and human based feedback. The invention can be used in environments such as automated news aggregators, search engines, and other electronic systems which compile information having temporal qualities.