Abstract: Sellers can, anonymously to buyers if they choose, expose to potential buyers a property that is or may be for sale, with or without a sales price or listing agreement, with as little or as much description of their property as the sellers wish to provide. Potential buyers can identify the location and/or types of properties that they would be interested in purchasing, with as little or as much specificity as they wish, and, at their option, provide information about themselves, such as their financial ability to complete a purchase, to the extent they wish. The system allows sellers to gauge demand for their properties and, if desired, initiate contact with potential buyers who have expressed an interest in purchasing those types of properties. Similarly, the system allows buyers to identify properties that match their interests and, if desired, initiate contact with potential sellers.

Abstract: Sellers can, anonymously to buyers if they choose, expose to potential buyers a property that is or may be for sale, with or without a sales price or listing agreement, with as little or as much description of their property as the sellers wish to provide. Potential buyers can identify the location and/or types of properties that they would be interested in purchasing, with as little or as much specificity as they wish, and, at their option, provide information about themselves, such as their financial ability to complete a purchase, to the extent they wish. The system allows sellers to gauge demand for their properties and, if desired, initiate contact with potential buyers who have expressed an interest in purchasing those types of properties. Similarly, the system allows buyers to identify properties that match their interests and, if desired, initiate contact with potential sellers.

Abstract: A web site or other interactive service maintains user activity data reflective of the activities of its users. A failure analysis component analyzes the user activity data to automatically detect likely failure events. A failure event filtering component intelligently selects failure events for which to request feedback from the user, preferably taking into consideration information about the failure event itself and information about the particular user. Requests for user feedback, and operator responses to the user feedback messages, are preferably presented on a personal log page that also displays other types of personalized information.

Abstract: An advertisement display scheduler resident on a user's computer receives advertisements from a server system over a network. Upon receipt, the advertisement display scheduler determines the priority of the advertisement and assigns it to one of a plurality of prioritized advertisement queues. Each queue is sorted according to predetermined scheduling criteria so that advertisements deemed “more important” are presented to a user first. The advertisement display scheduler logs statistical information relating to the presentation of advertisements for use in updating the scheduling criteria, and makes such statistical information available to the server system.

Abstract: A system for providing scheduled messages to a remote user in a batch oriented system. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a user creates and/or reads electronic mail locally. While the user creates the electronic mail, a message is displayed to the user on a portion of the local monitor, the message preferably changing in accordance with a local display schedule and stored on a local storage device. The message is preferably targeted to the particular user. When the user is ready to transmit the e-mail created and/or receive e-mail addressed to him, the user's local client establishes a connection via a modem with a remote e-mail server system. The remote e-mail server system not only receives the e-mail transmitted by the user and/or transmits e-mail addressed to the user, but also updates the user's local messages in accordance with a distribution schedule.

Abstract: A system for providing scheduled messages to a remote user in a batch oriented system. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a user creates and/or reads electronic mail locally. While the user creates the electronic mail, a message is displayed to the user on a portion of the local monitor, the message preferably changing in accordance with a local display schedule and stored on a local storage device. The message is preferably targeted to the particular user. When the user is ready to transmit the e-mail created and/or receive e-mail addressed to him, the user's local client establishes a connection via a modem with a remote e-mail server system. The remote e-mail server system not only receives the e-mail transmitted by the user and/or transmits e-mail addressed to the user, but also updates the user's local messages in accordance with a distribution schedule.

Abstract: A system for providing scheduled messages to a remote user in a batch oriented system. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a user creates and/or reads electronic mail locally. While the user creates the electronic mail, a message is displayed to the user on a portion of the local monitor, the message preferably changing in accordance with a local display schedule and stored on a local storage device. The message is preferably targeted to the particular user. When the user is ready to transmit the e-mail created and/or receive e-mail addressed to him, the user's local client establishes a connection via a modem with a remote e-mail server system. The remote e-mail server system not only receives the e-mail transmitted by the user and/or transmits e-mail addressed to the user, but also updates the user's local messages in accordance with a distribution schedule.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method and apparatus for scheduling the presentation of a continuously-changing display to computer users, and is particularly well-suited for use in an advertisement-supported e-mail service. An advertisement display scheduler resident on a user's computer receives advertisements from a server system over a network. Upon receipt, the advertisement display scheduler determines the priority of the advertisement and assigns it to one of a plurality of prioritized advertisement queues. Each queue is sorted according to predetermined scheduling criteria so that advertisements deemed "more important" are presented to a user first. The advertisement display scheduler logs statistical information relating to the presentation of advertisements for use in updating the scheduling criteria, and makes such statistical information available to the server system.

Abstract: A system and method for authenticating that advertisements are properly displayed at a remote computer. The advertisements are received electronically and are stored in a memory device at the remote computer. The advertisements are output to users when the remote computer is off-line. Each advertisement is authenticated by the remote computer prior to output to ensure, for example, that the advertisement has not been tampered with, modified or replaced. Information as to when advertisements are output is recorded and used for billing the advertisers. This information can be stored in a statistics file on the remote computer. When the statistics file is transferred to a central computer, the statistics file is authenticated to ensure that it has not been tampered with, modified or replaced. The authentication scheme can be used as part of an electronic mail system.

Abstract: A system for providing scheduled messages to a remote user in a batch oriented system. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a user creates and/or reads electronic mail locally. While the user creates the electronic mail, a message is displayed to the user on a portion of the local monitor, the message preferably changing in accordance with a local display schedule and stored on a local storage device. The message is preferably targeted to the particular user. When the user is ready to transmit the e-mail created and/or receive e-mail addressed to him, the user's local client establishes a connection via a modem with a remote e-mail server system. The remote e-mail server system not only receives the e-mail transmitted by the user and/or transmits e-mail addressed to the user, but also updates the user's local messages in accordance with a distribution schedule.

Abstract: A system and method for reducing access latency to stable storage are described. A technique referred to as fault trickling is used to improve access latency to stable storage such as flash memory. In particular, data requests from a central processing unit are preferentially satisfied by a memory management unit providing access to a main memory. When the requested data does not reside in the main memory, however, the memory management unit satisfies the request by providing direct fine-grain access to the flash memory. In addition, concurrently with satisfying the data request directly from the flash memory, a block transfer is initiated from the flash memory to the main memory. Once the block transfer is completed, a memory map, such as an address translation table, is updated to indicate that the data now resides in the more convenient source of data--the main memory. Accordingly, subsequent data requests, for that or proximately located data, can be satisfied by accessing the main memory.

Abstract: A method for managing the power consumed by a disk drive in a portable laptop computer which includes spinning the disk up during period when the computer apparatus is in an active or idle mode, creating a threshold to determine when to spin down the disk as a function of a period of disk inactivity, spinning the disk down when the threshold is exceeded in order to reduce the power consumption of the disk, automatically increasing the threshold when an undesirable spin up of the disk has occurred and automatically decreasing the threshold when an acceptable spin up of the disk occurs. By virtue of this method, the threshold for disk inactivity is continually monitored and adjusted to maintain a balance between energy consumption and undesirable disk spin down.

Abstract: A method for managing the power consumed by a disk drive in a portable laptop computer which includes quantizing predetermined periods of disk inactivity into states which are stored in a state table in memory. Based upon a history of disk accesses by a user, the number of transitions between each pair of states is counted and stored in memory. In view of this history, a future period of disk inactivity can be predicted and said prediction is compared with a threshold value. If the predicted period of disk inactivity is greater than the threshold value, the computer is automatically placed in a low power mode by spinning down the disk. If not, the disk continues to spin.