Patents by Inventor Eric I. Horvitz

Eric I. Horvitz has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 8024415
    Abstract: The present invention relates to a system (10, 200) and methodology (74) to enable a plurality of information associated with electronic messages, for example, to be automatically prioritized by a priorities system (12, 230) for transmittal to a user or system. The priorities system (12,230) can employ classifiers (20) that can be explicitly and/or implicitly trained to prioritize one or more received messages (14) according to a learned importance to the user. As an example, messages (14) can be classified as high, medium, low or other degrees of importance via a training set of examples (30) or types of messages having similar degrees of importance. A background monitor (34) can be provided to monitor a user's activities regarding message processing to further refine or tune the classifier (20) according to the user's personal decisions relating to message importance.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 16, 2001
    Date of Patent: September 20, 2011
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Eric I. Horvitz, David O. Hovel, Andrew W. Jacobs, Carl M. Kadie
  • Patent number: 7647171
    Abstract: A location-centric signal shadow mapping and storing architecture that creates maps where signals, such as GPS, cannot be seen with ease because of natural or synthetic features such as groups of tall buildings. Such maps are used with other information, such as the dynamics of the sensed velocity that had been seen before the loss of the signals, to reason about the location and likely activities being carried out by one or more people. Inferences can be made based on information about organizations and services associated with structures and locations proximal to the locations where signals were lost. Also, such reasoning can be used to turn off or to reduce the power consumed by the receivers of the location information, potentially with the joint use of accelerometers to identify when significant accelerations occur.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 29, 2005
    Date of Patent: January 12, 2010
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Eric I. Horvitz, John C. Krumm
  • Publication number: 20040267701
    Abstract: The present invention relates to a system and method to facilitate efficient and automated presentation of information to users. A decomposition component automatically decomposes an information item into sets of subcomponents in a two- or three-dimensional isometric space, and generates visualizations having interactive graphics that allow users to inspect respective subcomponents. Interface features are provided to enable hover, dwell, and clicking commands, for example, providing a variety of options to zoom in, or change configurations of the visualization in accordance with the users intentions or inferences about what they desire to see or inspect more closely. Beyond the use of decompositions into exploded views of the content of items typically viewed as singular documents, the methods can be applied to perform geometric transformations on visualizations of multiple windows and other resources based on content and activity to provide regularized visualizations of the multiple items.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 30, 2003
    Publication date: December 30, 2004
    Inventors: Eric I. Horvitz, Lili Cheng, Jia-Chi Wu