Abstract: Search results can include, not only responsive content, typically in the form of documents, but can also include information regarding responsive entities, including tasks relevant to those entities, and can include identifications of individuals from whom additional information can be obtained, or who are otherwise relevant to the search. An association between entities and documents referencing those entities is identified and maintained. Documents responsive to a user's search query are identified utilizing existing algorithmic mechanisms and such identified responsive documents are referenced to determine whether they are associated with one or more entities. Additionally, a people/query mapping is maintained associating individual people with specific queries. User actions directed to one or more people in response to a query are utilized as a feedback loop.

Abstract: Multiple schemes and techniques for facilitating presentations with an interactive application are described. For example, an interactive application provides a console view overlay for integrating multiple productivity applications into a graphical user interface (GUI) window. An interactive application can also share a selected display portion of the console view overlay with other interactive applications. As another example, presenters and other audience members can draw on the selected display portion being shared, and the drawn graphics are synchronously displayed by the other interactive applications. Interactive applications, as directed by their users, can join various member groups and specific presentations thereof. Moreover, a user may share content in accordance with membership grouping.

Abstract: Search results can include, not only responsive content, typically in the form of documents, but can also include information regarding responsive entities, including tasks relevant to those entities, and can include identifications of individuals from whom additional information can be obtained, or who are otherwise relevant to the search. An association between entities and documents referencing those entities is identified and maintained. Documents responsive to a user's search query are identified utilizing existing algorithmic mechanisms and such identified responsive documents are referenced to determine whether they are associated with one or more entities. Additionally, a people/query mapping is maintained associating individual people with specific queries. User actions directed to one or more people in response to a query are utilized as a feedback loop.

Abstract: Search results can include, not only responsive content, typically in the form of documents, but can also include information regarding responsive entities, including tasks relevant to those entities, and can include identifications of individuals from whom additional information can be obtained, or who are otherwise relevant to the search. An association between entities and documents referencing those entities is identified and maintained. Documents responsive to a user's search query are identified utilizing existing algorithmic mechanisms and such identified responsive documents are referenced to determine whether they are associated with one or more entities. Additionally, a people/query mapping is maintained associating individual people with specific queries. User actions directed to one or more people in response to a query are utilized as a feedback loop.

Abstract: Multiple schemes and techniques for facilitating presentations with an interactive application are described. For example, an interactive application provides a console view overlay for integrating multiple productivity applications into a graphical user interface (GUI) window. An interactive application can also share a selected display portion of the console view overlay with other interactive applications. As another example, presenters and other audience members can draw on the selected display portion being shared, and the drawn graphics are synchronously displayed by the other interactive applications. Interactive applications, as directed by their users, can join various member groups and specific presentations thereof. Moreover, a user may share content in accordance with membership grouping.

Abstract: Multiple schemes and techniques for facilitating presentations with an interactive application are described. For example, an interactive application provides a console view overlay for integrating multiple productivity applications into a graphical user interface (GUI) window. An interactive application can also share a selected display portion of the console view overlay with other interactive applications. As another example, presenters and other audience members can draw on the selected display portion being shared, and the drawn graphics are synchronously displayed by the other interactive applications. Interactive applications, as directed by their users, can join various member groups and specific presentations thereof. Moreover, a user may share content in accordance with membership grouping.

Abstract: Described herein is a technology that facilitates efficient large-scale similarity-based retrieval. In several embodiments documents, images, and/or other multimedia files are compactly represented and efficiently indexed to enable robust search using a long-query in a large-scale corpus. As described herein, these techniques include performing decomposition of a file, e.g., an image, a document containing an image, or a document-like representation of an image. The techniques use dimension reduction to obtain three parts, low-dimensional representations (major semantics), file specific terms (minor semantics), and background words, representing the major semantics in a feature vector and the minor semantics as keywords. Using the techniques described, file vectors are matched in a topic model and the results ranked based on the keywords.

Abstract: Described is a technology by which a low-resolution image is processed into a high-resolution image, including by performing processing in the gradient domain. A gradient profile corresponding to the lower-resolution image is transform into a sharpened image gradient. A high-resolution gradient profile is estimated from a low-resolution gradient profile, e.g., by multiplying the low-resolution gradient profile by a transform ratio that is based upon learned shape parameters, learned sharpness values and a curve distance to an edge pixel along the gradient profile. The transform ratio is used to transform a low-resolution gradient field to a high-resolution gradient field. Reconstructing the higher-resolution image is performed by using the high-resolution gradient field as a gradient domain constraint, e.g., in along with a reconstruction constraint obtained from image domain data. An energy function is minimized by enforcing the gradient domain constraint and the reconstruction constraint, e.g.

Abstract: A unified search service may collect information related to an enterprise from at least one of publicly available data and private enterprise data. In some implementations, crowd sourcing may be used to determine a source list of one or more sources of information. Authored content can be generated, such as by combining one or more items of information from the public data with one or more items of information from the private enterprise data. Further, in some implementations, a public index may be generated from the public data, and one or more affiliation indexes may be generated from the private enterprise data. For example, a first affiliation index may contain confidential enterprise information, while a second affiliation index may contain non-confidential enterprise information. A user's affiliation to the enterprise may be taken into consideration when determining which indexes to use when responding to a search request from the user.

Abstract: Systems, methods and computer-storage media are provided for identifying query formulation suggestions in response to receiving a search query. A portion of a search query is received. Query formulation suggestions are identified by semantically analyzing the search query. The query formulation suggestions are used to further formulate the received search query. The query formulation suggestions include semantic-pattern-based query suggestions that are derived from semantic query patterns, one or more entities, and information associated with these entities. The query formulation suggestions are transmitted for presentation.

Abstract: Systems, methods and computer-storage media are provided for identifying low-match search queries and determining comparable item matches to suggest to the user in response to a low-match query. “Low-match queries” are queries for which an insufficient number of exact item matches are available. In embodiments, exact and/or comparable item matches may be determined via semantic analysis. Also provided are systems, methods and computer-storage media for informing the user, by way of a presented indicator, or the like, that a presented item was selected for presentation based upon a similarity metric rather than being determined an exact match for the input query.

Abstract: Architecture that represents search results as tiles in a tile-based user interface. The tiles can be images or icons selected to represent a search result or multiple search results. In a broader implementation the tiles can be related to entities as derived from the search results. A web document is received, and on which feature processing is performed to obtain features for each (page, image) tuple. The features are also input to representative image classification, along with the other features to output image classification data. Representative image classification calculates representative scores for every (page, image) pair and (page, image set) pair, and the images are ranked for presentation and viewing in the tile-based user interface. User interaction can be via a touch-based user interface to return and view search results related to a selected tile.

Abstract: A method for creating an optimized gradient mesh of a vector-based image from a raster-based image. In one implementation, a set of boundaries for an object on a raster-based image may be received. An initial gradient mesh of the object may be created. A residual energy between the object on the raster-based image and a rendered initial gradient mesh may be minimized to generate an optimized gradient mesh.

Abstract: A computer implemented method for deforming a 3D polygon mesh using non-linear and linear constraints. The method includes creating a coarse control 3D polygon mesh that completely encapsulates the 3D polygon mesh to be deformed, projecting the deformation energy of the 3D polygon mesh and the constraints of the 3D polygon mesh to the vertices, or subspace, of the coarse control 3D polygon mesh, and determining the resulting deformed 3D polygon mesh by iteratively determining the deformation energy of the subspace. The constraints may be either linear or non-linear constraints, for example, a Laplacian constraint, a position constraint, a projection constraint, a skeleton constraint, or a volume constraint.

Abstract: Embodiments related to the removal of blur from an image are disclosed. One disclosed embodiment provides a method of performing an iterative non-blind deconvolution of a blurred image to form an updated image. The method comprises downsampling the blurred image to form a blurred image pyramid comprising images of two or more different resolution scales, downsampling a blur kernel to form a blur kernel pyramid comprising kernels of two or more different sizes, and deconvoluting a selected image in the blurred image pyramid according to a Richardson-Lucy deconvolution process in which a bilateral range/spatial filter is employed.

Abstract: An exemplary method includes providing image data for an illuminated physical sample of a heterogeneous translucent material, determining one or more material properties of the material based in part on a diffusion equation where one of the material properties is a diffusion coefficient for diffusion of radiation in the material and where the determining includes a regularization term for the diffusion coefficient, mapping the one or more material properties to a virtual object volume, assigning virtual illumination conditions to the virtual object volume, and rendering the virtual object volume using the virtual illumination conditions as a boundary condition for a system of diffusion equations of the virtual object volume. Other methods, devices and systems are also disclosed.

Abstract: Search results can include, not only responsive content, typically in the form of documents, but can also include information regarding responsive entities, including tasks relevant to those entities, and can include identifications of individuals from whom additional information can be obtained, or who are otherwise relevant to the search. An association between entities and documents referencing those entities is identified and maintained. Documents responsive to a user's search query are identified utilizing existing algorithmic mechanisms and such identified responsive documents are referenced to determine whether they are associated with one or more entities. Additionally, a people/query mapping is maintained associating individual people with specific queries. User actions directed to one or more people in response to a query are utilized as a feedback loop.

Abstract: A user is provided with multidimensional search results in multiple panes. Search results include, not only content, typically documents, responsive to a user's search query, but also include information regarding entities that are responsive to the search query, including tasks relevant to those entities, and include identifications of individuals from whom additional information can be obtained, or who are otherwise relevant to the user's search. Responsive documents are presented in one pane, while responsive entities and associated information and tasks are presented in a separate pane and responsive individuals are presented in yet another separate pane. Two or more panes can be presented to the user, and user action in one pane can impact other panes, such as user selections in the entity pane being utilized to disambiguate the search query and thereby causing the listing of documents presented in another pane to be updated in accordance with the disambiguation.

Abstract: Techniques described enable answering a natural language question using machine learning-based methods to gather and analyze evidence from web searches. A received natural language question is analyzed to extract query units and to determine a question type, answer type, and/or lexical answer type using rules-based heuristics and/or machine learning trained classifiers. Query generation templates are employed to generate a plurality of ranked queries to be used to gather evidence to determine the answer to the natural language question. Candidate answers are extracted from the results based on the answer type and/or lexical answer type, and ranked using a ranker previously trained offline. Confidence levels are calculated for the candidate answers and top answer(s) may be provided to the user if the confidence levels of the top answer(s) surpass a threshold.

Abstract: Described herein is a technology that facilitates efficient large-scale similarity-based retrieval. In several embodiments documents, images, and/or other multimedia files are compactly represented and efficiently indexed to enable robust search using a long-query in a large-scale corpus. As described herein, these techniques include performing decomposition of a file, e.g., an image, a document containing an image, or a document-like representation of an image. The techniques use dimension reduction to obtain three parts, low-dimensional representations (major semantics), file specific terms (minor semantics), and background words, representing the major semantics in a feature vector and the minor semantics as keywords. Using the techniques described, file vectors are matched in a topic model and the results ranked based on the keywords.