Abstract: Various embodiments enable an application to obtain information associated with a link to content without navigating to the link. The application can be configured to identify a link, receive input to attain information associated with the link, and send a request to a service for the information. In one or more embodiments, a service can be configured to receive a request for information associated with a link, ascertain one or more sources from which to gather the information, determine appropriate mechanisms by which to obtain the information, and acquire the information. Alternately or additionally, the service can further assemble the information into a consumable format, and return the consumable format to a requesting application or device.

Abstract: A social network system (or other type of hosting system) is described herein which allows different types of applications to interact with the common resources of the system via respective application-specific channels. Through an application-specific channel, a user may obtain a filtered set of content items (e.g., posts) and notifications that pertain to a particular application with which the user is currently interacting. But the user may also obtain items and notifications that do not necessarily have an affiliation with the particular application. The social network system may maintain a single identity for each user across all application channels hosted by the system.

Abstract: The subject disclosure is directed towards a real-time or near real-time sentiment monitoring service. A set of rules such as keywords and data sources to crawl is provided to the monitoring service, which crawls the sources to obtain sentiment-related data for an entity, such as a corporation or product. Content items may be selected from the crawled data, and/or the data may be analyzed to provide results. The results may be displayed, such as on a content page, to quickly view the public's sentiment regarding the entity. The rules may be dynamically modified by a user or collaborating users to tune monitoring of the entity as desired, e.g., to obtain more relevant results.

Abstract: Aspects extend to methods, systems, and computer program products for automating task processing. Assisted microtasking is used to facilitate an incremental introduction of automation to handle more and more of scheduling related work over time as the automation become more effective. Incremental introduction of automation permits delivery of higher quality results (via human worker verification) prior to acquiring sufficient training data for fully automated solutions. Assisted microtasking can be used to increase human worker efficiency by using automation to do much of the work. The human worker's involvement can be essentially reduced to one of (e.g., YES/NO) verification. Aspects of the invention can be used to bootstrap data collection, for example, in “small data” scenarios.

Abstract: Aspects extend to methods, systems, and computer program products for automated task processing with escalation. An overall task to be achieved (e.g., scheduling a meeting) can be broken down into a grouping of (e.g., loosely-coupled) asynchronous sub-tasks. Completing the grouping of sub-tasks completes the overall task. Performance of some sub-tasks can be automated. Other sub-tasks can be escalated for performance by micro workers. When a micro worker is unable to perform a sub-task, the overall task can be escalated to a macro worker. Accordingly, a three tiered approach of automation, micro workers, and macro workers is scalable, cost efficient, and also provides flexibility to accurately handle more complex tasks and sub-tasks.

Abstract: Various embodiments provide summarization techniques that can be applied to blogs or microblogs to present information that is determined to be useful, in a shortened form. In one or more embodiments, a procedure is utilized to automatically acquire a set of concepts from various sources, such as free text. These acquired concepts are then used to guide a clustering process. Clusters are ranked and then summarized by incorporating sentiment and the frequency of words.

Abstract: A social network system (or other type of hosting system) is described herein which allows different types of applications to interact with the common resources of the system via respective application-specific channels. Through an application-specific channel, a user may obtain a filtered set of content items (e.g., posts) and notifications that pertain to a particular application with which the user is currently interacting. But the user may also obtain items and notifications that do not necessarily have an affiliation with the particular application.

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: Aspects of the subject disclosure are directed towards opportunity cards that provide a user with straightforward access to other content of a website that may be interesting to a user, as well as other information and recommendations. Opportunity cards are generated for a user based upon user profile data, and may recommend and provide links to other website content that the user is likely to be interested in and/or has likely not already seen. The opportunity cards may be presented in conjunction with the content, such as inline, interspersed among a stream of posts of content.

Abstract: Various embodiments enable an application to obtain information associated with a link to content without navigating to the link. The application can be configured to identify a link, receive input to attain information associated with the link, and send a request to a service for the information. In one or more embodiments, a service can be configured to receive a request for information associated with a link, ascertain one or more sources from which to gather the information, determine appropriate mechanisms by which to obtain the information, and acquire the information. Alternately or additionally, the service can further assemble the information into a consumable format, and return the consumable format to a requesting application or device.

Abstract: Various embodiments enable an application to obtain information associated with a link to content without navigating to the link. The application can be configured to identify a link, receive input to attain information associated with the link, and send a request to a service for the information. In one or more embodiments, a service can be configured to receive a request for information associated with a link, ascertain one or more sources from which to gather the information, determine appropriate mechanisms by which to obtain the information, and acquire the information. Alternately or additionally, the service can further assemble the information into a consumable format, and return the consumable format to a requesting application or device.

Abstract: A state affinitized system comprises worker computing devices uniquely affinitized with one or more states such that only those worker computing devices maintain local copies of the states with which they are affinitized. Requests and data relevant to a state are directed to the worker computing device affinitized with that state, such as by front-end computing devices. A centralized persistent storage can maintain a copy of each state and can modify the states in response to newly received information in the same manner as the worker computing devices. Such maintenance can be performed by coalescer computing devices, which can also derive second order data from the states in the centralized persistent storage, which can be further added to the state and also communicated to the worker computing device affinitized with that state. Crawler computing devices can obtain additional information for incorporation into states from network-based information repositories and services.

Abstract: The present invention provides for determining a gamut boundary description for a color device, the color device being characterized at least by a destination transform which converts colors from a device-independent color space to a device-dependent color space and which reports out-of-gamut colors. A set of sample values is determined in the device-independent color space. For each of the sample values within the set of sample values, the destination transform is applied to the sample value, and in a case where the sample value is in gamut, the sample value is included within a set of gamut boundary values. The gamut boundary description is determined by forming a set of polygonal surfaces based on the set of gamut boundary values. Accordingly, a gamut boundary description is determined without necessarily having to sample additional color values as the number of colorant channels for the color device increases.

Abstract: Various embodiments provide summarization techniques that can be applied to blogs or microblogs to present information that is determined to be useful, in a shortened form. In one or more embodiments, a procedure is utilized to automatically acquire a set of concepts from various sources, such as free text. These acquired concepts are then used to guide a clustering process. Clusters are ranked and then summarized by incorporating sentiment and the frequency of words.

Abstract: The subject disclosure is directed towards a real-time or near real-time sentiment monitoring service. A set of rules such as keywords and data sources to crawl is provided to the monitoring service, which crawls the sources to obtain sentiment-related data for an entity, such as a corporation or product. Content items may be selected from the crawled data, and/or the data may be analyzed to provide results. The results may be displayed, such as on a content page, to quickly view the public's sentiment regarding the entity. The rules may be dynamically modified by a user or collaborating users to tune monitoring of the entity as desired, e.g., to obtain more relevant results.

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: Various embodiments enable an application to obtain information associated with a link to content without navigating to the link. The application can be configured to identify a link, receive input to attain information associated with the link, and send a request to a service for the information. In one or more embodiments, a service can be configured to receive a request for information associated with a link, ascertain one or more sources from which to gather the information, determine appropriate mechanisms by which to obtain the information, and acquire the information. Alternately or additionally, the service can further assemble the information into a consumable format, and return the consumable format to a requesting application or device.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for color conversion useful for color devices having a large number of input channels, for example CMYK color printers having additional inks used to enhance the color printer's gamut. The color conversion is performed using a strata collection of look-up tables that stratify an n-dimensional color space into sets of lower dimensional subspaces. For lower dimension subspaces, the associated look-up tables may be closed, while for a higher dimension subspace, an associated look-up table may be open, leaving gaps in the subspace not enclosed by a look-up table. A color management module using the strata collection for color conversion may determine if a color conversion is for a color value that falls within a gap. If so, the color management module may use a relatively complex interpolation process. If not, the color management module may use a relatively simple interpolation process.

Abstract: A state affinitized system comprises worker computing devices uniquely affinitized with one or more states such that only those worker computing devices maintain local copies of the states with which they are affinitized. Requests and data relevant to a state are directed to the worker computing device affinitized with that state, such as by front-end computing devices. A centralized persistent storage can maintain a copy of each state and can modify the states in response to newly received information in the same manner as the worker computing devices. Such maintenance can be performed by coalescer computing devices, which can also derive second order data from the states in the centralized persistent storage, which can be further added to the state and also communicated to the worker computing device affinitized with that state. Crawler computing devices can obtain additional information for incorporation into states from network-based information repositories and services.

Abstract: The present invention transforms a source device colorant value to a destination device colorant value, by determining whether all non-black colorant values of the source device colorant value are zero, transforming the source device colorant value to a colorimetric value using a source device model, transforming the colorimetric value to a gamut-mapped colorimetric value using a user-selectable gamut-mapping model, and selecting a destination device colorant value based on the determination. In a case where all of the non-black colorant values of the source device colorant value are zero, the destination device colorant value is selected so that its black colorant value reproduces a lightness of the gamut-mapped colorimetric value, and all of its non-black colorant values are zero. Otherwise, the destination device colorant value is selected so that a combination of its non-black and black colorant values reproduces the gamut-mapped colorimetric value.