Abstract: Physical controls on a physical controller device (PCD) are dynamically mapped to application controls for an application being executed on a computer having a touch-sensitive display surface. The computer identifies a PCD which has been placed by a user on the display surface and displays a mapping aura for the PCD. When the user touches an activate direct-touch button displayed within the mapping aura, the computer activates a mapping procedure for the PCD and displays a highlighted direct-touch button over each application control which is available to be mapped to the physical controls on the PCD. When the user selects a particular application control which is available to be mapped by touching the highlighted button residing over the control, the computer creates a dynamic mapping between the selected application control and a user-selected physical control on the PCD.

Abstract: Multi-spectral imaging technique embodiments are presented which involve an active imaging approach that uses wide band illumination of known spectral distributions to obtain multi-spectral reflectance information in the presence of unknown ambient illumination. In general, a reflectance spectral distribution of a captured scene is computed by selecting a number of different illumination spectra and capturing multiple images of the scene. Each of these images is captured when the scene is illuminated by a different one of the selected illumination spectra in addition to the ambient light. The reflectance spectral distribution of the scene is computed for each pixel location based on the relative response between pairs of the radiometric responses of the corresponding pixels in the captured images, given a set of parameters including the added illumination spectra used to capture each of the images and the response function and spectral sensitivity of the camera used to capture the images.

Abstract: A “Remote Display Generator,” as described herein, provides various techniques for providing high-fidelity displays with highly responsive interactive application experiences to clients across a wide range of network bandwidths for remotely hosted applications. In general, the Remote Display Generator uses a compression-friendly remote display architecture as a core. With this compression architecture, actual screen data from a remote server is read out from the display buffer frame by frame, and then compressed with a unified screen codec. Other technologies, including timer-driven screen update models and adaptive transmission mechanisms, are then integrated with various embodiments of the Remote Display Generator to improve overall user experience by improving display quality and responsiveness to user interaction with remotely hosted applications.

Abstract: A digital ink annotation process and system for processing digital documents and digital ink annotations therein. An annotation's position is maintained within a document such that the original intent and meaning of the annotation is preserved. This is true even if the document is edited, resized, displayed on a different device or otherwise modified. The process includes automatic and manual grouping of digital ink strokes within a document to define digital ink annotations, classifying the annotations according to annotation type, and anchoring the annotations to appropriate regions or positions in a document. The process further includes reflowing the annotations in a new document layout such that the annotations conform and adapt to the new layout while preserving the original intents and meanings of the annotations. The system includes a classification module, an anchoring module, a reflow module and a clean-up module to implement the digital ink annotation process.

Abstract: An audio start service method for enabling and scheduling ad hoc distributed meetings. Only a short (in some embodiments less than or equal to about 32 bits) unique device identification is needed to enable distributed meeting devices participating in the meeting to rendezvous at a common rendezvous network address. Once the participants know the unique meeting network address they can take part in the meeting, while others can join or leave the meeting. The data string is each device's unique identification that is encoded into an inaudible watermark and continuously exchanged between devices over the telephone network. A first distributed meeting device requests a network address from a distributed meeting server. This unique meeting network address then is sent to an audio start service that identifies “buddies” of the first device and sends out meeting invitations and the network address to other devices so they can join the meeting.

Abstract: The educational adaptive provider architecture described herein provides a way for an educational services framework to be built on varying underlying existing technologies without any changes in the object model and services. The provider framework supports the ability to have multiple types of providers for various services, such as, for example, for authorization, authentication, communication, grouping, scoring, social-networking, storage and user functions. The educational adaptive provider architecture provides easy integration of existing institutional and educational service deployments.

Abstract: The present invention relates includes system and a method for automatically generating short segments of video (or video “cliplets”) from a larger source video. A cliplet has the properties that its length is determined prior to generation and that the cliplet ideally is semantically meaningful and contains a single short event or theme. Generally, the cliplet generation method processes a large source video and generates cliplet results for presentation (such as to a user). Specifically, the method processes the source video to determine editing points and then extracts cliplets from the source video based on the editing points. The extracted cliplets can overlap in time. Cliplet results then are presented, such as to a user. The cliplet generation system includes a video cliplet generator that processes a large source video and generates cliplets in accordance with the cliplet generation method.

Abstract: The symbolic differentiation technique described herein uses operator overloading and two simple recursive procedures, both the forward and reverse forms of differentiation, to create purely symbolic derivatives. The symbolic derivative expressions can be translated into a program in an arbitrary source language, such as C# or C++, and this program can then be compiled to generate an efficient executable which eliminates much of the interpretive overhead normally encountered in automatic differentiation.

Abstract: Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to image restoration for compressed images. In aspects, image restoration is accomplished by recovering spectral information from data corresponding to a compressed image. The spectral information is recovered using an algorithm to search through a solution space of possible solutions while constraints are imposed on the solution space to trim undesirable solutions from the space. An algorithm described herein may be iteratively applied to improve the quality of the recovered image.

Abstract: A multi-sensor sound source localization (SSL) technique is presented which provides a true maximum likelihood (ML) treatment for microphone arrays having more than one pair of audio sensors. Generally, this is accomplished by selecting a sound source location that results in a time of propagation from the sound source to the audio sensors of the array, which maximizes a likelihood of simultaneously producing audio sensor output signals inputted from all the sensors in the array. The likelihood includes a unique term that estimates an unknown audio sensor response to the source signal for each of the sensors in the array.

Abstract: Transmission delays are minimized when packets are transmitted from a source computer over a network to a destination computer. The source computer measures the network's available bandwidth, forms a sequence of output packets from a sequence of data packets, and transmits the output packets over the network to the destination computer, where the transmission rate is ramped up to the measured bandwidth. In conjunction with the transmission, the source computer monitors a transmission delay indicator which it computes using acknowledgement packets it receives from the destination computer. Whenever the indicator specifies that the transmission delay is increasing, the source computer reduces the transmission rate until the indicator specifies that the delay is unchanged. The source computer dynamically decides whether each output packet will be a forward error correction packet or a single data packet, where the decision is based on minimizing the expected transmission delays.

Abstract: A dynamic wide angle image viewing technique is presented which provides a way to view a wide-angle image while zooming between a wide angle view and a narrower angle view that employs both perspective and non-perspective projection models. In general, this involves first establishing the field of view for a view of the wide angle image that is to be displayed. The view is then rendered and displayed based on the established field of view, such that the projection transitions between a perspective projection associated with narrower angle views and a non-perspective projection (e.g., cylindrical, spherical or some other parameterization) associated with wider-angle views.

Abstract: An “Animation Synthesizer” uses trainable probabilistic models, such as Hidden Markov Models (HMM), Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), etc., to provide speech and text driven body animation synthesis. Probabilistic models are trained using synchronized motion and speech inputs (e.g., live or recorded audio/video feeds) at various speech levels, such as sentences, phrases, words, phonemes, sub-phonemes, etc., depending upon the available data, and the motion type or body part being modeled. The Animation Synthesizer then uses the trainable probabilistic model for selecting animation trajectories for one or more different body parts (e.g., face, head, hands, arms, etc.) based on an arbitrary text and/or speech input. These animation trajectories are then used to synthesize a sequence of animations for digital avatars, cartoon characters, computer generated anthropomorphic persons or creatures, actual motions for physical robots, etc.

Abstract: Application service requests received by an application hosting framework are automatically differentiated and categorized, and resource usage patterns associated with the requests are predicted. Resource usage data points are successively extracted from the hosting framework. Elements of an initial resource usage pattern matrix are computed from the data points. An estimate for the number of categories of requests is computed from the initial resource usage pattern matrix, where the requests in each category have similar resource usage patterns. Elements of a resource usage signature matrix and request categorization matrix are computed from the estimate for the number of categories of requests and the initial resource usage pattern matrix.

Abstract: A user interface system and process for graphically displaying the results of a standard search, such as a database search, to a user on a display device via an interactive search results window in which the user views and filters search results items. These results can be presented in either a cluster or histogram format, or both. This allows the user to visualize the results graphically, rather than just displaying a list of the items found. In addition the presentation of the search results can be graphically manipulated to easily filter the results as desired by the user.

Abstract: Harmonic distortion residual echo suppression (HDRES) technique embodiments are presented which act to suppress the residual echo remaining after a near-end microphone signal has undergone AEC, including harmonic distortion in the signal that was caused by the speaker audio signal playback. In general, an AEC module is employed which suppresses some parts of the speaker audio signal found in a near-end microphone signal and generates an AEC output signal. A HDRES module then inputs the AEC output signal and the speaker audio signal, and suppresses at least a portion of a residual part of the speaker audio signal that was left unsuppressed by the AEC module. This includes at least a portion of the harmonic distortion exhibited in the AEC output signal.

Abstract: A user working on a client computer is allowed to remotely login to a server over a computer network. A first secure connection is established between the client and the server. Communications with a trusted device which is in the user's control is established via a communication channel between the trusted device and the client, where this channel is not part of the network. A second secure connection is established between the trusted device and the server through the client, where this second secure connection is tunneled within the first secure connection. The user remotely logs into the server over the second secure connection using the trusted device.

Abstract: A “code optimizer” provides various techniques for optimizing arbitrary XOR-based codes for encoding and/or decoding of data. Further, the optimization techniques enabled by the code optimizer do not depend on any underlining code structure. Therefore, the optimization techniques provided by the code optimizer are applicable to arbitrary codes with arbitrary redundancy. As such, the optimized XOR-based codes generated by the code optimizer are more flexible than specially designed codes, and allow for any desired level of fault tolerance. Typical uses of XOR-based codes include, for example, encoding and/or decoding data using redundant data packets for data transmission real-time communications systems, encoding and/or decoding operations for storage systems such as RAID arrays, etc.

Abstract: Operating system states capture and loading technique embodiments are presented that involve the capture and loading of baseline system states. This is accomplished, in one embodiment, by storing the states of a computer's operating system memory that it is desired to restore at a future time. No changes are permitted to the persisted storage associated with the computer. Instead, changes that would have been made to the persisted storage during an ensuing computing session, had they not been prevented, are stored in a separate computing session file. Whenever it is desired to return the operating system to its baseline condition, the stored baseline system memory states are loaded into the operating system memory, in lieu of the operating system memory's current states.

Abstract: Cross-domain communication between a parent web page hosted in a parent domain and a child web page hosted in a different child domain is provided. Upon downloading the parent page and child page into a client's web browser, an IFM-channel connection can be established within the browser between the parent page and child page, which can be used to bidirectionally communicate text-based messages containing commands and HTML content directly between the parent page and child page. Additionally, an XML-channel connection can be established within the browser between the parent page and child page, which can be used to bidirectionally communicate text-based messages containing HTTP commands and XML content directly between the parent page and child page. This cross-domain communication of messages takes place completely within the browser.