Abstract: A fulfillment services provider may offer export services to merchants, including generation of required export documentation; calculation, collection, and remittance of customs duties; and transportation via an international carrier. Such export services may be offered through a registration service, and may be integrated with other fulfillment services provided to registered merchants (e.g., domestic order fulfillment and/or warehousing of inventory), or may be offered to merchants that do not receive other fulfillment services from the provider. Export services may be provided to merchants who certify that all registered or specified items may be legally exported to all (or specified) international destinations, or the provider may verify compliance to export regulations on behalf of registered merchants. The provider may assume the role of Principal Party in Interest for registered merchants or the merchants may retain this role.

Abstract: A system and method of offering media content is disclosed. In one embodiment, the method includes receiving a selection of a disaggregated media content item from a user computer at a server via an online site that offers a catalog of items. The method also includes identifying a catalog item related to the selected disaggregated media content item. Further, the method includes displaying a detail interface via the online site, the detail interface including details related to the disaggregated media content item and a recommendation of the identified catalog item. A graphical user interface (GUI) is disclosed that includes a song-level detail page including a plurality of details related to an individual song available for download via an online site. The GUI includes at least one recommendation of at least one other item associated with a performer of the individual song, where the other item(s) are offered via the online site.

Abstract: A computer-implemented system provides a browse tree in which items represented within a database are arranged within a hierarchy of item categories. Each time a user selects an item, an amount of credit is cumulatively assigned to the ancestor nodes (categories) of the selected item. The amount of credit assigned to a particular category of the browse tree over time for a given user represents the user's predicted affinity for that category. The user's relative preferences for some or all of the categories are predicted by calculating differences between the user's predicted affinities for such categories and the predicted affinities of a population of users for such categories. Scores reflective of these relative category preferences are in-turn used to provide personalized recommendations or other personalized content to the user.

Abstract: A computer-implemented data processing system comprises a user interface and gift conversion logic. The user interface is configured to permit users to order products using a network service, such as a website. The gift conversion logic is in communication with the user interface and permits the users to specify gift conversion rules. For each user that specifies gift conversion rules, the gift conversion rules define a manner in which gifts purchased for the user by other users may be converted.

Abstract: Techniques are described for managing access of executing programs to non-local block data storage. In some situations, a block data storage service uses multiple server storage systems to reliably store copies of network-accessible block data storage volumes that may be used by programs executing on other physical computing systems, and at least some stored data for some volumes may also be stored on remote archival storage systems. A group of multiple server block data storage systems that store block data volumes may in some situations be co-located at a data center, and programs that use volumes stored there may execute on other computing systems at that data center, while the archival storage systems may be located outside the data center. The data stored on the archival storage systems may be used in various ways, including to reduce the amount of data stored in at least some volume copies.

Abstract: Information retrieval systems and methods are disclosed for presenting items of interest to a user of a computer-based data repository, where the items are presented in the form of lists generated by other users. Users of a data repository may generate lists of items from the repository that are accessible by other users. In various embodiments, users generating lists may add supplemental commentary about the items and other personalizing information. The information retrieval systems and methods store the user-generated lists for future presentation to other users. When a user of the data repository submits a search query, items returned in the query's results are interpreted to be items of interest to the user, and in response, one or more lists determined to be similar to the items of interest are presented to the user.

Abstract: A method of providing recommendations is disclosed and includes receiving input from a visitor of an online site. The input indicates a request to receive data related to an offering from an expert associated with the offering. In some embodiments, the method also includes sending a communication to the expert in response to the request. The communication requests data related to the offering.

Abstract: A method and system for associating keywords with online content sources. According to one embodiment, a method may include identifying a result set including one or more of a plurality of online content sources, wherein each of the included one or more online content sources satisfies a keyword query including one or more keywords. The method may further include, for a given one of the online content sources included in the result set, identifying one or more aggregate paths including the given online content source, wherein a given one of the one or more aggregate paths includes one or more navigation paths among the plurality of online content sources, and in response to detecting a selection of a particular online content source from one of the identified aggregate paths, associating the one or more keywords included in the keyword query with the particular online content source.

Abstract: A method of detecting contextual duplicate items can include identifying a plurality of representations of items in a data repository, each item representation including one or more textual attributes. A degree of fit between an item representation's attributes and other items can be calculated. The degree of fit can reflect the relevance of the attributes of one item to the other item. A degree of association between the two item representations can be calculated based at least in part on the calculated degree of fit. The degree of association between the two item representations can reflect the similarity of the two items. The degree of association between the two item representations can be assessed to determine whether the items are contextual duplicates.

Abstract: Techniques are described for providing enhanced access to stored data and related functionality, such as data stored by a system across multiple alternative storage partitions. At least some of the stored data may be specific to particular users who interact with the system, such as for users to perform tasks supplied by other users. The enhanced data access techniques may include storing at least a subset of each user's associated data on a single storage partition, and then efficiently identifying the storage partition corresponding to a user so that requests from that user may be handled by a computing node associated with that corresponding storage partition. Furthermore, additional data access enhancement techniques may relate to initially identifying an appropriate storage partition for a user and/or for migrating existing user data to a new partition identified as being appropriate for a user.

Abstract: Techniques are described for managing content by identifying content that has attributes of interest (e.g., content that is useful, humorous and/or that otherwise has a sufficiently high degree of quality) and by determining how to use such identified content. In some situations, a piece of content is automatically assessed in a manner based on automatically assessed levels of trust in users who are associated with the content, such as a user who authored or otherwise supplied the content and/or users who evaluated the content. For example, an automatically assessed level of trust for a user may be based on prior activities of the user and be used to predict future behavior of the user as a supplier of acceptable content and/or as an acceptable evaluator of supplied content, such as based on prior activities of the user that are not related to supplying and/or evaluating content.

Abstract: Systems and methods for time based management of digital content used with electronic devices lacking a connection to a common reference time keeping device are provided. Timing calibrations are used that, when applied to times measured by such disconnected electronic devices, allow the devices to calculate modified time measurements that are approximately equal to that of the reference time keeping device. The calibration time and other calibration information for the disconnected electronic devices may be stored by a digital content service and conveyed with digital content transferred from the digital content service to the disconnected electronic devices via portable data storage devices. In this manner, digital content may be consumed by a user on a plurality of disconnected electronic devices without violating license agreements associated with the digital content.

Abstract: An activity monitoring strategy monitors a user's consumption of content at a user device. To perform this operation, the activity monitoring strategy collects layout data that reflects the layout of the content as presented by the user device. The activity monitoring strategy then collects event data that reflects the user's consumption of the content. The activity monitoring strategy can use client-side executable functionality to implement the collecting of layout data and event data. The activity monitoring strategy asynchronously sends the collected data to a data analysis module where it is analyzed to determine features in the content that the user is presumed to have consumed. The activity monitoring strategy can apply the results of its analysis to modify the content, set the price charged for display of the features, etc.

Abstract: A facility for transmitting data items in a data stream is described. The facility compares the rate at which data items in the data stream are being generated to a threshold rate. When the rate at which data items in the data stream are being generated is no greater than the threshold rate, the facility transmits all of the data items in the data stream to a destination. When the rate at which data items in the data stream are being generated is greater than the threshold rate, the facility transmits only a randomly selected proper subset of the data items in the stream to the destination, such that data items are transmitted to the destination at a rate approximately equal to the threshold rate.

Abstract: Techniques described enable an entity, such as a company employing an e-commerce website, to leverage user-provided content, such as customer reviews of an item, to better customers' shopping experiences. To do so, customer reviews pertaining to an item may be examined to determine if the reviews contain links to other items. These links within the customer reviews may then be aggregated and sorted (e.g., ranked) according to certain criteria. The links may be sorted based on a number of times that the links are used in the reviews and/or on ratings of the items associated with the links. One or more of the links may then be displayed on the website. For instance, these links may appear on an item review page adjacent the customer reviews. Customers navigating to the item review page may then peruse the customer reviews as well as the displayed links that customers have used within the reviews.

Abstract: Method and apparatus for detecting duplicate shipments at one or more materials handling facilities in a distribution system. For each package processed at one or more downstream processing station(s), a destination identifier (customer/address combination) and one or more item identifiers for item(s) in the package may be obtained. An analysis of the obtained data may be performed in accordance with an analysis interval (e.g., thirty minutes or one hour). For every analysis interval, all destination-identifier/item-identifier combinations obtained in the analysis interval may be examined to determine the number of instances each destination-identifier/item-identifier combination occurred in aggregated data (a window, e.g. two weeks or one month of data). The number of destination-identifier/item-identifier combinations that have an occurrence count greater than a specified number may be counted, and if the sum is greater than a specified threshold, an alarm may be raised.

Abstract: A system and method for determining the likelihood of two documents describing substantially similar subject matter is presented. A set of tokens for each of two documents is obtained, each set representing strings of characters found in the corresponding document. A matrix of token pairs is determined, each token pair comprising a token from each set of tokens. For each token pair in the matrix, a similarity score is determined. Those token pairs in the matrix with a similarity score above a threshold score are selected and added to a set of matched tokens. A similarity score for the two documents is determined according to the scores of the token pairs added to the set of matched tokens. The determined similarity score is provided as the likelihood that the first and second documents describing substantially similar subject matter.

Abstract: The environmental impact of various transactions can be reduced or offset by determining the impact of various shipping and packaging options, and providing these options to customers. Customers then have the ability to select options that reduce the environmental impact of each transaction. A customer also can purchase environmental offsets to offset the determined impact. Customers can be provided with environmental impact information determined or tracked for each item viewed by the customer, such that each customer can be informed of the additional impact of each individual when making a selection. The selections and/or actions of a customer can be tracked such that environmentally friendly options and suggestions can be provided for subsequent transactions.

Abstract: An index for an item in a computer implemented merchandising system is computed as a function of objective data, e.g., transaction data, and subjective data, e.g., customer satisfaction ratings or reviews. The index may be extended with other data, including revenue, returns, refunds, discontinuations, and interactive shopping data. The index may further be weighted using a variety of weight factors for different components of the subjective and objective data. A display of the index places customer satisfaction data in the context of transaction data. The index may be used to provide prospective customers with a more balanced picture of consumer satisfaction than can be provided from customer satisfaction data alone, including prospective purchase comparisons and desirability.

Abstract: Systems and methods for providing dynamic DNS host services in regard to resolving a text-descriptive resource names of a network request into network addresses is presented. A network request corresponding to a network resource on the computer network is obtained. The network request comprises a text-descriptive resource name corresponding to the network resource. Resource criteria are also obtained. The resource criteria direct how to resolve the resource name of the network resource to a network address. A network address corresponding to the resource name is then selected according to the obtained resource criteria. Thereafter, the selected network address is returned in response to the network request.