Abstract: A method, apparatus, and system are directed towards seeding a user's contacts for their online social network. The invention is arranged to automatically recommend to the user a set of seed contacts that the user may employ to invite to join their social network. The set of seed contacts may be harvested from the user's existing portal activities, as well as other sources. In one embodiment, the invention analyzes portal activity, such as email exchanges with the user, and the like, to determine a frequency of contact with the user. Other sources may include but not be limited to emails, names within an address book of the user, names within an address book of another person, a buddy list, an instant messaging list, an activity, a mailing list, an online discussion group, a membership in a category, chat group, and the like.

Abstract: The present invention is directed towards a method and system for processing a real time increase in search requests for a common event. The method and system includes detecting an activity spike in user search request activity based on monitoring of user search requests over a defined period of time and determining source locations associated with the activity spike based on user search result activities. The method and system further includes associating the source locations with the user search request and thereupon applying a machine-learning model to determine a plurality of common features operative to cause the activity spike, including determining associations between the source locations and the activity spike.

Abstract: Information is generated indicative of frequency of search terms presented to at least one online search service. As event indications, indicative of user interaction generally with front end servers, are being provided for persistent storage, ones of the event indications that are indicative of search events are detected. The detected ones of the search event indications are processed and it is determined, based at least in part thereon, by location, frequency data indicative of a frequency of each of a plurality of search terms presented to the at least one online search service. An indication of at least some of the frequency data is caused to be associated with indications of locations to which the frequency data corresponds. For example, the frequency data may be displayed superimposed on a map.

Abstract: Method, system, and programs for providing development, deployment, and hosting of applications that are interoperable across different device platforms. An application capable of being executed in a plurality of different device formats is generated. The application is deployed to a client device for execution at the client device. Execution of the same application is initiated at a server.

Abstract: Methods and system for providing interactive media for broadcast content includes receiving navigation input to a first channel that presents content of the television broadcast. Identity of the content is determined by generating an audio fingerprint using an audio signal of the content. Types of interactive media available during the presentation of the content from the first channel and a predetermined input for accessing the graphical notification are identified and used to generate a graphical notification. Access to interactive media presented within the graphical notification is enabled during rendering of the graphical notification and at any time during rendering of the content from the first channel, upon providing the predefined input. When the predefined input is detected, the types of interactive media available for the content are rendered, and content for the select one of the interactive media is presented, during presentation of the content from the first channel.

Abstract: Methods are systems are provided that include obtaining a digital image from a digital photograph, such as may be taken by a digital camera or a camera phone. The digital image includes, for example, a URI or URL, which may be contained within a visible frame. A character recognition technique, such as an optical character recognition technique, may be used to recognize the URI or URL from the digital image. The URI or URL may be used to access a corresponding Web page. The character recognition technique may be applied on the digital camera or cell phone itself, or remotely.

Abstract: Disclosed herein is a matching of multiple different social graphs to generate a combined social graph. Such a combined social graph may be searched and used in determining information to provide to a user, for example. An iterative metric learning approach may be used in matching multiple different social graphs. A mechanism is provided to validate a match from different social graphs. Match validation of data field matching is provided.

Abstract: Described is a reliable and efficient design for a transactional status oracle (“ReTSO”), which supports large-scale storage systems. ReTSO uses a centralized scheme and implements snapshot isolation, a property that guarantees that read operations read a consistent snapshot of the data store. The centralized scheme of ReTSO enables a lock-free commit algorithm that prevents unreleased locks of a failed transaction from blocking other transactions. Each transaction submits the identifiers of modified rows to the ReTSO, the transaction is committed only if none of the modified rows is committed by a concurrent transaction, and a log of the committed transaction is cached. To recover from failures, before a client is notified of a change, the change cached is first persisted into a write-ahead log, such that the memory state can be fully reconstructed by reading from the write-ahead log. Furthermore, ReTSO implements a lazy, auto-garbage collector hash map that reduces the number of memory accesses per request.

Abstract: A computer-implemented method for monetizing future location of users includes identifying indicator(s) retrieved from log data or an electronic declaration that indicate a possibility that a user will be at a specific location in the future; generating a probability that the user will be at the specific location in the future based on the indicator(s); and charging an advertiser a cost for an impression to which to serve a location-specific advertisement targeted to the user, the cost charged being greater when the probability is greater that the user will be at the specific location in the future. The method may be extended to targeting a group of users that expect to be at the same location at the future point in time. Monetization of future locations may depend on the quality and/or quantity of the log data and declarations of future locations and on a number of users in a group of users if monetized according to the group.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus are described for stimulating user engagement with advertising content. Presentation of an interface in a display for viewing by a user is facilitated. The interface includes a content window occupying a substantially fixed location in the interface. Presentation of a sequence of units of content in the content window, some of which are advertisements is facilitated. Various techniques are described to encourage user engagement and interaction with the content window.

Abstract: Methods and systems for receiving sensitive information include receiving a request for entering sensitive information, the request received from a user interface rendered on a client device. The methods and systems rely upon nested iframes, each of which is hosted by a different server. An inner iframe is hosted by a server within a secure zone, such as a digital vault. A middle iframe is hosted within the secure zone and is invoked by an intermediate server. An outer iframe is hosted by a server that provides the user interface. The server that provides the user interface may be hosted by a cloud service provider, for example. Using the nested iframes and the network topology described in the present disclosure, users are able to exchange sensitive information with a server within the secure zone through a user interface provided outside the secure zone.

Abstract: Methods, systems and computer program products for pathing analysis are provided. The method includes receiving at a server, a query comprising one or more nodes. The method further includes identifying one or more prior queries, wherein the one or more prior queries comprise at least one of the one or more nodes. The method accesses metadata associated with the one or more prior queries. The method then selects based on the metadata, one or more data partitions for further processing. Next, the method causes one or more computers to identify one or more paths in the selected data partitions, wherein the one or more paths comprise at least the one or more nodes. Finally, the method presents the identified paths as an output to the query.

Abstract: A method and/or technique for geolocation safety awareness is provided herein. When a user, having a client device, travels to a location, threats associated with that location may not be known to the user. To determine a safety of the location, the location of a client device may be determined. A search for safety information about the location may be performed, and a threat level may be determined based upon the safety information. When the threat level exceeds a threat threshold, a security operation may be performed. The security operation may comprise presenting a warning notice to the user and/or activating a security timer.

Abstract: A system is described for serving data matching content in a search engine marketing system. The system may include a processor, an interface and a memory. The memory may be operatively connected to the processor and may store a page, a content related to the page, a set of terms and a data. The interface may be operatively connected to the memory and the processor and may be used to communicate with a user. The processor may identify a page and a content, perform a semantic analysis on the content to generate a set of terms, match the set of terms to a data, add the data to the page, and the serve the page to a user via the interface.

Abstract: The present teaching relates to creating and updating a user profile related to multiple devices, and synchronizing applications' sessions for the user on different devices. Upon execution of a first application on a first device, a first device ID associated with the first device and information about the first application are received. A user profile is created based on the first device ID and the information about the first application. Upon execution of a second application on a second device related to the first device, a second device ID associated with the second device and information about the second application are received. The user profile is updated based on the second device ID and the information about the second application. Further, the information about the first application is applied to the execution of the second application on the second device, or vice-versa.

Abstract: A system comprises an interface for enabling a user having a web property to input advertisement information including a web property advertisement, criteria indicating when presentation of the advertisement is desired by the user, a bid for the presentation of the advertisement when the criteria are met, and subsequent modifications to the advertisement information; geographically distributed servers, a plurality of the geographically distributed servers for storing the advertisement information, at least one of the geographically distributed servers for receiving a request for advertisement content from an advertising channel, at least one of the geographically distributed servers for determining whether the request meets the criteria, and at least one of the geographically distributed servers for forwarding the advertisement to the advertising channel in response to the request when the criteria have been met; and a distribution component for propagating the advertisement information to the geographically

Abstract: A method and system for providing personalized search results is disclosed. A computer receives input from a user to navigate to a web site (either directly or as a result of choosing a result from a search result page). The computer navigates to the web site and stores information about the web site in a file. The computer determines web sites associated with a search query of the user as the search query is being entered into a search area of a user interface. The associated web sites are sites that have been previously navigated to by the user. The determining step includes obtaining the web sites associated with the search query from a data structure previously generated from the file. The data structure includes parsed entries of URLs associated with the previously navigated web sites. Based on the determining step, web site links corresponding to the associated web sites are displayed as the search query is being entered.

Abstract: Methods and systems are provided that can include iconization and later play of video content items, such as advertisements. During presentation of an online video, video advertisements may be presented. Upon user selection, during or after presentation of a particular video advertisement, the advertisement may cease to be presented, but an icon may be displayed that represents the video advertisement. The icon may be displayed in an area adjacent to the online video display area, which area may include multiple icons. Later, upon user selection of the icon, the video advertisement may be played, or may continue playing, utilizing local storage of the video advertisement. This, in turn, may provide, for example, efficient, convenient user access to the video advertisement, leading to enhanced advertisement performance with minimal intrusive impact on the user experience as a whole.

Abstract: A media device and user interface for selecting media. In one embodiment, the media is selected based upon a desired relationship measure between at least two media files. In another embodiment, the media is selected based upon a skip command control functions.

Abstract: A system and method for booking targeted internet advertisements to web page impressions using a targeting dimension dictionary. The method commences by constructing a targeting dimension dictionary using a dictionary schema such as an XML DTD or other schema language, then retrieving the targeting dimension dictionary to book the impression using a target predicate wherein the target predicate is constructed at least in part using the targeting dimension dictionary. Such target predicates are used to match (i.e. satisfying the target predicate) an advertisement to the impression. The targeting dimension dictionary comprises a targeting dimension object, a targeting dimension attribute type object, and an application attribute type object. Dimension attribute type objects can include a segment definition for codifying sets or ranges of values. Such a targeting dimension dictionary can be accessed by various tools used in internet advertising campaigns for targeting based on predicates.