Abstract: A computer-implemented method is disclosed for determining, for comments associated with a content item, response likelihood scores indicating likelihood of a user responding to the comments, and presenting the comments to the user according to the determined response likelihood scores. A response likelihood score of the user responding to a comment is determined according to an emotion score associated with the comment and a user propensity of the user responding to comments with similar emotion scores for a topic of the content item. The comments associated with the content item are ranked based on the response likelihood scores associated with the comments. An arrangement of the comments can be determined based on the rankings of the comments, and the comments can be presented to the user according to the determined arrangement.

Abstract: A digital magazine presents content items to a user including one or more animation files. An animation file includes a plurality of frames that each has a variable display duration. To improve presentation of an animation file, a number of frames of the animation file that are preloaded into a memory of the client device on which the animation file is presented is determined based on contextual features describing computing resources available to the client device and on the display duration of frames of the animation file subsequent to a currently displayed frame of the animation file. Additionally, an animation file may be selected for preloading and display from a plurality of animation files based on a ranking the animation files.

Abstract: A system generates and displays to a user of a digital magazine a list of candidate topics. The system first receives a package name list from a user device of the user, and the package name list indicates computer applications installed on the user device. The system retrieves a package name-topic matrix generated based on information associated with a set of existing users of the system. The system compares package names included in the received package name list and package names included in the package name-topic matrix, and identifies known topics in the package name-topic matrix based on the comparison. The system generates a list of candidate topics for the user based on the identified known topics, and provides the list for display to the user. In response to candidate topics selected by the user, the system provides to the user content relevant to the selected candidate topics.

Abstract: A digital magazine server identifies content items for recommendation to a user based on content items with which the user previously interacted. Based on key phrases and terms in content items with which the user previously interacted, topics are associated with the content items and used to generate a vector for each content item. The vectors are used to generate clusters including one or more content items. A characteristic vector is generated for each cluster based on the vectors generated for content items within a cluster. Candidate content items are retrieved and topics included in the candidate content items are used along with the characteristic vectors to determine a measure of similarity between candidate content items and various clusters. Candidate content items with at least a threshold measure of similarity to a cluster are selected for presentation to the user.

Abstract: A digital magazine server receives user comments on content items of a digital magazine and generates comment threads. A comment thread has one or more user comments associated with a content item and at least one topic. A topic thread on a selected topic includes one or more comment threads related to the selected topic. To select comment threads for a topic thread based on the selected topic, the digital magazine server determines the relevance of the topic of each comment thread to the topic of the topic thread and determines the quality of the comment thread based on a plurality of quality factors such as number of comments and timestamps of the comments in a comment thread. The digital magazine server aggregates the comment threads based on at least one of topic relevance determination and thread quality determination and selects comment threads based on the aggregation.

Abstract: A digital magazine application executing on a client device presents a digital magazine to a user including content items retrieved from one or more sources based on information associated with the user. When presenting the digital magazine, a cover is presented including an image and one or more headlines describing one or more content items included in the digital magazine. The cover may be generated by clustering content items included in the digital magazine and ranking content items in various clusters based on their characteristics. Based on the rankings, information describing content items from various clusters is included on the cover. Alternatively, the cover includes information describing content items identified based on the order in which the content items are presented by the digital magazine.

Abstract: A user is presented with a digital magazine through a user interface of his/her client device. By monitoring the user's interactions with the digital magazine or content of the digital magazine, action with the user interface can be used to progress the user to discovery of and access to similarly grouped functionality, e.g., a reader category, a communicator category, and a curator category. For example, each category of user interactions can represent a different set of functions of the digital magazine. Based on the user interactions, a skill level of the user in each of the categories can be determined. One or more functions of the digital magazine can then be selected for presentation to the user based on the user's skill level in each category. The user interface of the digital magazine can then be modified to include the additional functions of the digital magazine, and the digital magazine can be presented to the user.

Abstract: A digital magazine server user may identify a content item presented by the digital magazine server to save or present to other digital magazine server users by interacting with a client device presenting the content item. For example, providing a gesture to the client device identifies a content item for presentation to other digital magazine server users. The gesture may begin by the user interacting with a portion of a display device that displays a portion of the content item and continue as the user interacts with the display device along a path from the portion to an additional portion. When the gesture is completed, the user may be presented with options to present the content item to additional digital magazine server users, or the content item may be presented to other digital magazine server users.

Abstract: A solution is provided for presenting content items of a digital magazine to a user of a digital magazine server, where a dynamic index is provided to indicate which content items are currently displayed on a display of the computing device. Multiple content items of the digital magazine can be arranged in a content panel. A dynamic index is synchronized with the display region of the content panel such that when a position of the display region of the content panel changes, a dynamic index is updated to indicate the changed position of the display region of the content panel. A portion of a content item can be displayed or hidden depending on current user interaction with the display panel. The display region indicator indicates the displayed portions of the content items and their corresponding hidden portions.

Abstract: An online content system, such as a digital magazine, provides scrollable content that can be advanced in discrete, full-page scrolling increments. Each page of the content may include text and one or more images. The online content system thus provides a page scrolling animation that minimizes the negative affect of fast-scrolling text on a user's experience. In the animation of a single page scroll, the text moves less than a full height of the page and the image(s) move the full height of the page (i.e., the current image moves completely off the page and the new image moves into position from a location completely off the page). During this animation, the image may pass over the text, covering the old text and revealing the new text as it moves into its final position. The old text may also fade out while the new text fades in.

Abstract: A digital magazine server presents content, which may include images, retrieved from various sources to a user. To improve presentation of images while allowing modification of images, the digital magazine server identifies feature points in an image and identifies regions of the image including the feature points. Groups of regions are generated based at least on the number of feature points in each region and the location of each region. Based on information associated with the groups, such as the location of various groups and the aspect ratio of various groups, one or more groups are selected and associated with the image. The selected groups may identify regions of the image including an object or not including an object, providing information for modifying the image without obscuring objects in the image.

Abstract: A digital magazine server logs user interactions with content provided by the server, including the topic of the content and time of the interaction by the user. For each user of the server, the server segments the time interval (e.g., a day) of the user's interactions with content into time periods, e.g., fixed time periods or automatically determined time periods, and ranks topics of interest for each time period. The server also obtains a list of topics that each user interacted with each day. The digital magazine server uses a time segmentation module based on content interaction data and associated timing information from the users of the server. Upon receiving a request for content from a user, the digital magazine server ranks the content for display to the user based on the match between the content and the ranked topics for the user during the current time associated with the request.

Abstract: An application associated with a digital magazine server receives actions from a user of the digital magazine server with content provided by the application. Additionally, the application obtains rules including suggested actions for the user to perform that are associated with actions previously performed by the user. As the user interacts with the application, the application captures information describing actions performed by the user and compares the actions performed by the user to the rules. If the application identifies a rule including information describing actions previously performed by the user that match captured actions, the application presents information identifying the suggested action in the identified rule to the user.

Abstract: An application associated with a digital magazine server and executing on a client device uses one or more dynamic page templates specifying the layout and formatting of content from the digital magazine server to generate pages of content for presentation to a user. To modify presentation of pages of content, the application receives dynamic page templates from the digital magazine server that replace or modify dynamic page templates previously stored on the client device executing the application. The application may request dynamic page templates from the digital magazine server when certain conditions are satisfied in some embodiments. Alternatively, the digital magazine server determines when to communicate dynamic page templates to the client device executing the application.

Abstract: A digital magazine server displays content to a user based on a page template specifying sizing and positioning of content items. The page template is selected from a set of candidate page templates, which is determined based on characteristics of page templates and characteristics of other page templates used to present content to the user. Different characteristics of a page template are weighted based on the page template's position in a series of additional page templates used to present content and characteristics of the additional page templates. Weights associated with different characteristics of a page template are combined to determine a template score for the page template, and the template score is used to determine if the page template is a candidate page template.

Abstract: An online content system, such as a digital magazine, includes an image scaling engine for increasing the resolution of images. The image scaling engine comprises a convolutional neural network. An input image is preprocessed for use as inputs to a convolutional neural network (CNN). The preprocessed input image pixel values are used as inputs to the CNN. The CNN comprises convolutional layers and dense layers for determining image features and increasing image resolution. The CNN is trained using backpropagation to adjust model weights and biases. Each convolutional layer of a CNN detects features in an image by comparing image subregions to a set of known kernels and determining similarities between subregions and kernels using a convolution operation. The dense layers of the CNN have full connections to all of the outputs of a previous layer to determine the specific target output result such as output image pixel values.

Abstract: A digital magazine application executing on a client device presents content retrieved from various sources to a user by presenting content regions that are each associated with various content items. When the digital magazine application identifies a type of interaction with a content region, the content region is modified to present information about various content items associated with the content region. For example, if the digital magazine application determines that a user positions a pointer at least a threshold distance from a surface of a display device for at least a threshold length of time at a location along a length and along a width of a display device where a content region is presented, the content region is modified. For example, the content region is increased in size and information describing content items associated with the content region is presented.

Abstract: A distributed scheduling system is provided for scheduling tasks of providing content items in a digital magazine and verifying completion of tasks performed in a dynamic and scalable way. The distributed scheduling system includes multiple execution devices for executing tasks for generating and presenting the digital magazine, and multiple task service devices for verifying completion of tasks performed by the execution devices. Each of the execution devices and task service devices generates a heartbeat indicating the operation status of the device for executing a corresponding task. A heartbeat is an electric representation generated by the device to indicate the operation status of the device (e.g., operable/functional or inoperable/down). Each task may be associated with a corresponding one of the task service devices, and each task service device may verify completion of its associated tasks.

Abstract: A digital magazine server creates a section of a digital magazine including content items based on a page template describing the relative positioning and sizing of content items. A page template may include display regions specifying the size of content items as a percentage of a display area. Additionally, a display region in a page template may specify use of a sub-template for presenting content items. The sub-template includes display regions specifying the relative positioning of content items presented in the display region specifying use of the sub-template. To generate the section of the digital magazine, various page templates are scored and a page template is selected based on the scoring. One or more diversity policies may be enforced when selecting the page template to improve user interaction with the digital magazine.

Abstract: A digital magazine server creates a section of a digital magazine including content items based on a page template describing the relative positioning and sizing of content items. A page template may include display regions specifying the size of content items as a percentage of a display area. Additionally, a display region in a page template may specify use of a sub-template for presenting content items. The sub-template includes display regions specifying the relative positioning of content items presented in the display region specifying use of the sub-template. To generate the section of the digital magazine, various page templates are scored and a page template is selected based on the scoring. One or more diversity policies may be enforced when selecting the page template to improve user interaction with the digital magazine.