Abstract: Recommendations are provided to users of social network site for a set of audiovisual items; the sequence of recommendations is optimized to increase an overall expected ratings from such users.

Abstract: Recommendations are provided to users based on their location within selected commercial establishments as well as their observed preferences expressed during live item sampling. The recommendations can take a number of forms, including electronic promotional offers communicated to the user's portable device.

Abstract: Advertising and search is performed using temporal parameters of stories, events, topics and electronic documents. The contents of a document relating to an event/topic is analyzed to identify temporal components. These components can be compared with corresponding counterparts in other documents to identify a relative temporal order, and to help drive an advertising engine or search engine.

Abstract: Items—including gourmet products—are evaluated and rated by participants in a controlled event, which can be coordinated by software locally or at a dedicated website. Event data, including item scores and participant scores can be shared with vendors, merchants and other commercial entities associated with the products. Promotional incentives from such entities for the products (and related products) can then be directly targeted and provided to participants and other members of the public. The participant's activities can also be collected and disseminated to affiliates/friends of the participants through social networking sites, personalized web pages, etc.

Abstract: A system and method is disclosed for presenting relevant advertising to web pages, including web logs. The ads can be selected by reference to an underlying content presented in web logs, based on extracting topics from the pages, and using these topics as the basis for a search query. Ads can then be matched against another set of topics derived from web pages forming the search results to the query.

Abstract: Voice verification systems for controlling access to electronic accounts using spoken utterances are disclosed. These systems include a database of words and a sentence synthesis engine that uses the dictionary to construct challenge sentences. A challenge logic routine selects a challenge sentence and processes a spoken response from an entity to determine if the entity is authorized to access an electronic account. Both human and machine spoken utterances can be processed as responses, and in some embodiments, the entity may be an automated agent authorized by a human to conduct transactions in said electronic account.

Abstract: Methods for creating statistical language models (SLMs) for audio Completely Automated Turing Tests for Telling Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHAs) are disclosed. In these methods, candidate challenge items including one or more words are automatically selected from a document corpus. Selected ones of the challenge items are articulated by a machine text-to-speech (TTS) system as candidate articulations. Those articulations are ranked based on a human listener score indicating whether a candidate articulation originated from a machine. The SLM is then trained to recognize machine TTS articulations according to those rankings, by using a subset of the plurality of candidate challenge items identified as machine articulations as a seed set.

Abstract: A CAPTCHA system uses images/pictures and/or motion for granting access to a computing system. The images can be culled from examples used in pictorial games, and can progressively presented to increase the strength of the CAPTCHA challenges. Speech recognition, motion and touch sensing can also be employed as parts of the challenge.

Abstract: A CAPTCHA system uses images/pictures and/or motion for granting access to a computing system. The images can be culled from examples used in pictorial games, and can progressively presented to increase the strength of the CAPTCHA challenges. Speech recognition, motion and touch sensing can also be employed as parts of the challenge.

Abstract: Items—including gourmet products—are evaluated and rated by participants in a controlled event, which can be coordinated by software locally or at a dedicated website. Event data, including item scores and participant scores can be shared with vendors, merchants and other commercial entities associated with the products. Promotional incentives from such entities for the products (and related products) can then be directly targeted and provided to participants and other members of the public. The participant's activities can also be collected and disseminated to affiliates/friends of the participants through social networking sites, personalized web pages, etc.

Abstract: Systems and methods for controlling access to resources using spoken Completely Automatic Public Turing Tests To Tell Humans And Computers Apart (CAPTCHA) tests are disclosed. In these systems and methods, entities seeking access to resources are required to produce an input utterance that contains at least some audio. That utterance is compared with voice reference data for human and machine entities, and a determination is made as to whether the entity requesting access is a human or a machine. Access is then permitted or refused based on that determination.

Abstract: Challenge items for an audible based electronic challenge system are generated using a variety of techniques to identify optimal candidates. The challenge items are intended for use in a computing system that discriminates between humans and text to speech (TTS) system.

Abstract: Items—including gourmet products—are evaluated and rated by participants in a controlled event, which can be coordinated by software locally or at a dedicated website. Event data, including item scores and participant scores can be shared with vendors, merchants and other commercial entities associated with the products. Promotional incentives from such entities for the products (and related products) can then be directly targeted and provided to participants and other members of the public. The participant's activities can also be collected and disseminated to affiliates/friends of the participants through social networking sites, personalized web pages, etc.

Abstract: Items—including gourmet products—are evaluated and rated by participants in a controlled event, which can be coordinated by software locally or at a dedicated website. Event data, including item scores and participant scores can be shared with vendors, merchants and other commercial entities associated with the products. Promotional incentives from such entities for the products (and related products) can then be directly targeted and provided to participants and other members of the public. The participant's activities can also be collected and disseminated to affiliates/friends of the participants through social networking sites, personalized web pages, etc.

Abstract: Items—including gourmet products—are evaluated and rated by participants in a controlled event, which can be coordinated by software locally or at a dedicated website. Event data, including item scores and participant scores can be shared with vendors, merchants and other commercial entities associated with the products. Promotional incentives from such entities for the products (and related products) can then be directly targeted and provided to participants and other members of the public. The participant's activities can also be collected and disseminated to affiliates/friends of the participants through social networking sites, personalized web pages, etc.

Abstract: Items—including gourmet products—are evaluated and rated by participants in a controlled event, which can be coordinated by software locally or at a dedicated website. Event data, including item scores and participant scores can be shared with vendors, merchants and other commercial entities associated with the products. Promotional incentives from such entities for the products (and related products) can then be directly targeted and provided to participants and other members of the public. The participant's activities can also be collected and disseminated to affiliates/friends of the participants through social networking sites, personalized web pages, etc.

Abstract: Items—including gourmet products—are evaluated and rated by participants in a controlled event, which can be coordinated by software locally or at a dedicated website. Event data, including item scores and participant scores can be shared with vendors, merchants and other commercial entities associated with the products. Promotional incentives from such entities for the products (and related products) can then be directly targeted and provided to participants and other members of the public. The participant's activities can also be collected and disseminated to affiliates/friends of the participants through social networking sites, personalized web pages, etc.

Abstract: Items—including gourmet products—are evaluated and rated by participants in a controlled event, which can be coordinated by software locally or at a dedicated website. Event data, including item scores and participant scores can be shared with vendors, merchants and other commercial entities associated with the products. Promotional incentives from such entities for the products (and related products) can then be directly targeted and provided to participants and other members of the public. The participant's activities can also be collected and disseminated to affiliates/friends of the participants through social networking sites, personalized web pages, etc.

Abstract: Items—including gourmet products—are evaluated and rated by participants in a controlled event, which can be coordinated by software locally or at a dedicated website. Event data, including item scores and participant scores can be shared with vendors, merchants and other commercial entities associated with the products. Promotional incentives from such entities for the products (and related products) can then be directly targeted and provided to participants and other members of the public. The participant's activities can also be collected and disseminated to affiliates/friends of the participants through social networking sites, personalized web pages, etc.

Abstract: Various methods and systems for auctioning items such as golf tee times, restaurant reservations, concert tickets or hotel reservations are disclosed. Users can effectively bid on a large number of items but receive at most one item at the end of the auction. This method has the favorable effects for the users of: (1) increasing the probability of successfully bidding for at least one item; (2) making the auction process more convenient by greatly reducing the need for actively monitoring the auction; and, (3) decreasing the possibility a user will be out bid at the last moment and receive no item. This method has the favorable effects for the seller of increasing the probability their listed items will sell and increasing the expected average sales price.