Patents Assigned to Yahoo ! Inc.
  • Patent number: 9830351
    Abstract: Systems and methods for generating and playing a sequence of media objects based on a mood gradient are also disclosed. A mood gradient is a sequence of items, in which each item is media object having known characteristics or a representative set of characteristics of a media object, that is created or used by a user for a specific purpose. Given a mood gradient, one or more new media objects are selected for each item in the mood gradient based on the characteristics associated with that item. In this way, a sequence of new media objects is created but the sequence exhibits a similar variation in media object characteristics. The mood gradient may be presented to a user or created via a display illustrating a three-dimensional space in which each dimension corresponds to a different characteristic. The mood gradient may be represented as a path through the three-dimensional space and icons representing media objects are located within the three-dimensional space based on their characteristics.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 6, 2013
    Date of Patent: November 28, 2017
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: William White, Malcolm Slaney
  • Publication number: 20170262878
    Abstract: Systems, devices, and methods are disclosed for determining the quality of traffic received from different web page publishers, and setting a pricing structure for the different traffic based on the determined quality of traffic. Accurately determining the quality of traffic and/or clicks from different publishers allows the network system described herein to offer a fair marketplace with just return on investments (ROI) for advertisers, and offer a robust and accurate traffic quality based pricing model for publishers. Internet based technology, and in particular deep learning techniques available through a neural network, are utilized to determine the pricing structure based on click and/or web page traffic quality measurements generated through the deep learning techniques.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 8, 2016
    Publication date: September 14, 2017
    Applicant: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Suleyman CETINTAS, Pengyuan WANG, Jian YANG, Puneet Mohan SANGAL
  • Publication number: 20170249311
    Abstract: Methods and devices for assessing the quality of user-generated content are described. In one embodiment, a method is disclosed for measuring the quality of a user-generated answer to a question by combining various factors, including question-answer surface word vector similarity, question-answer explicit semantic analysis vector similarity, answer-answer explicit sematic analysis vector similarity, query performance predictor, sentiment analysis, textual analysis of the answer, and reputation of the answerer. The method uses a learning procedure to determine the best algorithm for measuring the overall quality of the answer based on these factors.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 26, 2016
    Publication date: August 31, 2017
    Applicant: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Dan Pelleg, Oleg Rokhlenko, Idan Szpektor, Yuval David Pinter, David Carmel, Shirin Oskooi, Somesh Jain, Archit Shrivastava
  • Publication number: 20170228457
    Abstract: Systems, methods, and apparatuses are disclosed for adaptively generating a summary of web-based content based on an attribute of a mobile communication device having transmitted a request for the web-based content. By adaptively generating the summary based on an attribute of the mobile communication device such as an amount of visual space available or a number of characters permitted in the interface, a display of the web-based content may be controlled on the mobile communication device in a way that was not previously available. This enables control of displaying web-based content that has been adaptively generated to be displayed on limited display screens based on a learned attribute of the mobile communication device requesting the web-based content.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 9, 2016
    Publication date: August 10, 2017
    Applicant: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Youssef Billawal, Yashar Mehdad, Dragomir Radev, Amanda Stent, Kapil Thadani
  • Patent number: 9727901
    Abstract: An image-based recommendation system provides a first set of selectable images to a user and receives user selections from the first set of images. If a user selects a single image from the first set of images, the product page associated with the selected image is transmitted to the user. If the user makes multiple selections from the first set of images, then the images associated with the user selections are analyzed and a second set of similar images is generated for transmission to the user. The process of receiving and analyzing user-selected images, generating image sets and transmission of generated images sets continues until the user selects a single image. The precision of identification of similar images can be improved by providing the user selections as training data to the image-based recommendation system.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 13, 2013
    Date of Patent: August 8, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventors: Ralph Li, Evans Tseng, Brian Liu
  • Publication number: 20170220617
    Abstract: Multi-thread systems and methods are described for concurrently handling requests to commit data updates to a database by a plurality of data transactions. The database preferably supports multi-versioning and the data transactions are preferably isolated by snapshot isolation. In one embodiment, concurrent and lock-free handling of requests to commit data updates includes performing two types of concurrent data conflict detection. A transaction proceeds to commit only if it passes both types of conflict detection. The first type of conflict detection is based on a hash map between data keys and their commit timestamps whereas the second type of conflict detection is based on a log that keeps track of the status of transactions whose requests to commit are actively being processed. In another embodiment, concurrent conflict detection for data items in concurrent transactions is broken down into buckets and locks are used for accessing each bucket.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 1, 2016
    Publication date: August 3, 2017
    Applicant: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Edward Bortnikov, Ohad Shacham, Idit Keidar
  • Patent number: 9720882
    Abstract: Generating notifications comprising text and image data for client devices with limited display screens is disclosed. An image to be included in the notification is resized and reshaped using image processing techniques. The resized image is further analyzed to identify optimal portions for placing the text data. The text data can also be analyzed and shortened for including at the identified portion of resized image to generate a notification. The resulting notification displays the text and image data optimally within the limited screen space of the client device so that a user observing the notification can obtain the information at a glance.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 20, 2014
    Date of Patent: August 1, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventors: Bin Ni, Jia Li
  • Patent number: 9721389
    Abstract: In one embodiment, a first perspective of a three-dimensional marker may be detected, where the three-dimensional marker has a shape that presents a different appearance from every angle. A first three-dimensional virtual overlay corresponding to the first perspective of the three-dimensional marker may be identified or generated. The first three-dimensional virtual overlay corresponding to the first perspective of the three-dimensional marker may be projected or displayed such that the first three-dimensional virtual overlay substantially covers the first perspective of the three-dimensional marker.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 3, 2014
    Date of Patent: August 1, 2017
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventor: Lars Erik Holmquist
  • Patent number: 9721228
    Abstract: Systems and methods to host a social network locally on a user's computing device using social data at the user device. In one embodiment, a method includes maintaining, on a local computing device of a user, social data regarding social relationships of the user in order to support a social network of the user; and hosting, via the local computing device, the social network.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 12, 2011
    Date of Patent: August 1, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventors: Frank J. Cort, Brian Hein, Jon New
  • Patent number: 9716764
    Abstract: Among other disclosures, a method may include collecting historical communication data, personal data and usage statistics relating to a portion of a plurality of communications, a sender of one or more of the communications or one or more recipients of the communications. The method may include depositing the collected data into a repository. The method may include presenting the usage statistics in response to user behavior.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 25, 2008
    Date of Patent: July 25, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventors: Matthew Brezina, Adam Smith
  • Patent number: 9715546
    Abstract: The present teaching relates to searching encrypted data. In one example, a search request is received for encrypted documents. An encrypted query is generated based on the search request. The encrypted query is sent to a server that stores a first encrypted index and a second encrypted index. The first encrypted index maps encrypted keywords to full blocks each of which has a same size and is fully filled with encrypted document identities (IDs). The second encrypted index maps encrypted keywords to partial blocks each of which has the same size and is partially filled with encrypted document IDs. Based on the encrypted query, one or more encrypted document IDs are determined by searching against both the first encrypted index and the second encrypted index. A search result is generated based on the one or more encrypted document IDs. The search result is provided in response to the search request.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 18, 2016
    Date of Patent: July 25, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventors: Payman Mohassel, Ian Miers
  • Patent number: 9710433
    Abstract: Briefly, embodiments disclosed herein may relate to dynamic display of representations of digital content for user interaction on computing devices, for example, including displaying a collection of content items on a display of a computing device, wherein a two-or-more-dimensional spatial arrangement of individual content items of the displayed collection comprises individual content items being positioned relative to other individual content items based, at least in part, on analytic characterizations of one or more attributes of the individual content items.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 29, 2013
    Date of Patent: July 18, 2017
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Simon Kayode Osindero, Robert Jaros, Eric Willis, Clayton Mellina, Anastasia Svetlichnaya
  • Patent number: 9710759
    Abstract: In accordance with one aspect, methods and apparatus facilitate the filtering of unsolicited bulk electronic mail (email) sent from spammers. A plurality of recipient patterns for a plurality of emails from known spammers is logged. A plurality of recipient patterns for a plurality of emails from known non-spammers is also logged. A probabilistic model for predicting whether an unknown sender identity is a spammer is generated or modified based on the logged recipient patterns for the emails from known spammers and known non-spammers.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 12, 2010
    Date of Patent: July 18, 2017
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Anirban Dasgupta, Kilian Quirin Weinberger, Yehuda Koren
  • Patent number: 9710447
    Abstract: System, method and architecture for providing improved visual recognition by modeling visual content, semantic content and an implicit social network representing individuals depicted in a collection of content, such as visual images, photographs, etc. which network may be determined based on co-occurrences of individuals represented by the content, and/or other data linking the individuals. In accordance with one or more embodiments, using images as an example, a relationship structure may comprise an implicit structure, or network, determined from co-occurrences of individuals in the images. A kernel jointly modeling content, semantic and social network information may be built and used in automatic image annotation and/or determination of relationships between individuals, for example.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 17, 2014
    Date of Patent: July 18, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventors: Jia Li, Xiangnan Kong
  • Patent number: 9704045
    Abstract: One or more systems and/or methods for providing content to a user are provided. An image, associated with a user, may be evaluated utilizing an image classifier to identify an object within the image. The object may be utilized to identify a predicted class for the user. In an example, the predicted class may correspond to a life event (e.g., graduating college, having a baby, buying a house, etc.) and/or a life stage (e.g., adolescence, retirement, etc.). Locational information (e.g., a geotag) for the image may be evaluated to determine an image location (e.g., a location where the image was generated). Responsive to the image location corresponding to a home location of the user, the predicted class may be determined to be a class associated with the user. Content (e.g., promotional content) may be selected from a content repository based upon the class and subsequently provided to the user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 6, 2015
    Date of Patent: July 11, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventors: Kristjan Jonsson, Sanjeev Jagannatha Rao, Daniel J. Tasse
  • Patent number: 9703783
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer programs are presented for selecting news articles for presentation to a user. One method includes an operation for measuring dwelltimes for a first set of news items, where the dwelltime for a news item is based on the amount of time that the news item is displayed to a viewer. Further, the method includes an operation for training a classifier of news items based on the measured dwelltimes and based on features associated with the first set of news items. Additionally, the method includes an operation for ranking with the classifier a second set of news items for presentation to the user, the ranking also using the profile of the user for delivery of customized news to the user. The ranked second set of news item is then presented to the user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 25, 2013
    Date of Patent: July 11, 2017
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Xing Yi, Scott Gaffney, Jean-Marc Langlois
  • Publication number: 20170193107
    Abstract: Provided herein are mixed-media modules with functional layers that can be used to provided additional information to targeted audience. Systems and methods are disclosed for performing processing involved with search, such as processing search information to return search results. In one exemplary implementation, there is provided a method for processing information to return search results including mixed-media media presentation(s) selectable by a user. Moreover, such method may involve user interaction to manipulate the presentation, display various media and/or effect other functionality. Further implementations may involve generation of interactive, visually rich mixed-media content of high information density providing improved user experience and/or improved value to various participants.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 12, 2013
    Publication date: July 6, 2017
    Applicants: Qwiki, Inc., YAHOO! INC
    Inventors: Doug IMBRUCE, Owen BOSSOLA, Rasmus KNUTTSSON, Tommy CHHENG, Hakim EL HATTAB
  • Publication number: 20170193545
    Abstract: A filtering machine receives sponsored content and filters the sponsored content according to a quality metric generated by quality model circuitry and assigned to the instance of sponsored content. The quality model circuitry generates the quality metric in accordance with historical feedback received about other sponsored content and a collection of quality factors pertaining to the sponsored content. Based on the quality metric for the sponsored content, the filtering machine can effect service of the sponsored content to a user device for display thereon.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 30, 2015
    Publication date: July 6, 2017
    Applicant: YAHOO! Inc.
    Inventors: Ke Zhou, Miriam Redi, Mounia Lalmas, Puneet Mohan Sangal
  • Patent number: 9696770
    Abstract: A server cooling system includes: a flex-switch with one or more flexible building bridges; one or more utility farms coupled with the flex-switch; a power distribution unit operably connected to the flex-switch; and a server POD including one or more racks operably connected to the power distribution unit. The flex-switch is configurable to include additional utility farms, one or more generator farms, and one or more UPS farms.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 8, 2012
    Date of Patent: July 4, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventors: Barry Bianculli, Norman Holt, Jesus Suarez
  • Patent number: D791800
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 2, 2014
    Date of Patent: July 11, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventors: Guy Hepworth, Craig Douglas Weber, Peter Matthew Klein, Aparna Jain