Patents Assigned to Yahoo ! Inc.
  • Patent number: 9699258
    Abstract: Among other disclosures, a method may include collecting historical communication data and personal data 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 of historical communication data and personal data. The method may include presenting one or more items in the repository on a mobile device, in response to user behavior.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 25, 2013
    Date of Patent: July 4, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventors: Matthew Brezina, Adam Smith, Jeffrey Bonforte
  • 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
  • Publication number: 20170185901
    Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for building a user model. The system includes a processor and a non-transitory storage medium accessible to the processor. The processor is configured to obtain user data from a database, where the user data include user behavior for a plurality of apps installed on one or more user terminals. The processor selects at least one rating parameters using the user data, where the at least one rating parameters indicates a rating of relevant app usage. The system builds the user model based on a rating matrix comprising the at least one rating parameters.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 29, 2015
    Publication date: June 29, 2017
    Applicant: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Ayman FARAHAT, Tarun BHATIA
  • Patent number: 9690860
    Abstract: Briefly, embodiments disclosed herein may relate to formulating recommended search queries. Search query recommendations may be based, at least in part, on multiple user searches performed at least in part in response to consumption of publicly available content, for example.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 30, 2014
    Date of Patent: June 27, 2017
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Eric Bax, John Peng, Scott Ard, Arun Autuchirayll
  • Patent number: 9684908
    Abstract: A content item presented to a user may involve two or more topics, such as news articles mentioning athletes or actors. Users may enjoy expressing opinions about a comparison of the topics, such as personal preferences or an evaluation of talent. Presented herein are techniques for automatically generating, for the content item, a poll among the topics of the content item. The respective comparisons of a comparison set are evaluated for the topics of the content item, and a comparison relevance score is computed identifying the relevance of the comparison of the topics. The comparison having the highest relevance for the topics is selected, and a comparison question is formulated and presented to the user with the content item. Results may be tabulated and presented for the topics of the content item. These techniques facilitate user expression about the content item without depending upon user-authored polls for each content item.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 1, 2014
    Date of Patent: June 20, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO!, INC.
    Inventors: Oleg Rokhlenko, Idan Szpektor
  • Patent number: 9686590
    Abstract: A method comprises retrieving a profile of a given user, the given user having a given-user device; delivering a content item to the given-user device; receiving one or more user-specified tags associated with the content item; identifying one or more buddies of the user as indicated in the profile; and delivering the one or more tags to the one or more buddies.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 26, 2015
    Date of Patent: June 20, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventors: Ronald Jacoby, Brenda O'Kane
  • Patent number: 9685158
    Abstract: Systems and methods to process and/or present information relating to voice messages for a user that are received from other persons. In one embodiment, a method implemented in a data processing system includes: receiving first data associated with prior communications or activities for the user on a mobile device; receiving a voice message for the user; transcribing the voice message using the first data to provide a transcribed message; and sending the transcribed message to the mobile device for display to the user. In one embodiment, options are displayed for selection by the user to correct a misspelled word in the transcribed message.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 27, 2015
    Date of Patent: June 20, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventor: Jeffrey Bonforte
  • Patent number: 9684449
    Abstract: Methods and system for generating a first set of selection options for presentation on a display screen of a television. Each first set selection option identifies a sub-set of symbols. The presentation provides a visual representation of spatial relationship between the first set of selection options and a first group of input options available on a physical remote control. A first user selection is received for the first group of input options. In response to receiving the first user selection, a second set of selection options corresponding to the first user selection, is generated for presentation as a visual representation of spatial relationship between the second set of selection options and a second group of input options available on the physical remote control. A second user selection is received for the input options from the second group and is interpreted to identify selection of one of the sub-set of symbols.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 10, 2014
    Date of Patent: June 20, 2017
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventor: Hsi-Heng Sean Yang
  • Patent number: 9686400
    Abstract: A system and method for driver-aware notification that collects and analyzes contextual information about the driving environment to free a device owner from having to decide whether or not to answer an incoming message.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 9, 2014
    Date of Patent: June 20, 2017
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventor: Jean-Baptiste Queru
  • Patent number: 9679082
    Abstract: Methods, systems and programming for providing content. In one example, a request for content is received from a user. One or more parameters associated with a platform on which the requested content is to be presented are obtained. A plurality pieces of addition content are obtained based on the requested content or information associated with the user. Each piece of the addition content is associated with a user engagement metric. A layout of an enriched content page is determined based on the one or more parameters. The layout of the enriched content page includes one or more slots for presenting content. One or more pieces of the additional content are assigned to the one or more slots based on the user engagement metric. The enriched content page including the requested content and the one or more pieces of the additional content is transmitted to the platform.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 6, 2014
    Date of Patent: June 13, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventor: Bruno M. Fernandez-Ruiz
  • Patent number: 9680897
    Abstract: A system can throttle compression of instrumentation data related to a page view, by throttled scanning processes. Then that data can be communication over the Internet to a server effectively. The scanning of instrumentation data can be performed via batch processing; and therefore, data for compression may be maximized or throttled. The system can also accelerate the various caching options involved with the streaming of content items and ad items. For example, such items can be retrieved by the local and/or remote caches associated with the client-side application and/or the page view, prior to the items being requested by and/or presented to a user, via batch retrieval processes. These batch retrieval processes can also be combined with the batch scanning processes.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 31, 2014
    Date of Patent: June 13, 2017
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventor: Timothy Michael Tully
  • Patent number: 9674305
    Abstract: Disclosed is a method and apparatus that receives, over a network from a computing device being used by a user, a request to configure a first software module host with respect to a software module, the first software module host associated with the user. The apparatus transmits over the network to the computing device instructions to configure, for display by the computing device, the first software module host in accordance with the request. The apparatus computer transmits over the network to the computing device instructions to apply the same configuration with respect to the software module to a second software module host, the second software module host also associated with the user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 21, 2009
    Date of Patent: June 6, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventors: Paul Broman, Stephen Owens, John Hazelwood, Parag Jain, Jayadev Chandrasekhar, Steven Carlson, David Pham
  • Patent number: 9672445
    Abstract: Disclosed are systems and methods for improving interactions with and between computers in a content generating, hosting and/or providing system supported by or configured with personal computing devices, servers and/or platforms. The systems interact to identify and retrieve data across platforms, which can be used to improve the quality of data used in processing interactions between or among processors in such systems. The disclosed systems and methods provide systems and methods for automatic discovery of high quality digital content. According to embodiments, the present disclosure describes improved computer system and methods directed to analyzing raw image data, such as features and descriptors of images in order to identify a high quality image(s). Such images can be identified from a database of images, and such images can be identified in real-time, or near real-time during the capture of an image(s) by a camera.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 3, 2015
    Date of Patent: June 6, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventors: Simon Kayode Osindero, Frank Liu, Gerry Pesavento, Miriam Redi, Lucca Maria Aiello, Anastasia Alexeevna Svetlichnaya
  • Patent number: 9672288
    Abstract: Briefly, embodiments of methods and/or systems for providing enhancements to search query processing are disclosed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 30, 2013
    Date of Patent: June 6, 2017
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Hui Wu, Shenhong Zhu, Huming Wu
  • Publication number: 20170154356
    Abstract: An online advertising system receives an advertisement from an advertiser. The system analyzes the advertisement, extracts its features and provides to the advertiser a quality rating for the advertisement which depends on a user engagement factor such as the predicted dwell time for the ad, given its features. The system further provides to the advertiser suggestions for improvements to the advertisement, such as a list of actionable guidelines that can improve the expected dwell time of the ad, and likely its conversion rate.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 30, 2015
    Publication date: June 1, 2017
    Applicant: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Michele Trevisiol, Gabriele Tolomei, Nicola Barbieri, Mounia Lalmas, Puneet Mohan Sangal, Fabrizio Silvestri
  • Patent number: 9668375
    Abstract: A building for a data center (or server farm) includes a stack structure that interfaces with an environment and one or more housings coupled to a floor and the stack structure. Each of the housings includes one or more racks with a plurality of servers and each of the servers includes a computer fan capable of varying speed or reversing direction. The building also includes one or more filters between the one or more housings and the environment and one or more walls operable to be between the one or more filters and the environment.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 13, 2014
    Date of Patent: May 30, 2017
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Mozan Totani, Barry Bianculli
  • Patent number: 9665596
    Abstract: Embodiments of the invention are directed to using image data and contextual data to determine information about a scene, based on one or more previously obtained images. Contextual data, such location of image capture, can be used to determine previously obtained images related to the contextual data and other location-related information, such as billboard locations. With even low resolution devices, such as cell phone, image attributes, such as a histogram or optically recognized characters, can be compared between the previously obtained images and the newly captured image. Attributes matching within a predefined threshold indicate matching images. Information on the content of matching previously obtained images can be provided back to a user who captured the new image. User profile data can refine the content information. The content information can also be used as search terms for additional searching or other processing.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 4, 2016
    Date of Patent: May 30, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventors: Arun Ramanujapuram, Malcolm Slaney
  • Patent number: 9665663
    Abstract: Briefly, embodiments of methods and/or systems of providing relevant and diverse recommendations are disclosed. For one embodiment, as an example, a system may extract structured and/or semi-structured parameters from web resources obtained from interaction logs comprising records of browsing sessions. Content from extracted parameters may be compared, using an ontology, to find relationships among web resources and query resources.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 17, 2014
    Date of Patent: May 30, 2017
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Peter Mika, Roi Blanco, Julia Hoxha
  • Patent number: 9665629
    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.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 14, 2005
    Date of Patent: May 30, 2017
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventor: Bradley De Kindiq
  • Patent number: 9659214
    Abstract: A digital document is represented as a set of codes comprising indices into a feature space comprising a number of subspaces, each code corresponds to one subspace and identifying a cell within the subspace. Each digital document can be represented by a code set, and the code set can be used as selection criteria for identifying a number of digital documents using each digital document's corresponding code set. By way of some non-limiting examples, digital document code sets can be used to identify similar or different digital images, used to identify duplicate or nearly-duplicate digital images, used to identify similar and/or different digital images for inclusion in a recommendation, used to identify and rank digital images in a set of search results.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 30, 2015
    Date of Patent: May 23, 2017
    Assignee: YAHOO! INC.
    Inventors: Lyndon Kennedy, Ioannis Kalantidis, David Shamma