Abstract: Utilizing a scrollbar handle for both zooming and panning a display comprising items in a user interface may be accomplished by monitoring an input device's interaction with the scrollbar handle. If the scroll handle is dragged in a direction away from an orientation of the scroll handle in the scrollbar, a display area zoom function can be activated. The zoom function allows a viewbox, comprising content, to be rescaled as a function of the distance the scroll handle is dragged. A displaybox can be created that distinguishes an area of the viewbox from the remainder of the display, which corresponds to content in the viewbox that would be displayed in normal zoom if the scroll handle were released at that location. Further, upon detecting that the scroll handle is released, the display area can zoom to a view of the content inside the distinguished area.

Abstract: Utilizing a scrollbar handle for both zooming and panning a display comprising items in a user interface may be accomplished by monitoring an input device's interaction with the scrollbar handle. If the scroll handle is dragged in a direction away from an orientation of the scroll handle in the scrollbar, a display area zoom function can be activated. The zoom function allows a viewbox, comprising content, to be rescaled as a function of the distance the scroll handle is dragged. A displaybox can be created that distinguishes an area of the viewbox from the remainder of the display, which corresponds to content in the viewbox that would be displayed in normal zoom if the scroll handle were released at that location. Further, upon detecting that the scroll handle is released, the display area can zoom to a view of the content inside the distinguished area.

Abstract: Utilizing a scrollbar handle for both zooming and panning a display comprising items in a user interface may be accomplished by monitoring an input device's interaction with the scrollbar handle. If the scroll handle is dragged in a direction away from an orientation of the scroll handle in the scrollbar, a display area zoom function can be activated. The zoom function allows a viewbox, comprising content, to be rescaled as a function of the distance the scroll handle is dragged. A displaybox can be created that distinguishes an area of the viewbox from the remainder of the display, which corresponds to content in the viewbox that would be displayed in normal zoom if the scroll handle were released at that location. Further, upon detecting that the scroll handle is released, the display area can zoom to a view of the content inside the distinguished area.

Abstract: The claimed subject matter provides a system and/or a method that facilitates accessing information content based at least in part on relevancy to a user by leveraging user ambitions. User ambitions can take the form of to-do lists, calendar items, goals, or interests. These can be leveraged with or without contextual information, historical data, user profiles, and the like to determine the relevancy of content to a specific user. This can facilitate determining what content is accessible to a user based on relevance. A threshold relevance level can be dynamically adjusted.

Abstract: The claimed subject matter provides a system and/or a method that facilitates user selectable advertising networks. Advertising content can be formed into cohesive subsets of advertising. These subsets can be related to criteria to facilitate selection between available subsets of advertising content. A selection component can facilitate selection of the available subsets of advertising content based on these criteria. The criteria can be related to user preferences. Further the criteria can relate to explicit user preferences such as opt-in or opt-out indicia. The user can be presented with more relevant advertising content where user selection of advertising networks occurs.

Abstract: Utilizing a scrollbar handle for both zooming and panning a display comprising items in a user interface may be accomplished by monitoring an input device's interaction with the scrollbar handle. If the scroll handle is dragged in a direction away from an orientation of the scroll handle in the scrollbar, a display area zoom function can be activated. The zoom function allows a viewbox, comprising content, to be rescaled as a function of the distance the scroll handle is dragged. A displaybox can be created that distinguishes an area of the viewbox from the remainder of the display, which corresponds to content in the viewbox that would be displayed in normal zoom if the scroll handle were released at that location. Further, upon detecting that the scroll handle is released, the display area can zoom to a view of the content inside the distinguished area.

Abstract: Advertisements may be displayed on electronic devices within a variety of contexts, such as websites and applications, but the amount of information that may be conveyed by small advertisements in a portion of the screen may be limited. One technique for displaying information in a limited space involves a zoomable advertisement, wherein the advertisement displayed in a first zoom state is supplemented with additional information upon transitioning to a second zoom state (e.g., zooming in to visualize small content, and zooming out to visualize content that was out of bounds in the first zoom state.) Moreover, the content visible at the second zoom state may present advertising content targeted with respect to the user and based on one or more user criteria. The system may notify an advertisement tracking server of various events, e.g., upon rendering the targeted content on behalf of the user.

Abstract: The claimed subject matter relates to an architecture that can facilitate advertising models in connection with pyramidal volumes of advertising space. In particular, a pixel at one plane of view of an image can be associated with four pixels at a lower plane of view and so on. Advertising rights with respect to the pixel can be offered for sale, which can include all, a subset, or a different set of advertising rights with respect to other pixels in the pyramidal volume. The architecture can construct the data for the image dynamically based upon contextual input and the advertising rights as well as image format can be constructed based upon notions of zoning.

Abstract: An image query system, and associated method and computer program product are disclosed that enhance and accelerate image-based querying. To this end, the present invention presents a digital image query with implict and explicit associated metadata and retrieval of visually similar images or other pertinent information from a large collection of images stored on local, networked, or web-linked repositories.

Abstract: A system and method are provided for optimizing a set of search results typically produced in response to a query. The method may include detecting whether two or more results access equivalent content and selecting a single user-preferred result from the two or more results that access equivalent content. The method may additionally include creating a set of search results for display to a user, the set of search results including the single user-preferred result and excluding any other result that accesses the equivalent content. The system may include a duplication detection mechanism for detecting any results that access equivalent content and a user-preferred result selection mechanism for selecting one of the results that accesses the equivalent content as a user-preferred result.

Abstract: A system and method are provided for improving a user search experience by identifying spam results in a result set produced in response to a query. The system may include a user interface spam feedback mechanism for allowing a user to indicate that a given result is spam. The system may additionally include an automated spam identification mechanism for implementing automated techniques on the given result to determine whether the given result is spam. The system may further include a merging component for merging the determinations of the user interface spam feedback mechanism and the automated spam identification mechanism for deriving an indicator of the likelihood that a given result is spam.

Abstract: A system and method are provided for facilitating user feedback pertaining to search results produced by a search system in response to an input user query. The system may include an edit mode activation option provided in conjunction with the search results. The system may additionally include result manipulation tools triggered in response to a user selection of the edit mode activation option, the result manipulation tools allowing the user to manipulate the search results. The result manipulation tools may include a sorting interface for allowing a user to sort search results. The system may further include a feedback receiving mechanism for receiving and storing the user-manipulated search results for future ranking input or search result personalization input.

Abstract: A system and related techniques accepts user search or query terms over of the Internet or other network or connection. In addition to presenting regularly generated search results, according to embodiments of the invention the search engine and related logic may examine the search string for suggested refinements or improvements to the search terms, to attempt to derive improved results or results closer to the user's search intent. According to embodiments of the invention in one regard, the alternative search logic may attempt to extract related or more meaningful search terms from sources including past usage patterns by users, and other data. That alternative search logic may thus examine the user's search terms to determine a substring match to prior searches, for instance stored by the search host for all users.

Abstract: A system and related techniques monitor a user's attempt to access a Web site or other network site, and detect failed access attempts such as HTTP 404 messages or others. Rather than pass the access failure message directly through to the user, the system may communicate with a search service or other index of stored or cached Web pages or other content images. The user may be given a choice via a dialogue to view a stored version of the site they were attempting to access, so that some or all of the desired information may still be accessed. In embodiments, the user may be directed to differing sources of the identical or similar desired content, via a priority stack. If further embodiments, the operator of the Web site or other content source may choose to apply a cached content override to opt out of making stored content available to searchers or other users, for example for digital rights management purposes.

Abstract: A system and related techniques permit a search service operator to access a variety of disparate relevance measures, and integrate those measures into idealized or unified data sets. A search service operator may employ self-learning networks to generate relevance rankings of Web site hits in response to user queries or searches, such as Boolean text or other searches. To improve the accuracy and quality of the rankings of results, the service provider may accept as inputs relevance measures created from query logs, from human-annotated search records, from independent commercial or other search sites, or from other sources and feed those measures to a normalization engine. That engine may normalize those relevance ratings to a common scale, such as quintiles, percentages or other scales or levels. The provider may then use that idealized or normalized combined measure to, for example, train the search algorithms or heuristics to arrive at better or more accurate results.