Abstract: In some implementations, a method is performed by data processing apparatuses for managing and transmitting delivery route information. Data representing delivery routes is received, each delivery route including a sequence of scheduled delivery stops at locations within a geographic region, each delivery stop corresponding to orders that are scheduled for delivery. The delivery routes are classified into groups of delivery routes based on one or more criteria, and each group of delivery routes is assigned to a respective carrier entity. Respective portions of the data representing the delivery routes are transmitted to corresponding computing systems of the carrier entities assigned to the delivery routes. A carrier entity that has been assigned a group of delivery routes forwards individual delivery routes in the group of delivery routes to driver devices of individual drivers for execution of the individual delivery routes.

Abstract: In some implementations, a method performed by data processing apparatuses includes identifying a first delivery route that includes delivery stops at multiple locations within a first geographic region, and identifying a second delivery route within a second geographic region. The first delivery route can be assigned to a first carrier that is designated to deliver orders within the first geographic region, and the second delivery route can be assigned to a second carrier that is designated to deliver orders within the second geographic region. An additional order can then be identified that is requested to be delivered to a location within the first geographic region. The second delivery route can be modified to include the additional delivery stop for the additional order, including assigning the additional order to the second carrier even though the second carrier is designated to deliver orders within the second geographic region.

Abstract: In some implementations, a method performed by data processing apparatuses includes identifying a first delivery route that includes delivery stops at multiple locations within a first geographic region, and identifying a second delivery route within a second geographic region. The first delivery route can be assigned to a first carrier that is designated to deliver orders within the first geographic region, and the second delivery route can be assigned to a second carrier that is designated to deliver orders within the second geographic region. An additional order can then be identified that is requested to be delivered to a location within the first geographic region. The second delivery route can be modified to include the additional delivery stop for the additional order, including assigning the additional order to the second carrier even though the second carrier is designated to deliver orders within the second geographic region.

Abstract: A system and method for document retrieval is disclosed. The invention addresses a major problem in text-based document retrieval: rapidly finding a small subset of documents in a large document collection (e.g. Web pages on the Internet) that are relevant to a limited set of query terms supplied by the user. The invention is based on utilizing information contained in the document collection about the statistics of word relationships (“context”) to facilitate the specification of search queries and document comparison. The method consists of first compiling word relationships into a context database that captures the statistics of word proximity and occurrence throughout the document collection. At retrieval time, a search matrix is computed from a set of user-supplied keywords and the context database. For each document in the collection, a similar matrix is computed using the contents of the document and the context database.