Patents by Inventor James C. Willeford

James C. Willeford has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 8271987
    Abstract: Techniques are described for facilitating access of users to tasks that are available to be performed, such as via a task exchange system that serves as an intermediary to facilitate performance by some task performer users of tasks supplied by other task requester users. The techniques may include automatically providing a particular group of task performer users with access to a supply of available tasks that are appropriate for those task performer users, such as based on an aggregate probability or other likelihood measure that the task performer users as a group will collectively accept to perform those tasks in a specified manner. More generally, the affinity and/or appropriateness of a group of users to perform one or more tasks may be based on various information related to the users, including past task performance behavior of those users, and/or qualifications or more general reputational aspects of those users.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 1, 2007
    Date of Patent: September 18, 2012
    Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: James C. Willeford, Nicole A. Deflaux, Vidya V. Iyer, Anand Chelian, Ranganath Atreya, Adam D. Bradley
  • Patent number: 8219693
    Abstract: Techniques are described for providing enhanced access to stored data and related functionality, such as data stored by a system across multiple alternative storage partitions. At least some of the stored data may be specific to particular users who interact with the system, such as for users to perform tasks supplied by other users. The enhanced data access techniques may include storing at least a subset of each user's associated data on a single storage partition, and then efficiently identifying the storage partition corresponding to a user so that requests from that user may be handled by a computing node associated with that corresponding storage partition. Furthermore, additional data access enhancement techniques may relate to initially identifying an appropriate storage partition for a user and/or for migrating existing user data to a new partition identified as being appropriate for a user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 12, 2010
    Date of Patent: July 10, 2012
    Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: Nicole A. Deflaux, Adam D. Bradley, Ranganath Atreya, Anand Chelian, Vidya V. Iyer, James C. Willeford
  • Patent number: 8108352
    Abstract: A scalable data store framework is provided to migrate data across partitions in a data store without compromising data availability for customers. The scalable data store framework includes one or more partitions configured to manage a set of “entities” for a network-based service. When a new-partition event is detected, a target partition is identified for bifurcation and various additional partitions are added to the data store. After the target partition is replicated into the additional partitions, some entities associated with the target partition are migrated to the additional partitions in order to maintain good load balance in the data store.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 24, 2010
    Date of Patent: January 31, 2012
    Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: Vidya V. Iyer, Nicole A. Deflaux, Adam D. Bradley, James C. Willeford
  • Patent number: 7958518
    Abstract: Techniques are described for providing enhanced interactions with software services, such as when executing software programs use remote software services. For example, if a software program is executing on a first computing system and using remote services provided by one or more other computing systems, one or more local software proxies may be executed on the first computing system to represent the remote services. The software program may interact in a common manner with the local software proxies, while each local software proxy may interact with its corresponding remote service in a manner specific to that remote service and transparent to the software program. Furthermore, a local software proxy may facilitate software program testing, such as by interacting with a local copy of a remote service rather than the actual remote service during testing and/or by emulating asynchronous message interactions with a remote service during testing.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 26, 2007
    Date of Patent: June 7, 2011
    Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.
    Inventor: James C. Willeford
  • Patent number: 7949999
    Abstract: Techniques are described for providing enhanced access to software services or other software programs that provide interfaces for use by clients. The enhanced access may, for example, be provided for a software service having multiple distinct versions with distinct corresponding interfaces, such as if some clients continue to initiate access to older versions of the software service using corresponding older interfaces, while other clients initiate access to a current software service version using a corresponding current interface version. The enhanced access techniques may further include automatically adapting requests that correspond to older interface versions of a software service so that the adapted requests correspond to the current interface version for the software service, and responses may similarly be adapted from a format for a current version of a software service to a format for a prior interface version used by the request that resulted in the response.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 7, 2007
    Date of Patent: May 24, 2011
    Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.
    Inventor: James C. Willeford
  • Patent number: 7827286
    Abstract: Techniques are described for providing enhanced access to stored data and related functionality, such as data stored by a system across multiple alternative storage partitions. At least some of the stored data may be specific to particular users who interact with the system, such as for users to perform tasks supplied by other users. The enhanced data access techniques may include storing at least a subset of each user's associated data on a single storage partition, and then efficiently identifying the storage partition corresponding to a user so that requests from that user may be handled by a computing node associated with that corresponding storage partition. Furthermore, additional data access enhancement techniques may relate to initially identifying an appropriate storage partition for a user and/or for migrating existing user data to a new partition identified as being appropriate for a user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 15, 2007
    Date of Patent: November 2, 2010
    Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: Nicole A. Deflaux, Adam D. Bradley, Ranganath Atreya, Anand Chelian, Vidya V. Iyer, James C. Willeford
  • Patent number: 7788233
    Abstract: A scalable data store framework is provided to migrate data across partitions in a data store without compromising data availability for customers. The scalable data store framework includes one or more partitions configured to manage a set of “entities” for a network-based service. When a new-partition event is detected, a target partition is identified for bifurcation and various additional partitions are added to the data store. After the target partition is replicated into the additional partitions, some entities associated with the target partition are migrated to the additional partitions in order to maintain good load balance in the data store.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 5, 2007
    Date of Patent: August 31, 2010
    Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: Vidya V. Iyer, Nicole A. Deflaux, Adam D. Bradley, James C. Willeford
  • Patent number: 7730034
    Abstract: Techniques are described for storing and accessing data on heterogeneous types of data repositories, such as by a distributed software system that uses multiple data repositories on multiple computing nodes, including to transfer groups of data between multiple heterogeneous types of data repositories. In some situations, the techniques may be used by a system that stores various types of data regarding users or other entities that are modeled by the system, such as to transfer a group of data that represents an entity. The transfer of data may be facilitated by use of an abstraction interface that provides a uniform interface for accessing the multiple data repository types, such as an abstraction interface provided by one or more storage management components that further provide functionality to translate data between various data formats used by the multiple data repository types, such as via use of a common data format.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 19, 2007
    Date of Patent: June 1, 2010
    Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: Nicole A. Deflaux, Vidya V. Iyer, James C. Willeford, Adam D. Bradley