Abstract: A system and method for efficiently executing a plurality of live parallel Internet content usage experiments using a large pool of randomly selected participating users (separated into control and test groups) while minimally disturbing offered content is provided. In an illustrative implementation, a content provider communicates the parameters for a content usage experiment to a content server. A complimentary test subject verification script operates on the content server that determines which client computing devices are to be included in the experiment group. In operation, a participating client computing device requests content from the content provider's server. The content provider's server executes the test subject verification script to determine if the client computing device is to be considered as a test subject. The content usage of the experiment content and non-experiment content is tracked and compared to each other to determine if the experiment content impacted content usage.

Abstract: A system and process for providing adaptable controls to computing applications to facilitate interaction by an operator with displayable content. In a computer system running a computing application, it is advantageous to provide adaptable controls that have the ability to reflect content or feature preferences of operators of computing applications. These dynamic computing application controls cooperate with computing applications to provide additional features to the operator.

Abstract: A system and process for providing adaptable controls to computing applications to facilitate interaction by an operator with computing application content. In a computer system running a computing application, it is advantageous to provide adaptable controls that have the ability to reflect content or feature preferences of operators of computing applications. These dynamic computing application controls cooperate with computing applications to provide additional features to the operator. However, unlike conventional computing application controls that have their parameters hard-coded within the computing application itself, the present invention provides a system to update the control parameters remote to the computing application to reflect changes in operator's preferences. In an illustrative implementation, these dynamic controls may take the form of an add-on toolbar having drop down menus that have the form of panes.

Abstract: A system and process for providing adaptable controls to computing applications to facilitate interaction by an operator with computing application content is provided. The present invention provides a system to update the control parameters remote to the computing application to reflect changes in operator's preferences. In an illustrative implementation, these dynamic controls may take the form of an add-on toolbar having drop down menus that have the form of panes. In operation, the computing application launches and retrieves the parameters of these controls through messaging from a remote server computer. When launched, the computing application will display the add-on toolbar, maintaining Web-in-Web panes, having the latest updated parameters (i.e. content, look, and feel of the toolbar and panes) as found on the remote server computer.

Abstract: A data migration throttle that supports the incremental and reversible migration of web site customization data from a client-side data store to a server-side data store. Initially, each user of the web site stores customization data, such as the user's zip code, in a cookies file together with a globally unique identifier (GUID) which identifies the user. In order to migrate data to a server side store, the throttle is set to a value. Each time a user contacts the web server a hash of the user's GUID is compared with the throttle value, and the user's data is migrated to the server if the hash value is less than the throttle value. The throttle may be lowered, thereby causing some users to revert to client-side storage of customization data.