Patents by Inventor Michael Ching

Michael Ching 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: 9324112
    Abstract: The author ranking technique described herein is a technique to rank authors in social media systems along various dimensions, using a variety of statistical methods for utilizing those dimensions. More particularly, the technique ranks authors in social media systems through a combination of statistical techniques that leverage usage metrics, and social and topical graph characteristics. In various exemplary embodiments, the technique can rank author authority by the following: 1) temporal analysis of link sharing in which authority is computed based on a user's propensity to provide early links to web pages that subsequently become popular; 2) topical authority based on the author's links and content updates in specific topic areas; and 3) popularity and influence based on nodal properties of authors.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 9, 2010
    Date of Patent: April 26, 2016
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Peter Richard Bailey, Chad Carson, Scott Joseph Counts, Nikhil Bharat Dandekar, Ho John Lee, Shubha Umesh Nabar, Aditya Pal, Michael Ching, Paul Alexander Dow, Shuang Guo, Hyun-Ju Seo
  • Publication number: 20160063109
    Abstract: Systems and techniques for a query-breadth selected search result sorting mechanism are herein described. A search query can be received from a user. A breadth score can be generated for the search query. A sorting mechanism can be selected from a plurality of sorting mechanisms based on the breadth score. Search results can be identified for the query and the selected sorting mechanism can be applied to the search results to produce an ordered set of search results. The ordered set of search results can be presented to the user.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 29, 2014
    Publication date: March 3, 2016
    Inventors: Yuanjie Liu, David Goldberg, Michael Ching, Xiaoyuan Wu, Joseph Anthony Beynon, Song Feng
  • Publication number: 20150254688
    Abstract: Systems and methods to predict bidding behaviour are described. The system identifies a listing that includes listing information that describes an item that is being auctioned on a network-based marketplace. The system further identifies bid classification information based on the number of bids received for the item. Finally, the system predicts whether no more bids are expected to be received for the item based on the classification information.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 10, 2014
    Publication date: September 10, 2015
    Inventors: Alpha Kamchiu Luk, Michael Ching, Ben Chisell, Johannes Braun, Tom Pugh, Tom Wagstaff, Shervin Moghaddam, Yu Liu, Vinayak Agarwal, Gajanan Adalinge, David Goldberg
  • Publication number: 20150248715
    Abstract: A system and method of identifying suspicious item-related features are disclosed. In some embodiments, a sample of item listings is received. Each item listing in the sample of item listings may correspond to an item offered for sale on an e-commerce website. Item-related data for each item listing in the sample of item listings may be extracted. Training data comprising identifications of which item listings in the sample of item listings are suspicious and identifications of which item listings in the sample of item listings are not suspicious may be received. A model for classifying a candidate item listing on the e-commerce website as being suspicious may be determined using the training data.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 28, 2014
    Publication date: September 3, 2015
    Applicant: EBAY INC.
    Inventors: Brian Scott Johnson, Michael Ching, Julie Lavee Netzloff, Vamsi Krishna Salaka
  • Publication number: 20150227996
    Abstract: In an example embodiment, e-commerce listings from a database are ranked into a first ranking in accordance with a first ranking scheme. Then a location of a potential buyer is identified. One or more of the listings are identified as may ship listings that a corresponding seller has indicated as pertaining to a good or service that may ship to the location of the potential buyer, without a commitment of shipping to the location of the potential buyer. A position of one or more of the may ship listings in the first ranking may be altered to achieve a second ranking.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 11, 2014
    Publication date: August 13, 2015
    Applicant: EBAY INC.
    Inventors: Alpha Kamchiu Luk, Jennifer Chang, Michael Ching, Alex Cozzi, Theodore Citrin
  • Patent number: 9104751
    Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer-readable storage media for presenting supplemental search results having indications that identified documents have been endorsed by the user and/or social network connections of the user are provided. A search query is received and it is determined that the user's social networking data is available. Documents that have been endorsed by the user and/or social network connections of the user are searched to identify those that satisfy the input search query. The satisfying documents are assigned a relevance score to determine whether each satisfying document is relevant enough to be shown and to determine placement of the document on the SERP relative to standard search results. Upon rendering of the SERP, a supplemental search result identifying documents that were endorsed by the user and/or social network connections of the user is presented, as is an indication about which social network connection(s) of the user endorsed the document.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 30, 2011
    Date of Patent: August 11, 2015
    Assignee: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
    Inventors: Yajie Siamwalla, Rajesh Krishna Shenoy, Lei Duan, Satish Kumar Musukula, Charles C. Carson, Jr., Michael Ching
  • Publication number: 20140181101
    Abstract: Search results may include both objective results and person results. In one example, a search query is evaluated to determine whether it is the type of query that a user might want to ask to a friend. If the query is of such a type, then the search engine may examine a social graph to determine which friends of the user who entered the query may have information that is relevant to answering the query. If such friends exist, then the friends may be displayed along with objective search results, along with an explanation of each friend's relevance to the query. Clicking on a person in the results may cause a conversation to be initiated with that person, thereby allowing the user who entered the query to ask his or her friend about the subject of the query.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 17, 2013
    Publication date: June 26, 2014
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Sandy Wong, Wei Mu, Jun Yin, Rahul Nair, Simon King, Srinivasan Badrinarayanan, Xavier Legros, Michael Ching, Kevin Haas, Shubha Nabar
  • Patent number: 8538960
    Abstract: Search results may include both objective results and person results. In one example, a search query is evaluated to determine whether it is the type of query that a user might want to ask to a friend. If the query is of such a type, then the search engine may examine a social graph to determine which friends of the user who entered the query may have information that is relevant to answering the query. If such friends exist, then the friends may be displayed along with objective search results, along with an explanation of each friend's relevance to the query. Clicking on a person in the results may cause a conversation to be initiated with that person, thereby allowing the user who entered the query to ask his or her friend about the subject of the query.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 5, 2011
    Date of Patent: September 17, 2013
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Sandy Wong, Wei Mu, Jun Yin, Rahul Nair, Simon King, Srinivasan Badrinarayanan, Xavier Legros, Michael Ching, Kevin Haas, Shubha Nabar
  • Publication number: 20130097144
    Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer-readable storage media for presenting supplemental search results having indications that identified documents have been endorsed by the user and/or social network connections of the user are provided. A search query is received and it is determined that the user's social networking data is available. Documents that have been endorsed by the user and/or social network connections of the user are searched to identify those that satisfy the input search query. The satisfying documents are assigned a relevance score to determine whether each satisfying document is relevant enough to be shown and to determine placement of the document on the SERP relative to standard search results. Upon rendering of the SERP, a supplemental search result identifying documents that were endorsed by the user and/or social network connections of the user is presented, as is an indication about which social network connection(s) of the user endorsed the document.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 30, 2011
    Publication date: April 18, 2013
    Applicant: MICROSOFT CORPORATION
    Inventors: YAJIE SIAMWALLA, RAJESH KRISHNA SHENOY, LEI DUAN, SATISH KUMAR MUSUKULA, CHARLES C. CARSON, JR., MICHAEL CHING
  • Publication number: 20130036114
    Abstract: Search results may include both objective results and person results. In one example, a search query is evaluated to determine whether it is the type of query that a user might want to ask to a friend. If the query is of such a type, then the search engine may examine a social graph to determine which friends of the user who entered the query may have information that is relevant to answering the query. If such friends exist, then the friends may be displayed along with objective search results, along with an explanation of each friend's relevance to the query. Clicking on a person in the results may cause a conversation to be initiated with that person, thereby allowing the user who entered the query to ask his or her friend about the subject of the query.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 5, 2011
    Publication date: February 7, 2013
    Applicant: MICROSOFT CORPORATION
    Inventors: Sandy Wong, Wei Mu, Jun Yin, Rahul Nair, Simon King, Srinivasan Badrinarayanan, Xavier Legros, Michael Ching, Kevin Haas, Shubha Nabar
  • Publication number: 20120141267
    Abstract: A method and related apparatus to control pitch angle of the blade of any horizontal axis wind turbines (wind generators or wind mills), which employs only the centrifugal force of the blade assembly including the blades and the moving parts of the patented apparatus. The pitch control is automatic when the rotational speed of the turbine rotor reaches certain pre-set value, the blade pitch angle is increased by the centrifugal forces of the blade assembly, thus the apparatus restricts the maximum rotating speed of the turbine rotor, and protects the wind turbine from being destructed by excessive wind speed, yet the wind turbine will keep running and producing power at the excessive wind speed. Due to the simplicity and low cost, this method and related apparatus are more suitable for medium and small wind generators (e.g., power <10 KW), where the conventional hydraulic or electrical power-actuated pitch control apparatuses are too complicate and too costly to be installed.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 3, 2010
    Publication date: June 7, 2012
    Inventor: Michael Ching Kwei Kang
  • Publication number: 20120117059
    Abstract: The author ranking technique described herein is a technique to rank authors in social media systems along various dimensions, using a variety of statistical methods for utilizing those dimensions. More particularly, the technique ranks authors in social media systems through a combination of statistical techniques that leverage usage metrics, and social and topical graph characteristics. In various exemplary embodiments, the technique can rank author authority by the following: 1) temporal analysis of link sharing in which authority is computed based on a user's propensity to provide early links to web pages that subsequently become popular; 2) topical authority based on the author's links and content updates in specific topic areas; and 3) popularity and influence based on nodal properties of authors.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 9, 2010
    Publication date: May 10, 2012
    Applicant: MICROSOFT CORPORATION
    Inventors: Peter Richard Bailey, Chad Carson, Scott Joseph Counts, Nikhil Bharat Dandekar, Ho John Lee, Shubha Umesh Nabar, Aditya Pal, Michael Ching, Paul Alexander Dow, Shuang Guo, Hyun-Ju Seo
  • Patent number: 8149874
    Abstract: Apparatus and methods allocate I/O bandwidth of an electrical component, such as an IC, by configuring an I/O interface into various types of interfaces. In an embodiment of the present invention, an I/O interface is configured into either a bi-directional contact, unidirectional contact (including either a dedicated transmit or dedicated receive contact) or a maintenance contact used in a maintenance or calibration mode of operation. The I/O interface is periodically reconfigured to optimally allocate I/O bandwidth responsive to system parameters, such as changing data workloads in the electronic components.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 18, 2011
    Date of Patent: April 3, 2012
    Assignee: Rambus Inc.
    Inventors: Michael Ching, Steven Woo
  • Patent number: 8073009
    Abstract: Apparatus and methods allocate I/O bandwidth of an electrical component, such as an IC, by configuring an I/O interface into various types of interfaces. In an embodiment of the present invention, an I/O interface is configured into either a bi-directional contact, unidirectional contact (including either a dedicated transmit or dedicated receive contact) or a maintenance contact used in a maintenance or calibration mode of operation. The I/O interface is periodically reconfigured to optimally allocate I/O bandwidth responsive to system parameters, such as changing data workloads in the electronic components.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 22, 2008
    Date of Patent: December 6, 2011
    Assignee: Rambus Inc.
    Inventors: Michael Ching, Steven Woo
  • Patent number: 8041705
    Abstract: A system and method of crawling at least one website comprising at least one URL includes maintaining a lookup structure comprising all of the URLs known to be on a website; calculating a hub score for each webpage of the website to be recrawled, wherein the hub score measures how likely the to be recrawled webpage includes links to fresh content published on the website; sorting all the to be recrawled pages by their hub scores; and crawling the to be recrawled pages in order from highest hub scores to lowest hub scores. The calculating comprises computing a first value equaling a percentage of a number of new relative URLs on the to be recrawled page; computing a second value equaling a percentage of a previous hub score of the to be recrawled page; and computing the hub score as a sum of the first and the second values.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 5, 2009
    Date of Patent: October 18, 2011
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Srinivasan Balasubramanian, Michael Ching, Piyoosh Jalan, Satish C. Penmetsa, Andrew S. Tomkins
  • Publication number: 20110219162
    Abstract: Apparatus and methods allocate I/O bandwidth of an electrical component, such as an IC, by configuring an I/O interface into various types of interfaces. In an embodiment of the present invention, an I/O interface is configured into either a bi-directional contact, unidirectional contact (including either a dedicated transmit or dedicated receive contact) or a maintenance contact used in a maintenance or calibration mode of operation. The I/O interface is periodically reconfigured to optimally allocate I/O bandwidth responsive to system parameters, such as changing data workloads in the electronic components.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 18, 2011
    Publication date: September 8, 2011
    Applicant: RAMBUS INC.
    Inventors: Michael Ching, Steven Woo
  • Patent number: 7966337
    Abstract: A system and method for prioritizing a fetch order of web pages. The method comprises extracting by a web crawler a set of candidate web pages to be crawled. Each web page in the set of candidate web pages is associated with a website in a computer network. A determination is made to determine if a first website score for the website is in a website score database. The first website score is associated with web pages in the set of candidate web pages if the first website score exists in the website score database. The set of candidate web pages is prioritized with respect to an associated website score for each web page in the candidate set of web pages. Content is retrieved from the set of candidate web. Hyperlinks are extracted from the content. The hyperlinks are stored in a memory unit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 23, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 21, 2011
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: David L. Blackman, Michael Ching, Stephen Dill, Ivan Eduardo Gonzalez, Adam Marcus, Daniel Norin Meredith, Linda Anh Linh Nguyen
  • Patent number: 7755968
    Abstract: An integrated circuit memory device has a storage array with an adjustable number of memory banks, a row of sense amplifiers to access storage cells in the storage array; and memory access control circuitry. The memory access control circuitry provides a first number of memory banks and a first page size in the integrated circuit memory device in a first mode of operation, and provides a second number of memory banks and a second page size in the integrated circuit memory device in a second mode of operation. The memory access control circuitry includes logic circuitry to adjust the number of memory banks in the integrated circuit memory device, and to adjust the page size of the integrated circuit memory device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 7, 2007
    Date of Patent: July 13, 2010
    Assignee: Rambus Inc.
    Inventors: Steven Woo, Michael Ching, Chad A. Bellows, Wayne S. Richardson, Kurt T. Knorpp, Jun Kim
  • Publication number: 20090248631
    Abstract: A method and system for processing complex long running queries with respect to a database in which the database workload is determined in terms of quality of service (QoS) requirements of with respect to short running queries, which can be of a transactional type, in which long running queries are partitioned into a plurality of sub-queries that satisfy the database QoS requirements, are then processed and the results of processing the plurality of sub-queries are aggregated so as to correspond to the processing of the long running query.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 31, 2008
    Publication date: October 1, 2009
    Inventors: Alfredo Alba, Nikolaos Anerousis, Michael Ching, Genady Y. Grabarnik, Larisa Shwartz
  • Publication number: 20090136676
    Abstract: An apparatus for coating at least one food item is disclosed. The apparatus includes a reservoir for housing a liquid medium, a dipping assembly operatively coupled to the reservoir wherein the dipping assembly includes a holding mechanism for holding the at least one food item, and mechanical means operatively coupled to the holding mechanism for moving the holding mechanism into the reservoir whereby the at least one food item is immersed in the liquid medium such that the at least one food item is partially coated with the liquid medium in a predetermined fashion.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 14, 2008
    Publication date: May 28, 2009
    Inventor: Michael Ching