Patents by Inventor Michael Flaster

Michael Flaster 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: 9092479
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for generating synthetic queries using seed queries and structural similarity between documents are described. In one aspect, a method includes identifying embedded coding fragments (e.g., HTML tag) from a structured document and a seed query; generating one or more query templates, each query template corresponding to at least one coding fragment, the query template including a generative rule to be used in generating candidate synthetic queries; generating the candidate synthetic queries by applying the query templates to other documents that are hosted on the same web site as the document; identifying terms that match structure of the query templates as candidate synthetic queries; measuring a performance for each of the candidate synthetic queries; and designating as synthetic queries the candidate synthetic queries that have performance measurements exceeding a performance threshold.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 14, 2012
    Date of Patent: July 28, 2015
    Assignee: Google Inc.
    Inventors: Steven D. Baker, Michael Flaster, Nitin Gupta, Paul G. Haahr, Srinivasan Venkatachary, Yonghui Wu
  • Patent number: 8615514
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for evaluating website properties by partitioning user feedback data are disclosed. In one aspect, a method includes receiving a plurality of document query pairs (D-Qs) associated with a website, partitioning the plurality of D-Qs into one or more groups according to values for a partition parameter associated with the plurality of D-Qs, evaluating a property parameter of the website based on aggregated user feedback data of the D-Qs included within at least one of the one or more groups, and providing the evaluated property parameter as an input for ranking documents from the website as result documents for searches.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 3, 2010
    Date of Patent: December 24, 2013
    Assignee: Google Inc.
    Inventors: Neil C. Fernandes, Michael Flaster, April R. Lehman
  • Patent number: 8346792
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for generating synthetic queries using seed queries and structural similarity between documents are described. In one aspect, a method includes identifying embedded coding fragments (e.g., HTML tag) from a structured document and a seed query; generating one or more query templates, each query template corresponding to at least one coding fragment, the query template including a generative rule to be used in generating candidate synthetic queries; generating the candidate synthetic queries by applying the query templates to other documents that are hosted on the same web site as the document; identifying terms that match structure of the query templates as candidate synthetic queries; measuring a performance for each of the candidate synthetic queries; and designating as synthetic queries the candidate synthetic queries that have performance measurements exceeding a performance threshold.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 9, 2010
    Date of Patent: January 1, 2013
    Assignee: Google Inc.
    Inventors: Steven D. Baker, Michael Flaster, Nitin Gupta, Paul Haahr, Srinivasan Venkatachary, Yonghui Wu
  • Patent number: 8200670
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for clustering documents. A plurality of documents are identified from a set of documents, where the identified documents have the same top N terms by term frequency score for an integer N. A pattern string that is satisfied by at least a subset of the identified documents is identified. A document cluster is formed from at least the subset of the identified documents.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 31, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 12, 2012
    Assignee: Google Inc.
    Inventors: Michael Flaster, Eran Gabber, Ruoming Pang
  • Patent number: 8121991
    Abstract: Systems, methods and computer readable media for identifying transient paths within websites. Transient paths can be identified, for example, by identifying a path associated with known transient content and determining that the path exists on other pages associated with the website. If the path exists in other web pages associated with the website, the content associated with the path can be identified as transient content.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 19, 2008
    Date of Patent: February 21, 2012
    Assignee: Google Inc.
    Inventors: Eran Gabber, Michael Flaster, Ruoming Pang, Shanmugavelayutham Muthukrishnan
  • Patent number: 8086953
    Abstract: Systems, methods and computer readable media for identifying transient content in web pages. Transient content can be identified, for example, by parsing different versions of the same web page into tokens, and inserting fingerprints associated with the tokens into data structures. The data structures can be compared to each other to identify differences between the web pages, thereby identifying transient content associated with the web pages.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 19, 2008
    Date of Patent: December 27, 2011
    Assignee: Google Inc.
    Inventors: Eran Gabber, Michael Flaster, Ruoming Pang, Shanmugavelayutham Muthukrishnan
  • Publication number: 20070236355
    Abstract: An RF antenna grid design in which the antenna array is installed on a patch panel cover allows for the retrofitting of an RF antenna grid on existing patch panel based systems without disrupting network operation. An apparatus for determining connectivity between device ports on a patch panel and cable ends having corresponding RFID tags attached thereto comprises a patch panel having a plurality of device ports and a patch panel cover comprising a plurality of RFID antennas, where each of the RFID antennas comprises one or more protruding portions thereof, each of the protruding portions of the RFID antennas being in close physical proximity to one or more of the plurality of device ports when the patch panel cover is positioned in a fixed positional relationship to the patch panel (e.g., when the patch panel cover is “attached” to the patch panel).
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 29, 2006
    Publication date: October 11, 2007
    Inventors: Michael Flaster, Clifford Martin, Wee Ng, Cuong Tran
  • Publication number: 20060271506
    Abstract: Methods and apparatus are provided for mapping XML source documents to target documents using schema embeddings. According to one aspect of the invention, one or more edges in the one or more source schemas are mapped to one or more paths in at least one target schema. The disclosed mapping techniques ensure that (i) one or more source documents that conform to one or more of the source schemas can be recovered from one or more target documents that conform to the at least one target schema, if a mapping exists between the one or more of the source schemas and the at least one target schema; (ii) queries on one or more source documents that conform to one or more of the source schemas in a given query language can be answered on one or more target documents that conform to the at least one target schema; and (iii) the one or more target documents conform to a target schema.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 31, 2005
    Publication date: November 30, 2006
    Inventors: Philip Bohannon, Wenfei Fan, Michael Flaster, Suryanarayan Perinkulam
  • Publication number: 20060155743
    Abstract: Methods and apparatus are provided for identifying constraint violation repairs in data that is comprised of a plurality of records, where each record has a plurality of cells. A database is processed, based on a plurality of constraints that data in the database must satisfy. At least one constraint violation to be resolved is identified based on a cost of repair and the corresponding records to be resolved and equivalent cells are identified in the data that violate the identified at least one constraint violation. A value for each of the equivalent cells can optionally be determined, and the determined value can be assigned to each of the equivalent cells. The at least one constraint violation selected for resolution may be, for example, the constraint violation with a lowest cost. The cost of repairing a constraint is based on a distance metric between the attributes values.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 29, 2004
    Publication date: July 13, 2006
    Inventors: Philip Bohannon, Wenfei Fan, Michael Flaster, Rajeev Rastogi
  • Publication number: 20060121880
    Abstract: A method and apparatus for enabling message transmission between multiple communication environments such as the Internet and a wireless communications network, wherein user authentication and billing may be performed and wherein access rights associated with one environment may be advantageously inherited by another. The method enables the transmission of electronic messages (such as e-mail or SMS text messages) by registering two or more individual identities, each represented by a communications handle (such as an e-mail address or a mobile phone number), and by associating each of these two or more registered identities with each other, binding them into an equivalence class of identities, wherein one or more attributes of at least one of these identities becomes associated with the other identity. Illustratively, a sender-pays business (i.e., billing) model for e-mail to mobile message transmission and access rights to an internal enterprise database from a mobile phone are advantageously enabled.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 7, 2004
    Publication date: June 8, 2006
    Inventors: Lawrence Cowsar, Michael Flaster, Clifford Martin, Wim Sweldens