Abstract: An autonomous blog engine is implemented to enable the autonomous generation of a blog. The autonomous blog engine receives media objects that are captured by an electronic device during a trip session. The autonomous blog engine determines a place of interest based on photographs selected from the media objects. The autonomous blog engine then generates textual content using one or more pre-stored knowledge items that include information on the place of interest. The autonomous blog engine further autonomously publishes a blog entry on the place of interest that includes one or more photographs from the photograph cluster and the textual content.

Abstract: Dominant color names may be extracted from an image by analyzing spatial-context of pixels contained in the image. A dominant color region may be defined by taking a double-threshold approach that addresses ambiguous color regions and a degree of confidence that each pixel belongs in the dominant color region. Affiliation maps and binary maps may be used to generate the dominant color region. Images may be converted to a saliency map, from which a region of interest may be assigned a dominant color name. Image search results may be filtered by the dominant color name associated with the image.

Abstract: Image-based semantic distance technique embodiments are presented that involve establishing a measure of an image-based semantic distance between semantic concepts. Generally, this entails respectively computing a semantic concept representation for each concept based on a collection of images associated with the concept. A degree of difference is then computed between two semantic concept representations to produce the aforementioned semantic distance measure for the pair of corresponding concepts.

Abstract: Techniques for constructing an optimized kd-tree are described. In an implementation, an optimized kd-tree process receives input of a set of data points applicable for large-scale computer vision applications. The process divides the set of the data points into subsets of data points with nodes while generating hyperplanes (e.g., coordinate axes). The process identifies a partition axis for each node based on the coordinate axes combined in a binary way. The optimized kd-tree process creates an optimized kd-tree that organizes the data points based on the identified partition axis. The organization of the data points in the optimized kd-tree provides efficient indexing and searching for a nearest neighbor.

Abstract: Improved video coding is described to encode video data within a sequence of video frames. To this end, at least a portion of a reference frame is encoded to include motion information associated with the portion of the reference frame. At least a portion of a predictable frame that includes video data predictively correlated to said portion of said reference frame is defined based on the motion information. At least said portion of the predictable frame is encoded without including corresponding motion information and including mode identifying data. The mode identifying data indicate that the encoded portion of the predictable frame can be directly derived using at least the motion information associated with the portion of the reference frame.

Abstract: A user may perform an image search on an object shown in an image. The user may use a mobile device to display an image. In response to displaying the image, the client device may send the image to a visual search system for image segmentation. Upon receiving a segmented image from the visual search system, the client device may display the segmented image to the user who may select one or more segments including an object of interest to instantiate a search. The visual search system may formulate a search query based on the one or more selected segments and perform a search using the search query. The visual search system may then return search results to the client device for display to the user.

Abstract: An “Interactive Virtual Display,” as described herein, provides various systems and techniques that facilitate ubiquitous user interaction with both local and remote heterogeneous computing devices. More specifically, the Interactive Virtual Display uses various combinations of small-size programmable hardware and portable or wearable sensors to enable any display surface (e.g., computer display devices, televisions, projected images/video from projection devices, etc.) to act as a thin client for users to interact with a plurality heterogeneous computing devices regardless of where those devices are located relative to the user. The Interactive Virtual Display provides a flexible system architecture that enables communication and collaboration between a plurality of both local and remote heterogeneous computing devices.

Abstract: One or more portions of a compound image may be classified as picture portions and at least one remaining portion of the compound image may be classified as a non-picture portion. A first layer of a layered image may be generated based on the picture portions of the compound image. The first layer may be compliant with a first image format. A second layer of the layered image may be generated based on the non-picture portion. The second layer may be compliant with a second image format that is different from the first image format. The first layer and the second layer may be sent to a web browser. The first format and the second format may be supported by the web browser.

Abstract: Techniques for an image-based CAPTCHA for object recognition are described. The disclosure describes adding images to a database by collecting images by querying descriptive keywords to an image search engine or crawling images from the Internet. The disclosure describes generating the image-based CAPTCHA. The image is retrieved from the database, along with objects having significant values. An object is cropped from its image. The portion on the image where the object has been cropped is filled with image inpainting. The process obtains other objects from the database. The object is mixed among the other objects to from a set of candidate objects. A user is asked to select “the object” from the set of candidate objects that fits or matches the image. The image-based CAPTCHA evaluates whether a response, the selection, is from a human or a bot.

Abstract: Improved methods and apparatuses are provided for switching of streaming data bitstreams, such as streaming data bitstreams typically used in video streaming and other related applications. Some desired functionalities provided herein include random access, fast forward and fast backward, error-resilience and bandwidth adaptation. The improved methods and apparatuses can be configured to increase coding efficiency of and/or reduce the amount of data needed to encode a switching bitstream.

Abstract: Digital images are resized according to a prescribed image scaling factor. An original image is re-sampled according to the scaling factor, resulting in an initial resized image. A probability of text (POT) map is generated for the initial resized image, where the POT map specifies a smoothed POT value for each pixel in the initial resized image. A weighting factor (WF) map is generated which maps each different smoothed POT value to a particular WF value. The WF map is used to calculate an adjusted luminance value for each pixel in the initial resized image, resulting in a final resized image.

Abstract: A user may perform an image search on an object shown in an image. The user may use a mobile device to display an image. In response to displaying the image, the client device may send the image to a visual search system for image segmentation. Upon receiving a segmented image from the visual search system, the client device may display the segmented image to the user who may select one or more segments including an object of interest to instantiate a search. The visual search system may formulate a search query based on the one or more selected segments and perform a search using the search query. The visual search system may then return search results to the client device for display to the user.

Abstract: A shovel includes an electrically driven part subjected to temperature control during operation, a battery that supplies electric power to a constant electrical load that constantly operates apart from the electrically driven part, a first switch, and a second switch. The first switch opens or closes a power supply line between a temperature controller that controls the temperature of the electrically driven part and a photovoltaic power generator based on the temperature detection value of a temperature detector that detects the temperature of the electrically driven part. The second switch opens or closes a power supply line between the temperature controller and the battery based on the temperature detection value of the temperature detector.

Abstract: A cooperative rendering cache browser (CRC-Browser) for a mobile device may cooperatively manage cached content with a proxy server to reduce redundant transmissions of processed Web data. Additionally, the CRC-Browser may provide stateful, thin-client Web browsing to maintain synchronized information about rendering objects of a Web page. Further, the CRC-Browser may cache only stable and/or visible document object model (DOM) elements and communicate a list of IDs of the cached elements to the proxy. Such stateful thin-client browsers may be useful for reducing battery drain, poor responsiveness, and high wireless network costs of mobile Web browsing.

Abstract: This disclosure describes techniques for searching for similar images to an image query by using an approximate k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) graph. The approximate k-NN graph is constructed from data points partitioned into subsets to further identify nearest-neighboring data points for each data point. The data points may connect with the nearest-neighboring data points in a subset to form an approximate neighborhood subgraph. These subgraphs from all the subsets are combined together to form a base approximate k-NN graph. Then by performing more random hierarchical partition, more base approximate k-NN graphs are formed, and further combined together to create an approximate k-NN graph. The approximate k-NN graph expands into other neighborhoods and identifies the best k-NN data points. The approximate k-NN graph retrieves the best NN data points, based at least in part on the retrieved best k-NN data points representing images being similar in appearance to the image query.

Abstract: Techniques for identifying a salient object with respect to its context are described. A process receives an input image that includes a salient object. The process segments the input image into multiple regions and calculates a saliency value for each of the segmented regions based on scale image levels. The process constructs saliency maps based at least in part on the calculated saliency value, and combines the saliency maps to construct a total saliency map. Next, the process connects a set of line segments computed from the input image and utilizes the total saliency map to compute a closed boundary, which forms a shape prior from the closed boundary, and extracts the salient object from the total saliency map and the shape prior.

Abstract: Various technologies for a layered texture compression architecture. In one implementation, the layered texture compression architecture may include a texture consumption pipeline. The texture compression pipeline may include a processor, memory devices, and textures compressed at varying ratios of compression. The textures within the pipeline may be compressed at ratios in accordance with characteristics of the devices in the pipeline that contains and processes the textures.

Abstract: Techniques for recommending music and advertising to enhance a user's experience while photo browsing are described. In some instances, songs and ads are ranked for relevance to at least one photo from a photo album. The songs, ads and photo(s) from the photo album are then mapped to a style and mood ontology to obtain vector-based representations. The vector-based representations can include real valued terms, each term associated with a human condition defined by the ontology. A re-ranking process generates a relevancy term for each song and each ad indicating relevancy to the photo album. The relevancy terms can be calculated by summing weighted terms from the ranking and the mapping. Recommended music and ads may then be provided to a user, as the user browses a series of photos obtained from the photo album. The ads may be seamlessly embedded into the music in a nonintrusive manner.

Abstract: A method for compressing a high dynamic range (HDR) texture. A first block of texels of the HDR texture in a red-green-blue (RGB) space may be transformed to a second block of texels in a luminance-chrominance space. The first block may have red values, green values and blue values. The second block may have luminance values and chrominance values. The chrominance values may be based on a sum of the red values, a sum of the green values and a sum of the blue values. The luminance values and the chrominance values may be converted to an 8-bit integer format. The luminance values may be modified to restore a local linearity property to the second block. The second block may be compressed.

Abstract: An initial ranked list of a first plurality of visual documents is obtained from a first source in response to a query, and a second plurality of visual documents relevant to the query is gathered from a plurality of second sources. Visual patterns identified from the second plurality of visual documents are compared with the first visual documents for reranking the first visual documents.