50th week of 2008 patent applcation highlights part 51 |
Patent application number | Title | Published |
20080306856 | Aged Transactions in a Trading System - A method and system for aging orders, increasing securities market liquidity. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306857 | Method for displaying transmission time intervals of orders on electronic trading system - A method is provided for displaying transmission time intervals to a trader using an electronic trading system comprising the steps of displaying a trading screen for an electronic trading system, said trading screen including a transmission time interval display, and displaying a transmission time interval on the transmission time interval display. The transmission time interval comprises an order transmission time interval and a confirmation transmission time interval. The order transmission time interval includes an order transmission to proceed from a client computer to the electronic commodity exchange. The confirmation transmission time interval includes time for a confirmation transmission to proceed from the electronic commodity exchange to the client computer. The method may further comprise the steps of transmitting an order transmission from a client computer to an electronic trading exchange, receiving a confirmation transmission from the electronic commodity exchange by the client computer, and determining the transmission time interval. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306858 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ENABLING HEDGING CUSTOMERS TO LOCK FORWARD POSITIONS WITH CUSTOMER-FRIENDLY PAYMENT OPTIONS - In some embodiments, a method includes providing a loan or line of credit (LOC) to a purchaser to financing the cost of purchasing a retail commodity price protection contract. A new financial instrument is created bundling the loan or LOC and the retail commodity price protection contract. The method also includes allowing the purchaser to draw on a trust (that may have been created with proceeds from the loan) to purchase the retail commodity. The retail commodity price protection contract may specify a forward position, which may be selected by the customer, associated with the retail commodity. According to the forward position specified in the retail commodity price protection contract, a price protection service provider provides price protection to the customer against variability in the price of the retail commodity. The loan or LOC may be provided by a financial institution or the price protection service provider. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306859 | STANDING ORDERS AND SALES FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY RELEVANT ITEMS - In embodiments of the present invention improved capabilities are described for methods and systems for facilitating exchange of rights associated with environmentally relevant items. The methods and systems may include identifying a type of environmentally relevant item recognized by a market associated with an environmentally relevant action and allowing a user to place a standing order or sale. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306860 | ALLOCATION ENGINE FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY RELEVANT ITEMS - Methods and systems for facilitating exchange of rights associated with environmentally relevant items are provided. The methods and systems may include identifying a first environmentally relevant item, identifying a second environmentally relevant item and providing a software-based module for an allocation engine allowing at least one user to allocate at least one environmentally relevant item. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306861 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR INDEX BASED SETTLEMENT UNDER PRICE PROTECTION CONTRACTS - Systems and methods for the provisioning of price protection contracts which provide price protection against adverse fluctuations in the retail price of a commodity are disclosed. While these price protection contracts may pertain to almost any type of commodity, certain embodiments of the present invention may provide systems and method for allowing a consumer to obtain price protection on the purchase of fuel. Specifically, embodiments of the present invention may provide the ability to obtain a price protection contract for the purchase of fuel where the price protection contract specifies at least one lock price, quantity, locale and time period such that the price protection contract may guarantee the right to aggregately purchase the quantity of fuel in the locale at the lock price during the time period and where purchases under the price protection contract are settled against an index price at the time of the purchase. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306862 | BIDDER-SIDE AUCTION DYNAMIC PRICING AGENT, SYSTEM, METHOD AND COMPUTER PROGRAM PRODUCT - The present invention sets forth a system, method, and computer program product for automating an interaction between a buyer and an electronic, variable, dynamic pricing online auction service. The method can include receiving a registration of a buyer at an Internet enabled buyer bidding site, a portfolio, and account information. The method can also receive entered information about financial transaction instruments, contact information, and product preferences in an auction profile. The method can receive a search query for a desired product from product auctions of a plurality of auction sites and can use a search agent or a meta-search agent, and can provide returned auctions, including retrieving and presenting current status of product auctions. The method can receive a selection of returned auctions to store in the portfolio for tracking by scan agents and for bidding by bid proxies. The method can receive selections of product auctions of the returned auctions and place the product auctions into the portfolio for use by a cascaded bid proxy. The method can provide auction monitoring by scan agents of temporal progression of product auctions, and can notify someone via a messaging center of any changes in relevant aspects of the status that could prevent an initial bid from being placed by a bid proxy. The method can enable activation of bid proxies as an auction nears completion to begin placing bids until the auction is won or lost by auction closing and can confirm a counter-offer has not out-bid. The method can compute and execute another higher bid if a counter-offer has been made and accepted, higher than the most recent bid detected | 2008-12-11 |
20080306863 | System and Method for Managing Trading Using Alert Messages for Outlying Trading Orders - According to one embodiment, a method of managing trading is provided. In a market for a particular type of instrument, buy orders and sell orders are received from a plurality of traders. Each buy order has an associated bid price and each sell order has an associated offer price. A determination is made of whether the particular trading order is an outlying trading order by determining whether the particular trading order differs from at least one comparison price by more than a threshold value. If it is determined that the particular trading is an outlying trading order, a restrictive action is taken regarding the outlying trading order. For example, if a trader subsequently submits another trading order that would trade with the outlying trading order, an alert message may be sent to the trader and the subsequent trading order may be prevented from trading with the outlying trading order at least temporarily. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306864 | Electronic Trading System Supporting Anonymous Negotiation And Indicators Of Interest - A system conducts anonymous negotiations and supports indications-of-interest in trading stock. The system includes a database for storing public orders received from a public stock trading system; and a server for receiving hidden orders from a plurality of users and for conducting anonymous negotiations between first and second users with the hidden orders. The server repeatedly accesses the database to determine a match of any one of the hidden orders with any one of the public orders, and to execute a pair of orders selected from the hidden orders and the public orders. The system also transmits indicators-of-interest (IOIs) into a trading environment using the server for processing a trading order from a first user and for maintaining a profile of a user. The profile includes a current IOI setting for controlling transmission of the IOI from the user. The server responds to a toggle command from the first user to control transmission of the IOI opposite to the current IOI setting. The server responds to the IOI setting being set to allow transmission by transmitting the IOI of the first user associated with the trading order. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306865 | System and Method for Pricing and Allocation of Commodities or Securities - An auction server node is described for a computer network having user nodes for conducting an auction run by an auction adviser for awarding securities from an issuer to bidders of the auction. There is real-time monitoring of the auction as it occurs, a bid mechanism for receiving competitive bids from the bidders at the user nodes, including a quantity of securities to be purchased, an initial price revealed to the other bidders, and a firm price not revealed to the other bidders and within a predetermined range of the initial price. A single market clearing price is determined that allocates to the bidders all of the securities in the auction. An incremental adjustment of the market clearing price may be made by at least one of the auction advisor and the issuer, and an allocation made of the securities to the bidders at the adjusted clearing price. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306866 | AUTOMATICALLY DISTRIBUTING A BID REQUEST FOR A GRID JOB TO MULTIPLE GRID PROVIDERS AND ANALYZING RESPONSES TO SELECT A WINNING GRID PROVIDER - A method, system, and program for automatically distributing a bid request for a grid job to multiple grid providers and analyzing responses to select a winning grid provider are provided. A user at a grid client enters at least one bid criteria for a particular grid job intended for submission to an external grid environment. The grid client automatically selects at least one grid provider for the external grid environment to query for availability to process the particular grid job to meet the criteria for the particular grid job. Then, the grid client automatically distributes the criteria in a bid request for the particular grid job to the selected grid providers. The grid client stores bid responses received from the grid providers, and responsive to reaching a deadline for return of responses for the bid request, the grid client selects a winning bid response from the particular grid job from among the received responses. Then, the grid client automatically distributes the particular grid job from the grid client system to the grid provider submitting the winning bid response. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306867 | METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR MANAGING GOVERNMENT ISSUED ENTITLEMENTS - A method for designating accounts for funds from a check to be deposited is described. The method includes receiving, at a processing center having a processor, a direct deposit government entitlement check from a government entity to be deposited. The check may include an identifier. The method further includes comparing the identifier with a customer database to determine that funds from the check have been designated to be divided into sub-amounts and deposited into a plurality of accounts. Each of the plurality of accounts has account type and an associated expenditure designation. The method then receives a report of a total amount deposited from the check for each type of associated expenditure designation and each account type. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306868 | Unlimited toll utilization - A system, method, and computer readable medium for unlimited toll utilization by a transport in a fleet comprises receiving, by a toll rental entity, fleet information from a third party entity, receiving, by a toll authority, the fleet information from the toll rental entity, receiving, by the toll authority, toll usage information, matching, by the toll authority, the toll usage information with the fleet information, receiving, by the toll rental entity, the matched information, matching, by the toll rental entity, the matched information with a fleet subscription account, paying a fee, by the toll rental entity to the toll authority, based on the matched information with the fleet subscription account, and billing, by the toll rental entity, the third party entity, a fixed fee for each transport in the fleet, wherein the fixed fee is related to the paid fee. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306869 | Electric payment delivery service - Systems and methods for providing finance-related services such as electronic payment delivery are disclosed. In accordance with one embodiment, a payment system is configured to receive a payment message including a type of information, and to add an identification number to the message. The type of information is removed from the payment message, and the revised payment message is forwarded on to an entity responsible for payment. Particular embodiments in accordance with the present invention are suited for removing personal patient information from a HIPAA-compliant payment message, prior to forwarding the revised message over an electronic payment network. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306870 | PIN-LESS ATM PROCESSING SYSTEM - A system and method are provided for processing transactions across an ATM network without requiring the use of a PIN or a signature. The transactions can be aggregated to allow multiple purchases to be processed in a single transaction. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306871 | System and method of managing digital rights - A method of managing digital rights is disclosed that includes recording media content at one or more servers supporting a multimedia content distribution service. The one or more servers are configured to transmit multimedia data to multiple customer premises equipment (CPE) devices. The method further includes determining recorded media content at the one or more servers that is associated with a content source and providing a graphical user interface (GUI) accessible to a content manager at the content source to manage digital rights. The GUI includes a list of the recorded media content and at least one selectable element associated with each item of the list accessible to select media content and to configure digital rights associated with the selected media content. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306872 | INFORMATION RECORD INFRASTRUCTURE, SYSTEM AND METHOD - A method for controlling access to a medical record of a patient hosted by at least one medical record repository, comprising a plurality of sub-records, each sub-record having an associated different patient-controlled access control criteria, comprising: receiving, by an intermediary, a request for a medical record from a requester, said request comprising a medical record identifier, a requester identifier, requester authentication information, and patient-provided access control authorization; automatically processing, by the intermediary, the request for the medical record to authenticate the requester and determine sufficiency of the patient-provided access control authorization to meet the patient-controlled access control criteria for each respective sub-record encompassed by the request; and selectively communicating, from the intermediary to the at least one medical record repository, an identification of each sub-record for which access control criteria are determined to be sufficient for access by the requestor. An electronic payment authorization associated with the request may be generated, for compensation of at least one of the intermediary and a medical record repository. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306873 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR OBTAINING CONTENT LICENSE RIGHTS VIA A DOCUMENT LINK RESOLVER - A link resolver menu generated by a link resolver server includes a link to a “rights advisor website” containing a program that determines available rights for a resource. When activated, the program uses the resource information in the link to obtain a standard resource identifier and then uses user and context information to access and extract all agreements stored therein that are applicable to the organization to which the user belongs. The resource identifier is then used to determine agreements that are applicable to that resource. An applicable right is selected from each agreement, if available. The rights are then ordered in a tree from the most permissive to the most restrictive. The tree is then traversed from its lowest level upward and the resulting rights are presented to the user. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306874 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MANAGING A PRODUCT THROUGH A DISTRIBUTION CHAIN - A method and system for distributing products is provided. The distribution system enables a manufacturer of a product to define one or more allowed distribution paths, and to limit distribution of their product to only an allowed distribution path. The system provides an embedded processor in or on a product, with the embedded processor controlling access to some utility or feature of the product. In this way, the product is not usable or is undesirable until an authorized activation process has occurred. To control the distribution chain, a set of distribution rules is defined that sets allowed or excluded distributors and retailers for products or sets of products. When the product is moved to the next distributor, or presented at a point-of-sale, the rules are compared to the actual recorded distribution chain. If the distribution chain is proper, then the product may be activated, or moved to the next distribution entity. If the distribution chain is not proper, than the product may be permanently disabled, or a response may be generated that penalized the infracting distributor. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306875 | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR SECURE NETWORK CONNECTION - Methods and systems for secure payment via a network are disclosed. In an example embodiment, a system includes components to receive a globally unique identifier (GUID) and a client-hello message from a client, generate a tag and sending the tag and a server hello message to the client, receive the tag, a client-key-exchange message, a change-c-spec message, an encrypted-finished message, and secured payload from the client, and send an encrypted-finished message and secured response payload to the client. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306876 | VERIFYING DYNAMIC TRANSACTION SECURITY CODE IN PAYMENT CARD SYSTEM - A method includes receiving an authorization request for a purchase transaction. The method further includes determining (a) whether the purchase transaction is eligible for security code checking based on whether an account number included in the authorization request is in an eligible account number range, and (b) whether a transaction security code included in the authorization request is valid. The method also includes relaying the authorization request to an issuer financial institution with an indication as to whether the transaction security code is valid. Alternatively, the method may include declining the transaction when the security code is found to be invalid, and sending an advice message to the issuer regarding the declined transaction. In this alternative, the authorization request is relayed to the issuer only if the security code is found to be valid. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306877 | Secure Internet E-Commerce - A secure Internet based website electronically facilitating Internet entry of an account-owner to a pre-registered account on the secure Internet based website; escorting the owner to a merchant Internet site and therewith transmitting to the merchant site a one-time password, wherein said one-time password is thereafter identifiable by the secure Internet based website; receiving an invoice from the merchant Internet site wherein said invoice includes the one-time password; validating the one-time password; and presenting the invoice to the account owner. Now, if the secure Internet site receives an invoice approval from the owner, then the secure Internet site electronically providing the merchant Internet site with payment and delivery details necessary to complete a commercial agreement between the owner and the merchant wherein said agreement corresponds to specification, terms, and conditions associated with the invoice. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306878 | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ADMINISTERING INDEX-LINKED ANNUITY - A method for administering an annuity product comprises the steps of establishing an annuity account, storing data relating to the account, determining an amount of an income payment and paying the income payment to the account owner. The amount of the income payment is subtracted from an account value. The amount of the account value is adjusted by a first process which includes adjusting the account value by a first index. The amount of the income payment is periodically redetermined by a second process which includes adjusting the amount of the income payment by a second index. The first and second processes are separate processes designed to cause the account value and a present value of the income payments to diverge, such that the value of the income payments becomes increasingly greater relative to the account value during a payout phase of the annuity account. One embodiment comprises a computer system for administering the annuity product in accordance with the subject method. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306879 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CREATING A PRIMARY AND SECONDARY MARKET IN WHOLE AND BIFURCATED LAND TENANT IN COMMON REAL PROPERTY OWNERSHIP INTERESTS - The present invention relates to systems, methods, and articles of manufacture for the exchange of tenant in common real property ownership interests, either by physical or electronic exchange. The present invention also relates to methods for creating a secondary market for the buying and selling of tenant in common real property ownership interests. Additionally, the present invention relates to the creation of a primary and secondary market in bifurcated land TIC agreements. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306880 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CREATING A PRIMARY AND SECONDARY MARKET IN WHOLE AND BIFURCATED LAND TENANT IN COMMON REAL PROPERTY OWNERSHIP INTERESTS - The present invention relates to systems, methods, and articles of manufacture for the exchange of tenant in common real property ownership interests, either by physical or electronic exchange. The present invention also relates to methods for creating a secondary market for the buying and selling of tenant in common real property ownership interests. Additionally, the present invention relates to the creation of a primary and secondary market in bifurcated land TIC agreements. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306881 | PORTFOLIO SELECTION FOR CUSTOM INDICES OF PUBLIC SECURITIES BASED ON STATE OF DOMICILE OF ISSUING COMPANY - A method and system are provided for creating an investment vehicle associated with a geographic region, the investment vehicle including a plurality of securities issued by companies. That method comprises forming a set of securities based on inclusion criteria, and categorizing the securities according to geographic region, where the geographic region of a security may be determined based at least in part on the presence of a headquarters location of the issuing company in the geographic region. A predetermined number of securities associated with the geographic region of the investment vehicle are selected from the set of securities for inclusion in the investment vehicle, and the resulting investment vehicle is made available for trading. According to other preferred aspects of the invention, the inclusion of a company in the investment vehicle may also be based in part on market capitalization, or on the number of employees within the geographic region, or based on whether the company is listed on a particular exchange. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306882 | System, Report, and Method for Generating Natural Language News-Based Stories - The present invention generally relates to a system, report, and method for automatically generating a series of natural language news-based stories to be presented via a digital interface or printed publication to a portfolio user. The disclosure relates to a filter for selection of a handful of relevant and desired financial instruments for a specific use. These financial instruments, based on different selections from a portfolio manager via a management tool, are then used to either produce either a strategies page where a list of useful covered call trades and hedged trades are displayed in the form of a table or natural language news-based stories relating to a selected list of financial instruments found in a portfolio. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306883 | Techniques for automatically provisioning a database over a wide area network - Techniques for provisioning databases for users on a wide area network include a first party managing one or more database systems. Multiple second parties subscribe to database services supported by the database systems managed by the first party. The first party provides, over a network, to database applications controlled by the second parties, access to the database services to which the second parties are subscribed. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306884 | AUTOMATED MAILPIECE PROCESSING - System and method for the addressing of mail pieces by a variable printing system. Information allowing a mail piece to be associated with a mailing list of address information is printed on the mail piece prior to processing of the piece by a variable printing system. As the piece is processed by the variable printing system, the information printed on the piece is read and used to identify a mailing list from among a plurality of available mailing lists. Address information for that mail piece is obtained from the identified mailing list and printed on the mail piece by the variable printing system. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306885 | System and method for authenticating indicia using identity-based signature scheme - Methods and systems for verification of indicia that do not require key management systems, and in which revocation of key pairs is easily performed without adding costs to the verification process are provided. Indicia are generated and authenticated utilizing an identity-based encryption (IBE) scheme. A key generating authority generates a private key for a PSD, distributes the private key securely to the PSD, and provides public information for use by a verification service when verifying cryptographic digital signatures generated with the private key. The corresponding public key is a string consisting of PSD information that is provided as part of the indicium. The verification service can verify the signature of each indicium by obtaining the public key string from the indicium, and utilizing the key generating authority's public information. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306886 | Graphical user interface adaptation system for a point of sale device - A system for controlling a graphical user interface (GUI) for a point of sale device (POSD), including: a tracking element, in a processor for at least one specially-programmed computer, to track, using an interface element in the computer, respective responses, by end users, to a plurality of implementations of at least one input/output (I/O) function by respective GUIs for at least one first POSD; a comparison element, in the processor, to compare the respective responses with a performance parameter stored in a memory unit for the computer; and a configuration element, in the processor, to configure at least one second I/O function in accordance with the comparison of the respective responses with the performance parameter and arranged to transmit, using the interface element, the at least one second I/O function configuration to at least one second POSD for implementation by respective GUIs for the at least one second POSD. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306887 | METHOD FOR MACHINE LEARNING WITH STATE INFORMATION - Methods, systems, and computer program products are provided for the online convex optimization problem, in which the decision maker has knowledge of the all past states and resulting cost functions for his previous choices and attempts to make a new choice that results in minimum regret. The method does not rely upon the structure of the cost function or the characterization of the states and takes advantage of the similarity between successive states to enable the method to converge to a reasonably optimal result. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306888 | STOCHASTIC CONTROL OPTIMIZATION FOR SENDER-BASED FLOW CONTROL IN A DISTRIBUTED STATEFUL MESSAGING SYSTEM - A method and system for controlling message flow in distributed stream processing. State transition probabilities in a Markov model having one state per staleness value of data are determined for sending or withholding updates of data to subscribers using expected message rates from an information provider. A cost function annotates each state transition in the model with a state transition cost for each decision to “send” or “withhold”. A propagation policy specifying whether to send or withhold the message is determined for each state. The propagation policy is then deployed. If a new message comprising an update of data is received during a lapsed time unit, a staleness value of the data held by subscribers is increased. The propagation policy is used to determine whether to send or withhold the message. If the message should be sent, the message is propagated and the staleness value of the data is reset. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306889 | SYSTEM FOR SUPPORTING USER'S BEHAVIOR - Provided is a system | 2008-12-11 |
20080306890 | Plant Control Apparatus - A plant control system includes: a numerical calculation execution part which calculates the operation characteristic of the plant; a model for simulating the plant control characteristic according to information on the numerical calculation result; a learning part which learns the plant operation method by using the model; a learning information database which stores learning information data on the learning part; a pattern generation part which generates pattern data expressing a state input based on the learning information data in the learning part with a smaller input number than the model input dimension; a pattern database which stores the pattern data generated in the pattern generation part; and a learning result determination part which selects a learning result having a preferable control effect from the learning result obtained by using a plurality of patterns. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306891 | METHOD FOR MACHINE LEARNING WITH STATE INFORMATION - Methods, systems, and computer program products are provided for the online convex optimization problem, in which the decision maker has knowledge of the all past states and resulting cost functions for his previous choices and attempts to make a new choice that results in minimum regret. The method does not rely upon the structure of the cost function or the characterization of the states and takes advantage of the similarity between successive states to enable the method to converge to a reasonably optimal result. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306892 | MULTIPHASE FLOW METER FOR ELECTRICAL SUBMERSIBLE PUMPS USING ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS - A multiphase flow meter used in conjunction with an electrical submersible pump system in a well bore includes sensors to determine and transmit well bore pressure measurements, including tubing and down hole pressure measurements. The multiphase flow meter also includes at least one artificial neural network device to be used for outputting flow characteristics of the well bore. The artificial neural network device is trained to output tubing and downhole flow characteristics responsive to multiphase-flow pressure gradient calculations and pump and reservoir models, combined with standard down-hole pressure, tubing surface pressure readings, and the frequency applied to the electrical submersible pump motor. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306893 | Methods and systems for predicting occurrence of an event - Embodiments of the present invention are directed to methods and systems for training a neural network having weighted connections for classification of data, as well as embodiments corresponding to the use of such a neural network for the classification of data, including, for example, prediction of an event (e.g., disease). The method may include inputting input training data into the neural network, processing, by the neural network, the input training data to produce an output, determining an error between the output and a desired output corresponding to the input training data, rating the performance neural network using an objective function, wherein the objective function comprises a function C substantially in accordance with an approximation of the concordance index and adapting the weighted connections of the neural network based upon results of the objective function. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306894 | Computer-implemented methods and systems for identifying and reporting deviations from standards and policies for contracts, agreements and other business documents - A computer-implemented method may include steps of providing a plurality of business document templates; providing a plurality of deviation rules and associating at least some of the plurality of deviation rules with each of the business document templates; storing the plurality of business document templates and the associated plurality of deviation rules; generating a business document (such as a contract, for example) based upon one of the stored plurality of business document templates, the generated business document including a plurality of clauses and business document terms; retrieving the plurality of deviation rules associated with the business document template upon which the business document is based and applying the retrieved plurality of deviation rules against the generated business document; identifying all business document terms of the business document that do not conform to one or more of the applied plurality of deviation rules, and generating a report that includes at least the identified non-conforming business document terms. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306895 | Method and System for Predicting Personal Preferences - The invention provides techniques for building multiple predictive models of individuals' affinities for attributes of objects and/or services. The accuracies of multiple predictive models are measured and the models are combined based on the measurements, resulting in a more accurate predictive model of individual-specific affinities for attributes of the objects and/or services. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306896 | Detection of epidemic outbreaks with Persistent Causal-chain Dynamic Bayesian Networks - A method for determining a probability of a hidden variable from an observed variable in a Dynamic Bayesian Network is presented. The method includes identifying the network based on predetermined criteria, determining a number of hidden variables in a time slice of the network, determining a number of the time slices of the network, and determining the probability of the hidden variable from the observed variable in less than exponential time with respect to the number of hidden variables. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306897 | System for Providing Healthcare Operation Specific User Interface Display Images - A system provides a user interface for viewing nursing problems with multiple levels of granularity in a knowledge base and rendered in an application that are dependent on context of problems, patient demographic information and information needed by a user interface image. A user interface system presents patient medical problem information to a user. The system includes a first search processor for automatically searching a knowledge base of information associating multiple different medical problems with corresponding attributes to find an attribute indicating a particular characteristic of a particular medical problem, in response to occurrence of an event. A display processor initiates generation of data representing a display image. The display image includes, a first image area for including data indicating candidate medical problems and associated attributes and a second image area for including data representing assigned medical problems of a particular patient and enabling a user to select a medical problem for transfer from the first image area to the second image area. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306898 | Method for reliable classification of samples in clinical diagnostics using an improved method of classification - A system for classification of a test object using a training set comprising a plurality of objects, each of which is assigned as a member of a class. Collectively, the objects in the training set are members of at least two classes. A computer system is configured as a probabilistic classifier. The classifier estimates the probability of the test object being a member of each of the classes in the training set. The probabilistic classifier estimates the probability with reference to the class assignments of the objects in the training set which are neighbors to the test object within a defined region within the training set. The probabilistic classifier takes into account the situation in which there is an imbalance in the number of objects in the different classes in the training set. Additionally, the probabilistic classifier does not require any knowledge of the probability distribution function of the classes in the training set. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306899 | METHODS, APPARATUS, AND COMPUTER-READABLE MEDIA FOR ANALYZING CONVERSATIONAL-TYPE DATA - Methods, apparatus, and computer-readable media for analyzing conversational-type data by association of two or more types of extracted information in view of time are disclosed according to some aspects. In one embodiment, analysis of conversational-type data comprises identification of topical segments within the conversational-type data and linking of the topical segments with at least one other type of pertinent, extracted information. The linking can be based on a sequential order of utterances that compose, at least in part, the conversational-type data. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306900 | DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT METHOD AND APPARATUS - An electronic file accessible from terminals through a network is stored in folders having a hierarchical structure as a document and managed. When a document or folder in a folder is moved or deleted, the history of moving or deleting the document or folder is held. When one of the terminals opens a folder, the history of operation of a document or lower level folder once stored in the opened folder is displayed on the terminal that has opened the folder, based on the history of moving or deleting. A document processing method and apparatus in a document processing system allows a user to know the movement destination folder or deletion state of a document or folder by only opening a folder once storing the document or folder before moving or deleting, even if the document or folder was moved or deleted in the opened folder. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306901 | FILE PROCESSING DEVICE AND METHOD - A file processing device and a method are provided. The method includes: providing a storage unit for storing a connection date when an exterior storage device is connected to a file processing device; retrieving a last connection date of the exterior storage device; selecting the exterior storage device for files or file folders whose date information is later than the last connection date; and copying and saving the selected files or file folder to the file processing device. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306902 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR TRACKING PRINT JOB STATUS - A system and method to track and display the status of an electronic document submitted through a web-portal to a multifunctional peripheral device. The multifunctional peripheral device receives an electronic document file upon which it is to perform a service and logs the receipt in a central status database. During the processing of the electronic document file, the multifunctional peripheral device continually updates the status information corresponding to that file in the central status database. Through a web-portal, a user selects from a list of recently submitted document files one file for which status information is desired. The multifunctional peripheral device then accesses the central status database, retrieves the file, and displays, via the web-portal, detailed document and status information corresponding to the selected document file. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306903 | CARDINALITY ESTIMATION IN DATABASE SYSTEMS USING SAMPLE VIEWS - A system and method that facilitates and effectuates estimating the result of performing a data analysis operation on a set of data. Employing an approximation of the data analysis operation on a statistically valid random sample view of the data allows for a statistically accurate estimate of the result to be obtained. Sequential sampling in the view enables the approximated operation to evaluate accuracy conditions at intervals during the scan of the sample view and obtain the estimated result without having to scan the entire sample view. Feedback regarding the accuracy of the estimated result can be captured when the data analysis operation is performed against the set of data. Process control techniques can be employed with the feedback to maintain the statistical validity of the sample view. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306904 | SYSTEM, METHOD, AND PROGRAM PRODUCT FOR INTEGRATING DATABASES - A system for integrating databases comprises a first virtual table, a second virtual table, a common table, a list, a generating section, and a selecting section. The first virtual table corresponds to a first data. The second virtual table corresponds to a second data. The common table is associated with the first and second virtual tables. The list indicates information about associations between the first and second virtual tables and the common table. The generating section generates two or more access plans from a database query on the common table. The two or more access plans involve at least one of the first and second virtual tables in accordance with the list. The selecting section selects one of the two or more access plans generated by the generating section to be used to execute the database query. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306905 | Electronic directory system - A reverse based Electronic directory system is disclosed in which a subscriber can record a number of individual contact details about themselves, such as their telephone numbers (all types, including business, office direct line, business mobile, VoIP, home, personal mobile, facsimile) and e-mail addresses. The system allows other users to use one of these personal details as a search term in order to obtain other personal details. The system further provides for the ability to set permissions on any detail (such as personal details), so that they are not released without its owner's explicit permission. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306906 | SYSTEM FOR AGGREGATION SUBQUERY JOIN ELIMINATION - A system for use with an information retrieval system, in which system is used for transforming a database statement containing a first subquery and a second subquery joined together, the first subquery including a group by operation over a child subquery, the information retrieval system comprising means for removing the first subquery from the database statement thereby eliminating the join between the first subquery and the second subquery. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306907 | REDUNDANT VERSION INFORMATION IN HISTORY TABLE THAT ENABLES EFFICIENT SNAPSHOT QUERYING - A system for efficient snapshot querying include: providing a first version value for each data in a history table, where the first version value indicates a beginning of a period in which the data is valid; providing at least a second version value for each data in the history table, where the second version value indicates an end of the period in which the data is valid; receiving a request for a version of a database; and retrieving the data with the first version value less than or equal to the requested version and the second version value greater than or equal to the requested version. By maintaining a history table with redundant version information, the system is able to provide efficient snapshot querying while also avoiding the overhead burden of conventional approaches. No aggregates, joins, or sub-queries are required to retrieve a snapshot. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306908 | Finding Related Entities For Search Queries - Architecture for finding related entities for web search queries. An extraction component takes a document as input and outputs all the mentions (or occurrences) of named entities such as names of people, organizations, locations, and products in the document, as well as entity metadata. An indexing component takes a document identifier (docID) and the set of mentions of named entities and, stores and indexes the information for retrieval. A document-based search component takes a keyword query and returns the docIDs of the top documents matching with the query. A retrieval component takes a docID as input, accesses the information stored by the indexing component and returns the set of mentions of named entities in the document. This information is then passed to an entity scoring and thresholding component that computes an aggregate score of each entity and selects the entities to return to the user. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306909 | INTELLIGENT DOWNLOAD OF MEDIA FILES TO PORTABLE DEVICE - Systems and methods that intelligently download media files from a repository to a portable device of a user (e.g., cell phone), via an intelligent download engine and based on likelihood that such downloaded files are of interest to the user. Accordingly, from a user's perspective a seamless access to music depository is provided (e.g., typically all files of the depository seem to be virtually present on the portable device), and a user's manual interaction (e.g., selection of files based on memory requirement of the portable unit) is mitigated. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306910 | METHOD AND PROCESS FOR END USERS TO QUERY HIERARCHICAL DATA - Embodiments of the invention provide techniques for specifying precise queries of hierarchical data. In one embodiment, a mapping template is created to represent the hierarchical data in terms that are easy to for users to understand. The mapping template is used to generate a query tool having a tree structure made up of nodes that are queried by the user. The user may compose a query by navigating the tree structure to select nodes of interest, and specifying predicates for the selected nodes. Once the query is composed, it may be executed against the hierarchical data. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306911 | ORDERED INDEX - Systems and methods for processing an index are described. A postings list of items containing a particular term are ordered in a desired retrieval order, e.g., most recent first. The ordered items are inserted into an inverted index in the desired retrieval order, resulting in an ordered inverted index from which items may be efficiently retrieved in the desired retrieval order. During retrieval, items may first be retrieved from a live index, and the retrieved items from the live and ordered indexes may be merged. The retrieved items may also be filtered in accordance with the items' file grouping parameters. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306912 | QUERY RESULT ITERATION - Systems and methods for processing an index are described. A pulse in an inverted index refers to a group of items that do not occur in any other pulse in the index. When processing a query against an inverted index in which pulses are present, the query is processed against a single pulse. The end of the pulse is determined based on the characteristics of the pulse and the linked list nodes that comprise the postings lists from which the index was generated. In some embodiments, index updates are applied to the query result obtained from a single pulse to provide an efficient and up to date query result. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306913 | DYNAMIC AGGREGATION AND DISPLAY OF CONTEXTUALLY RELEVANT CONTENT - A web-based system scans content for specific terms, and transforms occurrences of the terms into hypertext links. Each hypertext link provides access to a dynamically generated web page which contains aggregated content related to the respective term. The aggregated content may be gathered through a distributed keyword search of various content sources, including web sites and other sources on a wide area network. The results of the keyword search are aggregated into a single page or document, preferably with filtering to remove page elements not well suited for display on a mobile device. Occurrences of specific terms on this dynamically generated page may similarly be transformed into links, such that the user can browse content from various sources within a confined environment. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306914 | Method and system for performing a search - A method and computer system for searching for documents satisfying a search query. A client application in an electronic device displays a user interface with a text input field and a plurality of selectable categories, receives user input including a text string representing search terms and a selection of one or more categories, and transmits the text string and selected categories as first and second parts, respectively, of a query to a database. The database contains an index of documents categorized according to the selectable categories. After receiving from the database a listing of documents fulfilling both parts of the query, the client application presents the listing as part of the user interface along with the input field and selectable categories. Upon receiving new user input updating the first and/or second part of the query, the client application transmits the updated query to the database. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306915 | System and Method for Data Management - A system and method for data management is disclosed. The data management system comprises a database and a display interface. The database stores data and metadata, wherein the metadata corresponds to the data. The display interface comprises a graphical interface and a searching interface. The graphical interface is used to display the data. The searching interface is used to search the creation time, accessed time or the number of accesses of the data. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306916 | Auto-activation of fonts - A method and an apparatus that search for font data associated with an electronic document in a system in response to a font request are described. A font search is automatically activated when a requested font is determined not yet registered in a system. As a result of the font search, a requested font may be registered into a system. If a font search cannot locate a requested font in local storages and remote systems, a replacement for the requested font is selected from registered fonts. A replacement font may be one of the registered fonts most similar to the requested font according to a similarity measurement based on font attributes. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306917 | FILE SERVER FOR PERFORMING CACHE PREFETCHING IN COOPERATION WITH SEARCH AP - Provided is a control computer coupled to a storage apparatus for storing a plurality of information resources and a search computer for receiving a search request containing a search condition and transmitting information resource list information containing at least one piece of information regarding an information resource corresponding to the search condition as a search result, the control computer includes a cache memory for storing at least one of the plurality of information resources, in which the control computer is configured to: receive the information resource list information from the search computer; calculate cache priority for each of the information resources based on the received information resource list information; decide at least one information resource to be stored in the cache memory based on the calculated cache priority; and store the decided at least one information resource in the cache memory. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306918 | System and method for wikifying content for knowledge navigation and discovery - Systems, methods and computer program products for navigating concepts found in data produced by intellectuals in a knowledge discovery process are disclosed. The present invention utilizes data sources and facilities for enabling community-based contributions for identifying associations between concepts disclosed by intellectuals. The present invention's approach results in having concepts mapped to authors and tools for linking related concepts with groups of intellectuals and/or contributors. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306919 | DOCUMENT SEARCH METHOD - A document search apparatus capable of an index-type search and a scan-type search performs a search in a combination of the two search types while compensating for the disadvantages of the two search types with each other. A search query for index-type search and a search query for scan-type search are constructed based on a search query consisting of a logical formula of keywords. Then, a character 2-gram for performing an index search is set to shorten the whole search time, and the index-type search is performed. Finally, a scan-type search is performed on this search result of the index-type search. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306920 | BYTE-CODE REPRESENTATIONS OF ACTUAL DATA TO REDUCE NETWORK TRAFFIC IN DATABASE TRANSACTIONS - Methods, articles of manufacture, and systems for reducing network traffic for database transactions between a requesting client and a database server are provided. For some embodiments, the client may access statistical information regarding the data, such as that commonly contained in indexes (e.g., encoded vector indexes), conventionally generated for use by a query optimizer. For some embodiments, based on the statistical information regarding the data, the client may request that the server send small byte-code representations of data from the database, rather than the actual data. The small byte-code representations may be significantly smaller than the actual represented data, thus reducing network traffic between the client and server. The client may then retrieve the actual represented data from a corresponding data representation record. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306921 | Digital Media Management Apparatus and Methods - Methods and apparatus for managing, finding and displaying objects such as digital images. Objects are tagged (“associated”) with descriptive textual and numeric data (“metadata”), and stored in a relational database from which they can be selected, sorted, and found. Tags can be defined by name, tag type, and associated attributes. Objects can be tagged by dropping a tag onto the object, or relating a database record for the tag to a database record for the object. Tagged objects can be searched for and displayed according to the degree to which their metadata matches the search criteria. Visual cues can indicate whether displayed objects match all, some but not all, or none of the search criteria. Database object distributions can be displayed as histograms or scatter plots, including timelines, calendars or maps. Object distributions can be used to search for objects or to limit search results for a previous search. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306922 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ENABLING BULK RETRIEVAL OF CERTIFICATES - A system and method for searching and retrieving certificates, which may be used in the processing of encoded messages. In one embodiment, a certificate synchronization application is programmed to perform certificate searches by querying one or more certificate servers for all of the certificates on those certificate servers. If all of the certificates on a certificate server cannot be successfully retrieved using a single search query, due to a search quota on the certificate server being exceeded for example, the search is re-performed through multiple queries, each corresponding to a narrower subsearch. Embodiments described herein enable large amounts of certificates to be automatically searched for and retrieved from certificate servers, thereby minimizing the need for users to manually search for individual certificates. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306923 | SEARCHING A MULTI-LINGUAL DATABASE - A system and method of searching a database in which documents of different languages are included. The system includes a synonym or keyword dictionary which is bi-directional and allows for translation of keywords between a first language and other languages. The translated words keywords for the document are stored in an inverted index which is then used for searching, either in a selected language, a second language or in all languages, as determined by the user. This use of multiple searching and a translated synonym dictionary avoids the need for translation of the entire document and avoids inaccuracies which may result from translations. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306924 | MOBILE TELEPHONE OBJECT LOOKUP AND IDENTIFICATION - Provided is a system and method for providing an information retrieval service on a mobile computing device such as a wireless computer or cellular telephone. The user of a mobile computing device provides vocal, visual or textual data to the service provider. The service scans a transmitted data to convert the data into a digital form and the data is converted into a text file. The service provider performs analytical computations on the data in the text file and, using context and preference rules, produces and transmits information of value to the user. In addition, the service may request additional information from the user for the purpose of better servicing the query. A query to the claimed service may be modified based upon configuration information stored with respect to a particular user or based upon previous queries from the particular user. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306925 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR AUTOMATIC MULTIMEDIA NARRATIVE ENRICHMENT - A method and apparatus is disclosed that receives an input narrative in a particular media format, and produces therefrom a multimedia enriched version of the input narrative. In one embodiment, a method is provided for enriching an input narrative with multimedia content, wherein the method includes the step of selectively segmenting the input narrative to form queries pertaining to different portions or elements of the input narrative. The method further comprises retrieving multimedia artifacts from one or more multimedia repositories, wherein each retrieved multimedia artifact is associated with one of the queries, and selecting a subset of the retrieved multimedia artifacts, wherein the subset includes artifacts comprising different types of multimedia content. The input narrative is then combined with respective multimedia artifacts of the subset, in order to provide an enriched and enhanced narrative. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306926 | System and Method for Semantic Normalization of Healthcare Data to Support Derivation Conformed Dimensions to Support Static and Aggregate Valuation Across Heterogeneous Data Sources - A computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for determining aggregate values of health data items from heterogeneously coded databases containing heterogeneously coded medical data. The data, in heterogeneous databases, is queried using a series of semantic layers including i) cascaded asymmetric association tables and ii) semantic search. The heterogeneously coded medical data items are translated into conformal dimensions and denominator files of combinations of disease data are derived. The denominator files of combinations of disease are aggregated based on a mapping of the coded medical and demographic conditions. The data is stored in a target data repository. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306927 | Index Partitioning and Scope Checking - Systems and methods for processing an index are described. Searches are scope checked more efficiently using a forward lookup process based on the size of the requested search scope. In addition, an index is partitioned into separate stores based on a search scope that is learned based on where the user commonly conducts searches. As an example, a separate store may be created for a user's home directory should the user be conducting most of his or her searches in that directory. In addition to limiting the size of the index, during retrieval, intelligent index partitioning avoids the need to scope check a common search location. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306928 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR THE SEARCHING OF INFORMATION RESOURCES - The present invention discloses a method and apparatus for the searching of information resources. A method includes steps of: according to a current query for a first type of information resource, obtaining a result of query on said first type of information resource, one or more facets of said first type of information resource and metadata under each facet, and relationships between said first type of information resource and other types of information resource that at least include a second type of information resource; and returning to a user the obtained result of query on said first type of information resource, the one or more facets of said first type of information resource and the metadata under each facet, and the relationships between said first type of information resource and other types of information resource that at least include a second type of information resource. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306929 | DE-SERIALIZING DATA OBJECTS ON DEMAND - The invention is directed to techniques for de-serializing data from a software system, such as an enterprise software system, upon request. For example, techniques are described for converting a data description language, such as the extensible markup language (XML), representation of data from an enterprise software system to an object when requested by a software application. A computing device connected to the enterprise software system loads multidimensional data via an XML data stream. The XML data is de-serialized to create objects as the objects are requested by software applications executing on the computing device. The remaining XML data may be stored on the computing device until the corresponding objects are requested by the software applications. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306930 | Automatic Content Organization Based On Content Item Association - An association engine for organizing content items in a logical database is provided. First description data including dimension data for a first identified content item in the database is extracted (S | 2008-12-11 |
20080306931 | Event Weighting Method and System - A system and method to facilitate automatic weighting of events in a network and targeting of advertising information to users within the network based on assigned event weights are described. Multiple events associated with a user are retrieved from a data storage module. Each event is further analyzed to extract one or more event features. A weight parameter value is further calculated for each retrieved event. Each event is further assigned to a predetermined category based on the calculated weight parameter value. Finally, each event and the associated weight parameter value are stored within the data storage module in connection with the predetermined category. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306932 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR A RATING SYSTEM - An embodiment relates generally to a method of searching. The method includes providing for a knowledgebase item and associating a review for the knowledgebase item. The method also includes associating a rating for the knowledgebase item and developing a ranking associated with the knowledgebase item based on at least one the review and the rating. The method further includes displaying the knowledgebase item based on the ranking in subsequent searches that include the knowledgebase item. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306933 | DISPLAY OF SEARCH-ENGINE RESULTS AND LIST - Displaying a list of search-engine results in the same web-browser window as a viewing frame that is configured to display one of the results is described herein. A user's web search is performed on a search engine, and results are returned to a client computing device. The results are listed in a web-browser window that is configured to simultaneously display any result selected by a user. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306934 | USING LINK STRUCTURE FOR SUGGESTING RELATED QUERIES - An approach is provided for determining related queries for a given search query based on the linking structure of electronic documents within a document set. Document titles are used to represent potential search queries and links between the electronic documents are used to determine relationships between the potential search queries. As such, the document set may be represented as a directed graph in which document titles (which represent potential search queries) are nodes and links are edges between the nodes. When a particular search query is received, a corresponding node is identified and related queries are determined by identifying other nodes having connections with that node. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306935 | USING JOINT COMMUNICATION AND SEARCH DATA - Conventionally, there are communities of individuals who perform Internet searches and communities of individuals who utilized Internet communications. While there is commonly a large amount of overlap between the two communities, there is little interaction between the two communities. Internet searches can be used to recommend interesting people to a user. Furthermore, Internet communications can be used to recommend content that is likely to be of interest to the user. In addition, previously engaged communications or searches can be used to disambiguate terms in a subsequent search. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306936 | Method and apparatus for compiling user preferences for digital content streamed to a mobile handset - A method and apparatus for compiling user preferences and providing access to preferred digital content on a mobile handset is provided. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306937 | Using search trails to provide enhanced search interaction - It has been found that user navigation that follows search engine interactions provides implicit endorsement of resources (such as web resources) that are preferred by users, and which may be particularly valuable for exploratory search tasks. Thus, a combination of past searching and browsing user behavior is analyzed to identify additional information that augments search results delivered by a search engine. The additional information may include a display of hyperlinks to locations which are derived from the past searching and browsing user behavior, given a specific input query. The additional information may be provided to supplement web search results. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306938 | ELECTRONIC PUBLICATION SYSTEM - A system and method for modifying publication data in a publication system are described. An example embodiment includes receiving proposed publication data and accessing a success measurement associated with past publications within a publication system. The success measurement may indicate a measurement of success associated with the past publications. An example system and method may generate modification data to be used to modify the proposed publication data. The modification data may be based on the success measurement and proposed publication data. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306939 | USE OF FIXED-WIDTH FIELD ARRAY WITH INVERTED INDEX - A computer based system can comprise an inverted index for a number of documents and a fixed-width field array storing data associated with the documents. The system provides results data using information obtained from the fixed-width field array. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306940 | IMAGE DISPLAY DEVICE AND METHOD - An image display device is provided. The device includes a display screen, a storage unit, and a processing unit. The storage unit stores images and selection interface information. The selection interface information includes a plurality of catalogues each of which collects one or more images. The processing unit includes a selection interface display module, a selection control module, and an image search module. The selection interface display module controls the display screen to display a selection interface that provides the catalogues for selection according to the selection interface information. The selection control module generates a selection signal in response to a selection operation on the selection interface. The selection signal indicates which catalogue on the selection interface is selected. The image search module searches the storage unit for the images according to the selection signal. An image display method is also provided. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306941 | SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATICALLY EXTRACTING BY-LINE INFORMATION - A by-line extraction system detects a set of potential headlines from a title meta-tag of a crawled document, selects a candidate headline from the set of potential headlines, and extracts the by-line information from the document using the location of the selected candidate headline. The system constructs the set of potential headlines based on the title meta-tag. The system selects a candidate headline by evaluating the set of potential headlines in order of the lengths of the potential headlines. The system extracts the by-line information from the document by using the location of the selected candidate headline to extract a string representing a date, a name, or a source located within a minimum distance from the location of the potential headline. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306942 | On the Role of Market Economics in Ranking Search Results - The invention presents a method of and service for searching computerized networks, such as the internet, that first performs a search based on a user query to produce results that are ranked. The results comprise references to entities (addresses on the network, such as web sites). Before reporting the results to the user, the invention provides that the search entity contacts the entities listed in the search results to determine whether entities listed in the search results desire to change their rank when compared to other entities listed in the results. If some entities do desire to change their rank, the invention charges fees to entities that increase their rank and credits (pays fees) to entities that decrease their rank. A portion of the amount charged to entities that increase their rank can be paid to the entity performing the search (helping to support the high quality search engines), and a portion will go to the entities that voluntarily decrease their rank within the search results (helping to support high-content web sites). | 2008-12-11 |
20080306943 | PHRASE-BASED DETECTION OF DUPLICATE DOCUMENTS IN AN INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM - An information retrieval system uses phrases to index, retrieve, organize and describe documents. Phrases are identified that predict the presence of other phrases in documents. Documents are the indexed according to their included phrases. Related phrases and phrase extensions are also identified. Phrases in a query are identified and used to retrieve and rank documents. Phrases are also used to cluster documents in the search results, create document descriptions, and eliminate duplicate documents from the search results, and from the index. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306944 | METHODS, SYSTEMS AND COMPUTER PROGRAM PRODUCTS FOR ANALOGY DETECTION AMONG ENTITIES USING RECIPROCAL SIMILARITY MEASURES - Analogies among entities may be detected by obtaining associative counts among the entities and computing similarity measures among given entities and other entities, using the associative counts. First and second entities are then identified as being analogies if the first entity has a strongest similarity measure with respect to the second entity and the second entity also has a strongest similarity measure with respect to the first entity. The similarity measures may be calculated using a normalized entropy inverted among a given entity and other entities. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306945 | EXAMPLE-DRIVEN DESIGN OF EFFICIENT RECORD MATCHING QUERIES - Example-driven creation of record matching queries. The disclosed architecture employs techniques that exploit the availability of positive (or matching) and negative (non-matching) examples to search through this space and suggest an initial record matching query. The record matching task is modeled as that of designing an operator tree obtained by composing a few primitive operators. This ensures that record matching programs be executable efficiently and scalably over large input relations. The architecture joins records across multiple (e.g., two) relations (e.g., R and S). The architecture exploits the monotonicity property of similarity functions for record matching in the relations, in that, any pair of matching records have a higher similarity value than non-matching record pairs on at least one similarity function. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306946 | SYSTEMS AND METHODS OF TASK CUES - A computing system for encouraging the performance of a task comprises association data, a proxy module, a display module, and a reward module. The association data associates tags with stimuli related to performing tasks. The proxy module is configured to receive encoded data, to identify tags in the encoded data that have associated stimuli in the association data, and to generate modified encoded data that includes data representative of at least one of the stimuli. The display module is configured to receive the modified encoded data, to display information based at least in part on the modified encoded data, and to provide at least one mechanism for a user to perform a task related to at least one of the stimuli. The reward module is configured to reward a user for performing tasks related to the stimuli. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306947 | Taxonomy editor - A repository | 2008-12-11 |
20080306948 | STRING AND BINARY DATA SORTING - A device, system, and method are directed towards sorting a set of string or binary data items. A segment of a fixed size from each data item is combined with a pointer to the data item in a word. The words are sorted, and words having equivalent string/binary segments are grouped together. The groups are recursively sorted until no groups remain or the end of the string or binary data in a group is sorted. Methods of the invention include determining a segment size based on a size of a pointer item and a word size, so that a segment and a pointer fit within a word, allowing comparisons and data manipulation to be performed on words. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306949 | INVERTED INDEX PROCESSING - Systems and methods for processing an index are described. In one exemplary method, a 2-level term table and postings table is used to generate postings lists. The postings lists are optimally stored in a postings file. Update sets for an index are optimally processed to update a index to a storage medium using flushing. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306950 | Arrival rate throttles for workload management - A computer-implemented method, system and article of manufacture for managing workloads in a computer system, comprising monitoring system conditions and operating environment events that impact on the operation of the computer system, regulating execution of one or more queries based on the monitored system conditions and operating environment events using arrival rate throttles, and performing the queries to access data in a database for presentation and use to a user. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306951 | Method and System of Retrieving Avatar Data Unique to a User - A method of retrieving avatar data unique to a user is provided. The method includes invoking an application and retrieving said avatar data from an avatar server. The avatar data is accessible from different types of devices, wherein the different types of data can be a game console or a personal computer. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306952 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR GROUPING CLAIM RECORDS ASSOCIATED WITH A PROCEDURE - A system and computer-implemented method for grouping medical records implements a multi-level analysis of the records. The level of analysis for each record is determined based upon the time proximity of each record to the defining medical procedure or service (anchor procedure) to be analyzed. Once an anchor procedure is identified, claim records are processed to determine whether any of the records should be grouped with the anchor procedure into a procedure episode group (PEG). First, the date of service for each claim record is identified to determine whether the claim record falls within time window. The claim records falling within the window then are assessed to determine whether each claim record is sufficiently related to the anchor procedure (for example, by determining whether the diagnostic, procedure, or episode treatment group coding of each claim record is associated with the anchor procedure). The requisite level of relationship between the claim records and the anchor procedure depends upon the position of the records within the time window. Only those claim records having the requisite relationship level associated with the portion of the time window in which they fall are included in the PEG. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306953 | System and method for sharing resources - A method and computer program product for defining an activity. One or more resources are associated with the activity. A user is associated with the activity. In response to associating the user with the activity, the user is granted access to the one or more resources associated with the activity. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306954 | Methods and systems for managing permissions data - Methods, systems and computer readable media which use permissions checking when deciding whether to allow access to a file are described. In one exemplary embodiment, a method includes receiving a notification of a change of permissions of a directory in a hierarchical file system and determining, in response to the notification, whether to update partially a permissions cache which is used in screening access based on permissions, such as access to search results. The determining may include a comparison of an identifier of the directory to a data structure of cached directories which have files represented in the permissions cache. | 2008-12-11 |
20080306955 | Content management system and method - A method and system for facilitating the editing by a user of content hosted on a network. A page comprising one or more items of content is presented to the user. A tag is embedded in the page. The tag includes rules associated with an identity of users who are entitled to edit one or more of the content items. If the user is entitled to edit one or more of the content items, an indication is presented to the user on the page. When activated by the user, the indicator allows the user to edit one or more of the content items. | 2008-12-11 |