Patent application number | Description | Published |
20090024952 | CONTROL AND VISIBILITY FOR DIGITAL CALENDAR SHARING - A digital calendar sharing control and visibility system and method for providing a user with control and visibility of digital calendar sharing. The system and method enhance and improve the sharing capabilities of current digital calendar applications. The system and method include a time-based (or expiration) sharing feature that gives a user control over the expiration date of the calendar sharing. The user can expire the sharing after a certain duration or date. The user also can specify a date range or a time range that a person can view in the user's digital calendar. A sharing audits and history feature allows a user to view who has looked at their calendar and what calendar information has been viewed. A private notes section allows a user to enter information that will not be seen by another person, even if that person has sharing permission to view the user's calendar. | 01-22-2009 |
20090282473 | OWNER PRIVACY IN A SHARED MOBILE DEVICE - Systems and methods that regulate range of access to personal information of a mobile unit's owner. The access control component can designate granularity for access levels and/or a spectrum of access modes—(as opposed to a binary choice of full access or no access at all). Such access can be based on a spectrum and/or discrete trust relationship between the owner and user of the mobile unit. A profile definition component can exploit an owner's trust relationships to designate levels of security. The profile definition component can further define a profile based on a set of applications, such as entertainment mode, browser mode, and the like. | 11-12-2009 |
20130303190 | REQUESTING A LOCATION OF A USER - A user sends a location request to a user of a group that requests the user's current location. For example, one family member may send a location request to another family member that is part of their family group for their current location. The user receiving the request may accept the location request or reject the location request. When the location request is reject, the requesting user is not provided with the current location information of the user. When the location request is accepted, the requesting user is provided with the current location information of the user. In addition to providing the location information to the requesting user, the location may also be shared with other members of the group. For example, a message may be sent to each of the family members that are part of the group that informs them that a member has updated their location. | 11-14-2013 |
20140167973 | PHYSICAL ACTIVITY INFERENCE FROM ENVIRONMENTAL METRICS - Portable devices include environmental sensors that generate metrics about the environment (e.g., accelerometers detecting impulses and vibration, and GPS receivers detecting position and velocity). Such devices often use environmental metrics to extract user input directed at the device by the user, and status information about the device and the environment. Presented herein are techniques for using environmental metrics to infer physical activities performed by the user while attached to the device. For example, jogging may be inferred from regular, strong impulses and typical jogging speed; walking may be inferred from regular, weak impulses and typical walking speed; and riding in a vehicle may be inferred from low-level vibrations and high speed (optionally identifying the type of vehicle ridden by the user). Based on these inferences, the device may automatically present applications and/or or adjust user interfaces suitable for the user's physical activity, rather than responsive to user input. | 06-19-2014 |
20140372898 | DISPLAYING LIFE EVENTS WHILE NAVIGATING A CALENDAR - Life events relating to a user are displayed on a calendar. A user may navigate to different time periods in the calendar and see past life events relating to the user displayed on the calendar. The life events that are displayed on the calendar may include different types of content and be determined from different sources. For example, the life events for the time period may be: pictures, events, social media posts, messages, and the like. Different content sources may be used to locate the life events relating to the user. The life events that are selected for display on the calendar may be shown differently from other content that is included on the calendar. The life events may be processed to adjust an appearance of the life event before it is displayed. A user may also share a life experience with other users. | 12-18-2014 |
Patent application number | Description | Published |
20090030767 | SCHEDULING AND IMPROVING ERGONOMIC BREAKS USING ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION - An ergonomic break system and method for scheduling and improving an ergonomic break for a user from a computing device. The system and method schedule the break based on environmental information to minimize annoyance to the user. Environmental information includes the condition of the computing device (such as whether the user is typing at the keyboard or using a mouse), the condition of the environment in the immediate vicinity of the computing device (such as whether the user is on the telephone or has another person in the room with her), and the condition of the user (such as whether the user is looking at the display device or is properly stretching during the ergonomic break). The system and method also include features that improve the user's productivity during the break and improve the effectiveness and effectiveness of the break. | 01-29-2009 |
20090100340 | ASSOCIATIVE INTERFACE FOR PERSONALIZING VOICE DATA ACCESS - The claimed subject matter according to one aspect provides systems and/or methods that effectuate user development, customization, or utilization of dynamically configurable dialogue flow systems. The system can include devices and components that employ data associated with a user to retrieve navigation panes unique with respect to the user, scans the navigation panes and identifies adjustable attributes, utilizes the adjustable attributes to generate voice prompts communicated to the user via handheld devices, the user in reply to the voice prompts utters personalized responses associated with the voice prompts, and based at least on the personalized responses initiates actions associated with the adjustable attributes. | 04-16-2009 |
20090254614 | SHARING CONTENT USING SELECTION AND PROPOSAL - A system may facilitate “almost automatic” sharing of content by regularly selecting content to be shared, and by publishing the content to certain entities if a person agrees, or does not object, to the sharing. A content item may be selected based on a criterion. A proposal to share the content item then may be displayed to a person. The proposal may specify a time by which the content item will be published if the proposal is not rejected. The person may explicitly accept or reject the proposal, or may passively allow the content to publish by not rejecting the proposal before the specified time. The content may be published so as to be receivable by a set of one or more entities that have been designated to receive shared content items. | 10-08-2009 |
20100094939 | TRANSIENT NETWORKS - The claimed subject matter relates to an architecture that can facilitate creation and management of an event-oriented transient network and can further manage decommission of the transient network. In particular, the architecture can construct temporary communities based upon a particular event, project, or activity; manage (e.g., filter, prioritize, or control) communications and content associated with the community; and disband the community by deconstructing the transient network according to an aging function that controls how the network decays. In addition, the architecture can leverage existing information (e.g. profile data) and content feeds associated with disparate social networking services or communities for the benefit of the temporary community. | 04-15-2010 |
20100107218 | SECURED COMPARTMENT FOR TRANSACTIONS - Systems and methods that establish a secured compartment that manages sensitive user transactions/information on a user's machine. The secured compartment qualifies user interaction with the machine, and separates such qualified interaction from other user activity on the machine. A user is switched to such secured compartment upon occurrence of a predetermined event, such as in form of: an explicit request (e.g., a secure attention sequence); an implicit request (e.g., inference of user activities); and presence of a peripheral device that is bound to the secured compartment (e.g., a USB)—wherein such actions typically cannot be generated by an application running outside the secured compartment. | 04-29-2010 |
20110301958 | System-Initiated Speech Interaction - Whenever an event occurs on a computing system which will accept a response from a user of the system, the system automatically determines whether or not to enable speech interaction with the system for the event response. Whenever speech interaction is enabled with the system for the event response, the system provides a notification to the user which informs the user of the event and their options for responding thereto, where these options include responding verbally. Whenever the user responds within a prescribed period of time via a voice command (VC), the system attempts to recognize the VC. Whenever the VC is successfully recognized, the system responds appropriately to the VC. | 12-08-2011 |
20110312303 | CONTEXT-DRIVEN DATA SHARING - This patent application pertains to context-driven data sharing, and specifically to data sharing relating to a telephone call. One example can establish a telephone call between first and second computing devices. This example can also utilize the telephone call as at least part of a basis for temporarily adjusting a data sharing permission level on at least one of the first and second computing devices during the telephone call. | 12-22-2011 |
20120310376 | OCCUPANCY PREDICTION USING HISTORICAL OCCUPANCY PATTERNS - Methods and systems for occupancy prediction using historical occupancy patterns are described. In an embodiment, an occupancy probability is computed by comparing a recent occupancy pattern to historic occupancy patterns. Sensor data for a room, or other space, is used to generate a table of past occupancy which comprises these historic occupancy patterns. The comparison which is performed identifies a number of similar historic occupancy patterns and data from these similar historic occupancy patterns is combined to generate an occupancy probability for a time in the future. In an example, time may be divided into discrete slots and binary values may be used to indicate occupancy or non-occupancy in each slot. An occupancy probability for a defined future time slot then comprises a combination of the binary values for corresponding time slots from each of the identified similar occupancy patterns. | 12-06-2012 |
20130053054 | USING PREDICTIVE TECHNOLOGY TO INTELLIGENTLY CHOOSE COMMUNICATION - Selecting communication settings. A method includes observing at least one of present, prior, or anticipated future movement of a user. Based on the observed user movement, embodiments may predict one or more future locations of the user. Based on the one or more future locations of the user, a communication setting of a device is selected to be used by the user. | 02-28-2013 |
20130201095 | PRESENTATION TECHNIQUES - Techniques involving presentations are described. In one or more implementations, a user interface is output by a computing device that includes a slide of a presentation, the slide having an object that is output for display in three dimensions. Responsive to receipt of one or more inputs by the computing device, how the object in the slide is output for display in the three dimensions is altered. | 08-08-2013 |
20130201276 | INTEGRATED INTERACTIVE SPACE - Techniques for implementing an integrative interactive space are described. In implementations, video cameras that are positioned to capture video at different locations are synchronized such that aspects of the different locations can be used to generate an integrated interactive space. The integrated interactive space can enable users at the different locations to interact, such as via video interaction, audio interaction, and so on. In at least some embodiments, techniques can be implemented to adjust an image of a participant during a video session such that the participant appears to maintain eye contact with other video session participants at other locations. Techniques can also be implemented to provide a virtual shared space that can enable users to interact with the space, and can also enable users to interact with one another and/or objects that are displayed in the virtual shared space. | 08-08-2013 |
20130232552 | Automatic Context Sharing with Privacy - The subject disclosure is directed towards a technology by which a computing device user may share context-related information (e.g., including current activity) with other recipient machines. A requestor may request to peek at a user's context, and if the requestor is valid (pre-approved by the user), a response based on context-related information is sent, which may be via a cloud service. The response may be filtered and/or adjusted based upon the identity of the requestor and other information associated with that identity, e.g., filtering criteria set by the user. Also described is notifying the user of the peek request, and logging information corresponding to the request and response. A broadcast message may also be sent by the device to share context without waiting for a peek request. | 09-05-2013 |
20140093079 | SECURELY JOINING A SECURE WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK - Securely joining a secure wireless communications network is described, for example, where a printer or other device is securely added to a home wireless network. In various embodiments, a temporary wireless network is established between a new joiner device and a second wireless communications device which is already a member of a secure home wireless network. In an example, the temporary wireless network is set up using a secret key known to the new joiner device and the second wireless communications device by virtue of physical proximity. In various examples, the secure, temporary wireless network is used to transfer credentials of the secure home network to the new joiner device which then joins the home network. In an example the temporary wireless network is cancelled once the new joiner device becomes a member of the secure home (or other) wireless network. | 04-03-2014 |
20140274159 | INFERRING PLACEMENT OF MOBILE ELECTRONIC DEVICES - A “Placement Detector” enables handheld or mobile electronic devices such as phones, media players, tablets, etc., to infer their current position or placement. Placement inference is performed by evaluating one or more sensors associated with the device relative to one or more trained probabilistic models to infer device relative to a user. Example placement inferences include, but are not limited to, inferring whether the device is currently in a user's pocket, in a user's purse (or other carrying bag or backpack), in a closed area such as a drawer or box, in an open area such as on a table, indoors, outdoors, etc. These types of placement inferences facilitate a wide range of automated user-device interactions, including, but not limited to, placement-dependent notifications, placement-dependent responses to various inputs, prevention of inadvertent “pocket dialing,” prevention of inadvertent power cycling of devices, lost or misplaced device location assistance, etc. | 09-18-2014 |