| Patent application number | Description | Published |
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| 20080250148 | Member Activation - A method and system are herein disclosed for registering a member at a targeted web-based information management system using a reduced amount of member and system interaction to confirm and establish the member's contact information. Generally, the method may communicate permission to solicit a potential member to the information management system. In one embodiment, the member previously communicated permission to receive solicitations from other systems to another web-based information management system. The method may communicate the permission from another web-based system to the present system. The permission may include member identification and/or demographic data. The method may communicate a solicitation message from the system to the member, the solicitation message comprising at least a portion of the member identification data. The member may then communicate a confirmation message to the targeted web-based information management system, wherein the confirmation message is in reply to the solicitation message and includes the portion of the member identification data. Using the confirmation, the system may then match the portion of the member identification data from the confirmation message to the portion of the member identification data from the confirmation message. | 10-09-2008 |
| 20080275916 | RULE-BASED DRY RUN METHODOLOGY IN AN INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM - A method of processing data in an information gathering system includes receiving a set of candidate data records and attempting to obtain a set of processing rules associated with the set of candidate data records. If the set of processing rules is successfully obtained, the method includes obtaining a set of quality criteria associated with the obtained set of processing rules, applying the set of processing rules and the set of quality criteria to the set of candidate data records to produce a set of quality indicators, and conditionally applying the set of candidate data records to a database associated with the information gathering system based on the set of quality indicators. | 11-06-2008 |
| 20080288863 | SYSTEM AND METHOD OF PERSONALIZING WEB PAGES BY PRE-FETCHING SUBSETS OF INDIVIDUAL MEMBER DATA - A method of efficiently providing information for personalizing a web page includes storing member information for a plurality of members such that the member information for each of at least a portion of the plurality of members includes a plurality of responses to demographic questions associated with one or more answers and a response is associated with one of the answers and is conditionally present in the member information, receiving a first selection of an answer to a demographic question from a first authorized user, temporarily associating a first variable personalization slot storing a Boolean value with an answer to the first selected demographic question, receiving a request from the member to view a web page, and personalizing the web page in accordance with the Boolean value stored in the member's first variable personalization slot. | 11-20-2008 |
| 20100262461 | System and Method for Web-Based Consumer-to-Business Referral - A method for automatically crediting a registered user for referring a candidate third-party entity to an online system, where the candidate entity is at least one of a commercial, government, or non-profit entity where the online system facilitates transactions between a plurality of users and a plurality of participating third-party entities, and where the online commercial system maintains a personal account for each registered user, includes receiving a transaction request from the candidate third-party entity, receiving an identifier associated with the transaction request such that the identifier corresponds to the registered user, identifying the registered user using the identifier, retrieving a crediting rule associated with the transaction request, and automatically crediting the registered consumer in accordance with the crediting rule. | 10-14-2010 |
| Patent application number | Description | Published |
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| 20090089313 | DECENTRALIZED RECORD EXPIRY - A technique is described that reduces the complexity and resource consumption associated with performing record expiry in a distributed database system. In accordance with the technique, a record is checked to see if it has expired only when it has been accessed for a read or a write. If at the time of a read a record is determined to have expired, then it is not served. If at the time of a write a record is determined to have expired, then the write is treated as an insertion of a new record, and steps are taken to treat the insertion consistently with regard to the previous expired version. A background process is used to delete records that have not been written to or actively deleted by a client after expiration. | 04-02-2009 |
| 20090112455 | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR RENDERING SIMPLIFIED POINT FINDING MAPS - A method and system for rendering simplified point finding maps is provided. The method may include defining a boundary area and a target point within a target area, on a map that comprises multiple roads segments. A plurality of routes that follow the road segments and go from the boundary area to the target point may be selected. Road segments that are not necessary to the routes may be removed from the map. | 04-30-2009 |
| 20090204593 | System and method for parallel retrieval of data from a distributed database - An improved system and method for parallel retrieval of data from a distributed database is provided. A parallel interface may be provided for use by a cluster of client machine for parallel retrieval of partial results from parallel execution of a database query by a cluster of database servers storing a distributed database. A query interface may be augmented for inputting a database query and specifying the number of instances of parallel retrieval of results from query execution. To do so, a commercial query language may be augmented for sending a query request that may include a parameter specifying the database query and an additional parameter specifying the desired retrieval parallelism. The augmented query interface may return a list of retrieval point addresses for retrieving the partial results assigned to each of the retrieval point addresses from parallel execution of the database query. | 08-13-2009 |
| 20100241639 | APPARATUS AND METHODS FOR CONCEPT-CENTRIC INFORMATION EXTRACTION - Disclosed are methods and apparatus for extracting (or annotating) structured information from web content. Web content of interest from a particular domain is represented as one or more tree instances having a plurality of branching nodes that each correspond to a web object such that the tree instances correspond to one or more structured data instances. The particular domain is associated with domain knowledge that includes one or more presentation rulesets that each specifies a particular structure for a set of data instances, a domain-specific concept labeler, one or more specified properties of the web objects in the tree instances, and a concept schema that specifies a representation of the data to be extracted from the web content. A structured data instance that conforms to the concept schema is extracted from the one or more tree instances based on the domain knowledge for the particular domain. Extraction of the structured data instances is accomplished by (i) using the domain-specific concept labeler to annotate a subset of nodes of the tree instances; and (ii) using a locally adaptive concept annotator to extract the structured data instances based on the annotated segments and the local properties associated with such annotated segments. The extracted structured data instance is stored as structured output records in a database. | 09-23-2010 |
| 20110153542 | OPINION AGGREGATION SYSTEM - A system is disclosed for obtaining and aggregating opinions generated by multiple sources with respect to one or more objects. The disclosed system uses observed variables associated with an opinion and a probabilistic model to estimate latent properties of that opinion. With those latent properties, the disclosed system may enable publishers to reliably and comprehensively present object information to interested users. | 06-23-2011 |
