Electronic Arts Patent Grants

System and method for tagging content and delivering the tag to buddies of a given user

Granted: January 27, 2015
Patent Number: 8943538
A method comprises retrieving a profile of a given user, the given user having a given-user device; delivering a content item to the given-user device; receiving one or more user-specified tags associated with the content item; identifying one or more buddies of the user as indicated in the profile; and delivering the one or more tags to the one or more buddies.

Advertisement distribution apparatus and advertisement distribution method

Granted: January 27, 2015
Patent Number: 8943535
An advertisement distribution apparatus includes: a receiver that receives a display request including a viewpoint condition and advertisement information; an advertisement space setting unit that sets an advertisement space corresponding to the viewpoint condition to video data of an arbitrary viewpoint position generated based on imaging data having different viewpoint positions; an advertisement information setting unit that sets the advertisement information received by the receiver…

Image cropping using supervised learning

Granted: January 20, 2015
Patent Number: 8938116
Software for supervised learning extracts a set of pixel-level features from each source image in collection of source images. Each of the source images is associated with a thumbnail created by an editor. The software also generates a collection of unique bounding boxes for each source image. And the software calculates a set of region-level features for each bounding box. Each region-level feature results from the aggregation of pixel values for one of the pixel-level features. The…

Extraction of video fingerprints and identification of multimedia using video fingerprinting

Granted: January 13, 2015
Patent Number: 8934545
A video fingerprinting algorithm extracts characteristic features from regions of interest in a media object, such as a video signal. The regions of interest contain the perceptually important parts of the video signal. A fingerprint may be extracted from a target media object, and the fingerprint the target media content may then be matched against multiple regions of interest of known reference fingerprints. This matching may allow identification of complex scenes, inserts, and…

Method and system for anonymous measurement of online advertisement using offline sales

Granted: January 13, 2015
Patent Number: 8935177
Anonymous measurement of online advertising using offline sales is disclosed. The measurement uses anonymized online ad exposure data and anonymized offline sales, or conversion data, to measure effectiveness of online advertisement. The anonymized exposure and conversion data are matched using tokens from each data set; each token corresponds to a user and is generated from personally identifiable information of the user that is anonymized to preserve the user's privacy. The anonymized…

Clustering cookies for identifying unique mobile devices

Granted: January 13, 2015
Patent Number: 8935194
Embodiments are directed towards clustering cookies for identifying unique mobile devices for associating activities over a network with a given mobile device. The cookies are clustered based on a Bayes Factor similarity model that is trained from cookie features of known mobile devices. The clusters may be used to determine the number of unique mobile devices that access a website. The clusters may also be used to provide targeted content to each unique mobile device.

Smartlink system and method

Granted: January 13, 2015
Patent Number: 8935400
Multiple applications may be targeted via key/value data associated with a resource identified by a primary Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”). By parsing the key/value data, an alternative application for accessing the resource may be identified. When the alternative application is installed on a device, the alternative application may be invoked to access the resource.

Techniques for modifying a query based on query associations

Granted: January 6, 2015
Patent Number: 8930356
Techniques are provided through which query associations are made between initial queries and corresponding query modifications to the initial queries previously made. Each query modification is made with respect to a searchable source. Based on these query associations, modified queries are generated on a per-source basis. Query associations may be stored on a per user or per community basis, where a community can include many users. Frequently used query modifications may be stored as…

Automatically arranging of icons on a user interface

Granted: January 6, 2015
Patent Number: 8930839
Automatically arranging icons on a user interface is provided. A plurality of icons associated with items are received and displayed on the user interface. An importance score for each icon of the plurality of icons and a similarity score between two or more of the plurality of icons are determined. Further, a user interface coordinate is assigned to at least a portion of the plurality of icons based on the importance and similarity scores. The user interface is then displayed with the…

Super-emoticons

Granted: January 6, 2015
Patent Number: 8930463
Techniques are described for generating and displaying “super-emoticons”. Super-emoticons are similar to smileys in that they may be generated in response to a participant in a textual conversation entering a specific sequence of textual characters. However, super-emoticons differ from smileys in that super-emoticons are programmed to demonstrate more sophisticated behaviors, including but not limited to: moving out of the text insertion location, interacting with other display…

Mouse gesture assisted search

Granted: January 6, 2015
Patent Number: 8930390
A system and method for method for performing a web search by a search engine for content including: providing a first search results page to a user in response to a search query; providing an interface for submission of an input action representing a search command, wherein the interface is associated with the search results page; receiving the input action; reformulating the search query to incorporate the search command represented by the input action; and providing a second search…

Search result abstract quality using community metadata

Granted: January 6, 2015
Patent Number: 8930376
A system and method is described herein that uses community-based metadata to improve the manner by which a search engine generates an abstract for a document, such as a Web page. The community-based metadata may comprise, for example, tags or descriptors associated with the document by users of a Web service, such as users of a social bookmarking Web service. By using community-based metadata to help identify text fragments within a document that are most suitable for generating the…

System and method for evolutionary clustering of sequential data sets

Granted: January 6, 2015
Patent Number: 8930365
An improved system and method for evolutionary clustering of sequential data sets is provided. A snapshot cost may be determined for representing the data set for a particular clustering method used and may determine the cost of clustering the data set independently of a series of clusterings of the data sets in the sequence. A history cost may also be determined for measuring the distance between corresponding clusters of the data set and the previous data set in the sequence of data…

System and method for online handwriting recognition in web queries

Granted: January 6, 2015
Patent Number: 8930360
A graphic representation resulting from a user interacting with a user interface operating on a user device is received over a network. The graphic representation corresponds to a portion of a desired graphic character of a graphic character set (e.g. Chinese). The graphic representation is analyzed to select a plurality of graphic characters of the graphic character set that are a probable match of the graphic representation. The plurality of probable graphic characters are transmitted…

System and method for presenting search results

Granted: January 6, 2015
Patent Number: 8930358
System and method for presenting search results. Search results may be mixed and/or prioritized based on one or more criteria. Search results may be mixed and/or prioritized based on user profile data, preferred advertiser/merchant rankings or a combination thereof. Search results may presented to a viewer on a display device simultaneously along with broadcast and/or streaming content. The search results may be “pushed” to a client-side device and presented along with related…

System and method for contextualizing query instructions using user's recent search history

Granted: January 6, 2015
Patent Number: 8930338
Disclosed is a system and method for providing search suggestions to a user based on the user's previously entered search queries. A computing device stores a global set of search suggestions. The computing device receives over a network from a user computer operated by a user one or more alphanumeric characters forming a portion of a search query. The computing device determines a search suggestion to the portion of the search query from the global set of search suggestions based on a…

Finding engaging media with initialized explore-exploit

Granted: December 30, 2014
Patent Number: 8923621
Software for initialized explore-exploit creates a plurality of probability distributions. Each of these probability distributions is generated by inputting a quantitative description of one or more features associated with an image into a regression model that outputs a probability distribution for a measure of engagingness for the image. Each of the images is conceptually related to the other images. The software uses the plurality of probability distributions to initialize a…

Systems and methods to identify users using an automated learning process

Granted: December 30, 2014
Patent Number: 8924956
A computer-implemented method includes: collecting first data from first computers on which first software is installed, the first data including first characteristics associated with the first computers and adoption results of the first software; correlating the first characteristics with the adoption results to generate a correlation result; prior to installation of the first software on a second computer, collecting second data associated with characteristics of the second computer;…

Method and system for providing a predefined content to a user

Granted: December 30, 2014
Patent Number: 8924799
A computer-implemented method of providing a predefined content to a user includes generating an error message at a user device, the error message based on unavailability of the predefined content to the user at a first instance of time. The method also includes receiving one or more error messages by a server, the one or more error messages being received from one or more user devices. Further, the method includes creating a list of one or more parameters by the server. Furthermore, the…

Method and system for generating recipients while composing electronic mails

Granted: December 30, 2014
Patent Number: 8924492
A computer-implemented method of generating recipients while composing electronic emails includes identifying a trigger from a user in response to the user composing an electronic mail (email). The computer-implemented method also includes receiving one or more alphabets subsequent to the trigger. The alphabets imply a recipient of the email. Further, the computer-implemented method includes fetching email addresses comprising the one or more alphabets from an address book corresponding…