MyStrands Labs: Patent-pending Technologies

Patent-pending Technologies

System and method for recommending multi media items.
Francisco J Martin, Enric Plaza and Marc Torrens
November 2004
This invention addresses the problem of recommending songs and other multimedia items based on their actual usage. The patent comprises the infrastructure to acquire the data about multimedia items usage and the methods to compute a similarity measure between usage models, and to aggregate ranked multimedia items in different usage models into a unique personalized recommendation.

[Worldwide Patent Application :: WO2006075032]
System and Method for Acquiring and Aggregating Data Relating to the Reproduction of Multimedia Files or Elements.
Francisco J Martin and Enric Plaza
May 2005
The invention relates to a system and method for acquiring and aggregating information relating to the reproduction of multimedia files or elements in a database, said data including information relating to the number of multimedia file or element reproductions. The inventive system comprises a plurality of digital devices which can access and reproduce multimedia files and an acquisition and storage device which communicates with each of the digital devices in order to receive data from each of the identification/characterisation programs, such that said identification/characterisation program can count the reproductions at least in a direct and/or weighted manner.

[Worldwide Patent Application :: WO2006114451]
Dynamic Identification of a New Set of Mediaitems Responsive to an Input Mediaset.
Matt McLaughlin
December 2004
This invention addresses the problem of generating a recommended media set given a query that contains media items. The system exploits implicit information from how a community of users organize their media items into sets. The system creates a new set of media items by merging existing sets of media items, where each of those sets contains items related to each other, and each of those sets shares some similarity with the items in the query set.

[United States Patent Application :: US20060173910]
System and Method for dynamically identifying a new set of media items responsive to an input set of media items by using metrics among media items.
Francisco J Martin, Jim Shur and Marc Torrens
February 2005
This invention addresses the problem of assisting users in building their mediasets by recommending media items that go well together with an initial (or input) mediaset. The recommendation is computed using metrics among the media items of a knowledge base of the system. This knowledge base comprises collections of mediasets from a community of users.

[United States Patent Application :: US2006184558]
[Worldwide Patent Application :: WO2006084102]
System for browsing through a music catalog using correlation metrics of a knowledge base of mediasets.
Francisco J Martin, Jim Shur and Marc Torrens
February 2005
This invention comprises a system for guiding users along an interactive, personalized path through a media item catalog beginning from an initial selection by the user of one or more media items. Such browsing process is constructed using metrics among the media items of a knowledge base of the system. This knowledge base comprises collections of mediasets from a community of users.

[United States Patent Application :: US20060179414]
[Worldwide Patent Application :: WO2006084269]
System and Method for Providing Media Program Units Incorporating Individually Customized Commercial Advertising.
Rick Hangartner
September 2005
Disclosed are embodiments of systems and methods for selection of promotional media items and/or generation of promotional or advertising units. In one embodiment, a set of promotional media items may be dynamically identified responsive to an input set of media items. In another embodiment, a promotional program unit is generated in response to receipt of user taste data for a user or group of users. The promotional program unit is an integral unit made up of one or more media items and one or more promotional media items.
Methods and Apparatus for Visualizing a Music Library.
Josep-Lluis Arcos, Patrick Hertzog and Marc Torrens
October 2005
Visualization methods and their corresponding features that allow users to better organize their personal music libraries and playlists. Such methods also ease the music selection process.
User to user recommender.
Pere Ferrera and Marc Torrens
December 2005
This invention addresses the task of finding user recommendations for a given user. The method considers two different sets of data: a) the music users have been listening to, and b) what music recommendations users would be given. Pre-computation methods allows the system to efficiently compare these sets among the users of a community. Furthermore, such comparisons give metrics that the system uses to figure out which users have to be recommended for a given user.
Sharing Tags Between Individual User Media Libraries.
Matt McLaughlin
December 2005
A system and method for unifying tags of a media user community by transferring user-supplied tags between individual user media libraries. Embodied in the invention is a process for identifying within a user community, common tags associated with media items and common media items associated with tags by cross-referencing media items and corresponding tags among individual media user libraries. The system provides a user with a unified classification of tags, which can be used to search, navigate and organize an individual users media library.
Systems and Methods For Prioritizing Mobile Media Player Files.
Guillermo Caudevila, Rick Hangartner, Matt McLaughlin, Francisco J Martin, Craig Rowley, David del Ser, Jim Shur
February 2006
A statistical method for inferring which media items on a mobile media player should be deleted based on user taste to free space for new media items. Taste parameters, intended playback scenario, and explicitly specified user preferences are combined to rank items from highest to lowest deletion priority to meet a required space constraint.
Mediaset Generation System.
Guillermo Caudevila, Rick Hangartner, Francisco J Martin, Craig Rowley, David del Ser, Marc Torrens
February 2006
Composite playlists are built of media items in individual libraries on multiple media devices in a common location. A means for playing the composite playlist steps through the playlist in sequence causing the media player with the indicated item to stream it to the other players where possible. Both a client-server architecture and a P2P distributed architecture are supported.
User Programmed Media Delivery Service (Bxerk).
Rick Hangartner
May 2006
A method and system for programming a media delivery system in which members of the general public can produce and host programming, including non promotional and promotional media items, and media consumers can provide direct feedback to the operator of the media delivery system indicating the programming and advertising of most interest fo them. Appropriately licensed, copyright protected media items, and optionally promotional media items, are made available through a web based virtual production studio to users who may combine them with user provided media items to produce programming suitable for transmission over the media delivery system.
Dynamic Interactive Entertainment Venue.
Guillermo Caudevila, Rick Hangartner, Francisco J Martin, Craig Rowley, David del Ser Bartolome, Jim Shur, Marc Torrens
August 2006
Disclosed are various embodiments of systems and methods for generating composite mediasets from mediasets, each comprising media items, associated with a plurality of users. In some embodiments, individual and/or group recommendations are provided for creating a group playlist by aggregating user taste data for a plurality of users in a group. In other embodiments, systems and methods are provided which allow for sharing and playing of a group playlist by users ina group, each of which has a media playback device. In still other embodiments, systems and methods are provided for dynamically building a composite playlist that may be updated as users enter and/or leave the group. One example of an interactive entretainment application also is described for use at a venue to entretain live guests with music selections that are dynamically influenced by the guests' individual tastes.
Personal music recommendation mapping applet overview.
Justin Donaldson
October 2006
The large magnitudes of information in many scale free network datasets makes them difficult to analyze, plot, and visualize. Sacrificies often must be made on the plot's representational veracity, or represtentational completeness. This method is used to explore query based sub-graphs of a larger network using a method based on multidimensional scaling. Since the basis for the network data is a query, certain characteristics of node connections can be compared across the sub-graph and the original network, and the node weight data can be represented as a function of its negative entropy. According to this scheme, a small sub graph of a larger network structure is analyzed. A z-score weighting scheme is used to modfiy each node's connection strenghts in the neighborhood against its total number of connections in the original network, and the dimensionality of these wighted connections strengths is reduced to create a low dimensional embedding suitable for visualization and analysis.
User Taste Profiling Based on Digital Electronic Events.
Lucia Garate, Francisco Jose Marin, Francisco J Martin, Marc Torrens
October 2007
This invention relates to user "profiling", i.e., developing a digital electronic file or record that is associated with a user (typically an individual person or a user ID) and that summarizes or reflects selected characteristics, preferences, tastes, opinions or other selected aspects of that individual and their personality.
Dynamic Profiling of Advertisements to Improve Targeting.
Lucia Garate, Francisco Jose Marin, Francisco J Martin, Marc Torrens
October 2007
This invention relates to targeting advertising to customers or consumers most likely to be interested in the subject matter of the advertisement.
User Feedback Adaptive Recommender Technology.
Rick Hangartner, Jim Shur
May 2007
Specification for building the Listening UMA (LUMA) from played events in the ds database.
Hierarchical Mining of Sequenced Transactional Events.
Francisco J Martin, Jackson Gibbs, Jim Shur, Lino Bort, Francesc Magdaleno, Marc Torrens, Ken Baldwin, Jose Gonzalez, David Gracia, Daniel Pérez, Manuel Castro
April 2008
The present application describes systems and methods to suupport personal financial management. More particularly, the present describes systems and methods for providing personalized recommendations of financial product and services.
Distributed Prediction Markets.
Peyman Faratin
April 2008
The invention relates to a system and method for creating "thick"/scalable prediction markets, where the information provided by those markets is used for index and search purposes.
Profile Model for Sharing Individual User Preferences.
Rick Hangartner
June 2008
An API for users to share information about their preferences with Web 2.0 services. A model for capturing user preferences in a profile relative to the knowledge stored in knowledge bases that can be used by Web 2.0 services to personalize user experiences. In essence, a user's profile for a particular knowledge base compactly describes what sections of the knowledge base are most likely to be of interest to the user. We develop a mixed parametric and non-parametric Bayesian model for the user profiles and profile dynamics and describe a general computational algorithm for deriving both from observed user interactions. Finally, we suggest ways a user profile could be used to select items likely to be of interest to the user from a knowledge base.
Ambient Collage Display of Social Media.
Joe McCarthy, Yogi Patel, Sameer Ahuja, Shelly Farnham, William Hazlewood, Josh Lind
July 2008
A business method to exploit interactive displays systems by using retail reward card/systems as a vehicle for providing personalized experience in the physical world via a communications network.