A clustering and recommendation machine determines that an item is included in a cluster of items. The machine accesses item data descriptive of the item. The machine accesses a vector that represents the cluster and calculates the likelihood that the item is included in the cluster, based on the item variable and the probability parameter. The machine determines that the item is included in the cluster, based on the likelihood. The machine also recommends an item to a potential buyer. The machine accesses behavior data that represents a first event type pertinent to a first cluster of items. The machine calculates a probability that a second event type pertaining to a second cluster of items will co-occur with the first event type. The machine identifies an item from the second cluster to be recommended and presents a recommendation of the item to the potential buyer.

This invention is about computer software and mobile-device-implemented methods, services and user interfaces for allowing a set of user or users to notify of special offers to other set of user or users. Utilizing this method and location based GPS technology, a set of user creates data which is stored in a middle layer such as a cloud system or database and then displayed on the other set of user's device. In this method, one set of user creates data and another set of user receives data. The data passes through the middle layer, identifies the devices in a defined latitude and longitude and displays the data on those devices. This data could be created from and received on various independent platforms using their API or tools specifically created for the data creation and receiving function.

A system and method is provided for adding at least one advertisement to a personal communication and providing additional communication data to a recipient that interacts with the advertisement. A sender network device communicates with an advertising application operating on a Web site to generate a personal communication containing at least one advertisement, where the at least one advertisement is selected from a palette of advertisements. In one embodiment of the present invention, the sender has control over advertisements that are displayed together with the personal communication by allowing the sender to delete (or remove) an advertisement from either the at least one advertisement or the palette of advertisements. If a displayed advertisement is interactive, and the advertisement is interacted with, the advertising application will provide the recipient with additional communication data in a format that can be understood by the recipient network device.

A method and system for planning and running video-on-demand (VOD) advertising includes a planner for planning advertising campaigns and an ad selector for running selected advertisements from selected ones of the campaigns. The campaigns are associated with household demographic classifications, video content category categories, household geographic locations, and/or video viewing times. In response to a viewer requesting a video, the selector selects the campaigns corresponding to the demographic classification associated with the viewer, the content category of the requested video, the geographic location associated with the viewer, and/or the viewing time at which the requested video is viewed. The demographic classification is determined by using an identifier of the viewer's set-top-box. The selector may select the campaigns corresponding to the content categories of the requested video. The content categories are determined by using an identifier associated with the requested video.

Methods and systems for determining a unique invocation of an online feature are disclosed. A key is distributed to multiple users. Upon performing a user action, the key is sent to a Bloom filter. If the output of the Bloom filter is a negative activation, the invocation is deemed to be unique. If the output of the Bloom filter is a positive activation, the invocation is deemed to be non-unique. For a large data set, the computational overhead of processing the key with the Bloom filter is significantly less than the brute force database approach. Thus, in large systems with many millions of users and possible user actions, disclosed embodiments allow assessment of a unique action in a timely manner.

A method and apparatus for advertising on a mobile phone. In one embodiment the method includes the steps of downloading an advertisement to the mobile phone using an advertisement server; selecting the downloaded advertisement on the mobile phone by a user of the mobile phone; providing by a server additional information in response to the user selection; and tracking the selection and additional information by the server. In another embodiment the compensation provided is in response to the display screen of said advertisement. In another embodiment the step of providing additional information includes the step of using space reserved, in the user interface of the mobile phone, for advertisements. Another aspect the invention relates to a system for displaying advertisements on a mobile phone. In one embodiment the system includes a server; and a mobile phone in communication with said server.

Systems and methods are disclosed that authenticate devices or users, and enable playback of secured streaming content through a media player. In one embodiment, the invention is a system for receiving secure content over an unmanaged network, including a security application configured operate on a user device with access to a network, where the security application is configured to receive a request for playlist data from the media player, send a playlist request to a content server, receive playlist data from the content server, send playlist data to a media player, receive a security access request from the media player, send a security access request to a security server, receive security access data from the security server; and send security access data to a media player.

A wearable apparatus and method are provided for capturing image data. In one implementation, a wearable apparatus for capturing image data is provided. The wearable apparatus includes at least one image sensor for capturing image data of an environment of a user, wherein a field of view of the image sensor includes a chin of the user. The wearable apparatus includes two or more microphones, and an attachment mechanism configured to enable the image sensor and microphones to be worn by the user. The wearable apparatus includes a processing device programmed to capture at least one image, identify the chin of the user to obtain a location of the chin, select a microphone from the two or more microphones based on the location, process input from the selected microphone using a first processing scheme, and process input from a microphone that is not selected using a second processing scheme.

Techniques are described for retrieving advertisements for insertion into a document. Embodiments receive a document comprising a request to retrieve a plurality of advertisement creatives. In response to transmitting the request specified within the received document to the advertisement management system, a single software object defining all of the plurality of advertisement creatives is received. Embodiments insert each of the plurality of advertisement creatives into the document, prior to rendering the document, and then render the document together with the advertisement creatives.

A method that includes: converting first service use information on a user to a first service device into first distributed data with a data format for distributed processing; converting second service use information on a user to a second service device into second distributed data with the data format, the second service use information being required to be processed independently of the first service use information; integrating the first distributed data and the second distributed data into third distributed data in which first server identification information on the first service device and second server identification information on the second service device are inserted by changing a specified data value in the data format of each of the first distributed data and the second distributed data; and transmitting the third distributed data to a plurality of distributed processing devices so that distributed processing on the first service use information and the second service use information is able to be performed by the distributed processing devices simultaneously is disclosed.