US 8,788,447 B2Granted

Hyperlocal smoothing

AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation

InventorsSusan T. Dumais, Alexander George Gounares

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

Concepts and technologies are described herein for hyperlocal smoothing. The hyperlocal smoothing solutions described herein provide a smooth view of data and events across hyperlocal geographic areas by combining sparse data available with inferred or extrapolated data. Additionally, the hyperlocal smoothing solutions described herein make use of contextual analysis to interpret service requests in a manner appropriate for a targeted hyperlocal area. Thus, the smooth view of data can be queried in a contextually sensitive manner to return relevant information for a hyperlocal geographic area, even in circumstances wherein data relevant to the hyperlocal geographic area is sparse or even non-existent.

Claims19

Dependent claims

A computer-implemented method for hyperlocal smoothing, the computer-implemented method comprising performing computer-implemented operations for:

receiving, at a computer executing a smoothing application, a request for explicit attribute data associated with an entity;
determining, by the computer, that the explicit attribute data relating to the entity is not available;
determining, by the computer, that the explicit attribute data relating to the entity or is unreliable by determining that the explicit attribute data is associated with an unreliable source;
in response to determining that the explicit attribute data is either not available or unreliable
analyzing, by the computer, attribute data comprising location data and related entities data,
identifying, by the computer, a further entity that is related to the entity based upon the location data and the related entities data;
obtaining, by the computer, related attribute data comprising attribute data relating to the further entity,
calculating, by the computer, inferred attribute data for the entity based, at least partially, upon the related attribute data;
and
outputting, by the computer, the inferred attribute data.

7 more elements

A computer-implemented method for hyperlocal smoothing, the computer-implemented method comprising performing computer-implemented operations for:

receiving, at a computer executing a smoothing application, a request for attribute data relating to an entity;
determining, by the computer, if explicit attribute data relating to the entity is available and is reliable;
in response to determining that the explicit attribute data is available and is reliable, outputting, by the computer, the explicit attribute data;
and
in response to determining that the explicit attribute data is not available or is unreliable,
identifying, by the computer, at least one related entity located at a locale that is related to a location associated with the entity;
obtaining, by the computer, related attribute data comprising attribute data for the related entity;
calculating, by the computer, an inferred attribute data based, at least partially, upon the related attribute data;
and
outputting, by the computer, the inferred attribute data.

7 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Facts

Application: 12/820,146Filed 22 Jun 2010
Published: US 2011/0313968 A122 Dec 2011
Granted: 22 Jul 2014
Term ends: Not estimatedThe source records don’t support an estimate.

Classification3 codes

G06F 16/29
Of structured data, e.g. relational data: geographical information databases
G06F 16/22
Of structured data, e.g. relational data: indexing; Data structures therefor; Storage structures
G06F
Computing and data processing

Family

US 2011/0313968 A1Pre-grant publication · published 22 Dec 2011
US 8,788,447 B2This patent

From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.

Timeline

Citations

Open elsewhere

Building an agent or pulling many patents? Use the API or MCP server instead of scraping pages. Get an API key