US 9,542,494 B2Granted

Proactive delivery of related tasks for identified entities

AssigneeMicrosoft Technology Licensing, LLC

InventorsLawrence Brian Ripsher, Severan Sylvain Jean-Michel Rault, Gary Voronel

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Abstract

A search engine database is utilized to identify “entities”, or things for which there exists associated discrete, objective information. For hosted information that is independently available, the entity detector independently accesses such information and identifies entities. For information that has defined potential entities, such as entertainment or lifestyle information such defined potential entities are provided to the entity detector to verify, with reference to the search engine database, whether they are entities. Once entities have been identified, a related task generator, with reference to the search engine database, identifies tasks that are related to the identified entities. Such tasks include informational tasks, economic tasks, time-sensitive and location-sensitive tasks. The identified entities and related tasks are provided to applications, with metadata quantifying confidence, relationship, importance, location and time sensitivity, and the like, thereby enabling those applications to proactively provide selects ones of that information to users.

Claims20

Dependent claims

One or more computer-readable memory comprising computer-executable instructions for proactively presenting tasks related to identified entities, the computer-executable instructions, when executed by one or more processing units of a computing device, causing the computing device to perform steps comprising:

selecting, from among information presented to a user through an application context, defined subsets of the information that reference potential entities;
receiving identified entities that were identified from the potential entities based on a search engine database;
receiving the related tasks that were identified as being related to specific, individual ones of the identified entities based on the search engine database;
receiving metadata quantifying a relationship between a particular identified entity and its related tasks;
selecting, from among the identified entities, based on the related tasks' metadata, a selected subset of identified entities, the selected subset being less than all of the identified entities;
selecting, from among the related tasks, at least one task related to each entity in the selected subset of identified entities;
generating an indicator, within the application context, for each entity in the selected subset of identified entities;
and
generating a presentation, within the application context, of the selected at least one related task if a user action is directed towards the generated indicator.

6 more elements

A method of proactively presenting tasks related to identified entities, the method comprising the steps of:

selecting, at a computing device, from among information presented to a user through an application context generated by an application executing on the computing device, defined subsets of the information that reference potential entities;
receiving, at the computing device, identified entities that were identified from the potential entities based on a search engine database;
receiving, at the computing device, the related tasks that were identified as being related to specific, individual ones of the identified entities based on the search engine database;
receiving, at the computing device, metadata quantifying a relationship between a particular identified entity and its related tasks;
selecting, at the computing device, from among the identified entities, based on the related tasks' metadata a selected subset of identified entities, the selected subset being less than all of the identified entities;
selecting, at the computing device, from among the related tasks, at least one task related to each entity in the selected subset of identified entities;
generating, on a display device communicationally coupled to the computing device, an indicator, within the application context, for each entity in the selected subset of identified entities;
and
generating, on the display device, a presentation, within the application context, of the selected at least one related task if a user action is directed towards the generated indicator.

6 more elements

A mobile computing device comprising:

geographic position determining hardware;
wireless network interface hardware;
at least one central processing unit;
and
one or more computer-readable storage media comprising computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the at least one central processing unit, perform steps comprising:
selecting, from among information presented to a user by the mobile computing device, defined subsets of the information, that reference potential entities;
receiving, via the wireless network hardware interface, identified entities that were identified from the potential entities based on a search engine database;
receiving, via the wireless network hardware interface, the related tasks that were identified as being related to specific, individual ones of the identified entities based on the search engine database;
receiving, via the wireless network hardware interface, metadata quantifying a relationship between a particular identified entity and its related tasks;
selecting, from among the identified entities, based on the related tasks' metadata, a selected subset of identified entities, the selected subset being less than all of the identified entities;
selecting, from among the related tasks, at least one task related to each entity in the selected subset of identified entities;
generating an indicator, within the application context, for each entity in the selected subset of identified entities;
and
generating a presentation, within the application context, of the selected at least one related task if a user action is directed towards the generated indicator.

11 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.