Method and apparatus for scheduling presentation of digital content on a personal communication device

• US 7,958,457 B1
• Filed: 08/31/2001
• Issued: 06/07/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 12/20/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Wireless Agents LLC
• Original Assignee: Wireless Agents LLC
• Inventors: Kay, Robert L., Cotter, R. Brandon, Maxwell, Kenneth J., Brandenberg, Carl Brock
• Primary Examiner(s): Huynh; Ba
• Assistant Examiner(s): TRAN, MYLINH T
• Application Number:
  US09/944,482
• Time in Patent Office: 3,567 Days
• Field of Search: 345/708, 345/745, 345/789, 345/811, 715/708, 715/745, 715/789, 715/811, 715/864, 715/859, 715/860, 715/857, 715/858, 715/855, 715/820, 715/819, 715/818, 715/817, 715/736, 715/737, 715/740
• US Class Current: 715/789
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 19/14 specially adapted for specific applications
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/1613 for portable computers cooling arrangements therefor G06F1/203; constructional details or arrangements for pocket calculators, electronic agendas or books G06F15/0216; constructional details of portable telephone sets: with several bodies H04M1/0202
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/1616 with folding flat displays, e.g. laptop computers or notebooks having a clamshell configuration, with body parts pivoting to an open position around an axis parallel to the plane they define in closed position
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/1622 with enclosures rotating around an axis perpendicular to the plane they define or with ball-joint coupling, e.g. PDA with display enclosure orientation changeable between portrait and landscape by rotation with respect to a coplanar body enclosure
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/1624 with sliding enclosures, e.g. sliding keyboard or display
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/1626 with a single-body enclosure integrating a flat display, e.g. Personal Digital Assistants [PDAs]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/1632 External expansion units, e.g. docking stations
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/1664 Arrangements for ergonomically adjusting the disposition of keys of the integrated keyboard
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/1698 the I/O peripheral being a sending/receiving arrangement to establish a cordless communication link, e.g. radio or infrared link, integrated cellular phone details of antennas disposed inside a computer H01Q1/2266
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 7/01 Probabilistic graphical models, e.g. probabilistic networks
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/00 Commerce
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/0214 Foldable telephones, i.e. with body parts pivoting to an open position around an axis parallel to the plane they define in closed position combined with translation movement H04M1/0235
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/0233 Including a rotatable display body part
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/0235 : Slidable or telescopic telephones, i.e. with a relative translation movement of the body parts; Telephones using a combination of translation and other relative motions of the body parts
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/0247 : comprising more than two body parts
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/7243 : with interactive means for internal management of messages
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72451 : according to schedules, e.g. using calendar applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72454 : according to context-related or environment-related conditions
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72457 : according to geographic location
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72472 : wherein the items are sorted according to specific criteria, e.g. frequency of use
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2250/10 : including a GPS signal receiver
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/06 : Optimizing the usage of the radio link, e.g. header compression, information sizing , discarding information system modifying transmission characteristic according to link quality by modifying frame length H04L1/0007; dynamic adaptation of the packet size for flow control or congestion control H04L47/365
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 : Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/18 : Information format or content conversion, e.g. adaptation by the network of the transmitted or received information for the purpose of wireless delivery to users or terminals
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 8/18 : Processing of user or subscriber data, e.g. subscribed services, user preferences or user profiles; Transfer of user or subscriber data

Abstract

A method of presenting digital content to a user on a display of a computing device displaying a continuous stream of digital content in a stream portion of the display, obtaining a current context of the user and the computing device, providing contextual sensitivities for the digital content items, determining a value for the digital content item'"'"'s relevance of being displayed, calculating a probability of displaying the digital content item based upon the value of the digital content item'"'"'s relevance of being displayed, performing a random selection of the digital content item based upon the probability of displaying the digital content item, and presenting the digital content item in the stream of digital content being displayed.

Claims

1. A method for automatically selecting at least one element of a set of content items for presentation to a user through a device, comprising:

determining a current context of said device, wherein said context has at least one dimension;

automatically determining a relevancy value for each element of said set of content items with respect to said current context;

automatically generating a probability value for each element of said set of content items from said relevancy values by mapping said relevancy value to an unadjusted probability value, wherein said mapping is a non-linear mapping defined by the equation;

Unadjusted Probability Value=e**(A×

(Relevancy Value)+B)wherein A is a scale value and B is an offset value;

probabilistically selecting at least one of said plurality of content items in accordance with each item'"'"'s probability value; and

presenting said at least one selected content item to said user through said device.

2. A method for automatically selecting at least one element of a set of content items for presentation to a user through a device, comprising:

determining a current context of said device, wherein said context has at least one dimension;

automatically determining a relevancy value for each element of said set plurality of content items with respect to said current context;

automatically generating a probability value for each element of said set of content items from said relevancy values by mapping said relevancy value to an unadjusted probability value;

adjusting said unadjusted probability value to generate an adjusted probability value by suppressing the unadjusted probability values of content items having similar, unadjusted probability values to generate the adjusted probability value, wherein said adjusted probability value is generated by the relations;

Adjusted Value(k)=Unadjusted Value(k)/Correction(k)

Correction(k)=Sum{j=1 to n}(1/(1+(Unadjusted Value(k)−

Unadjusted Value(j))⁴))

wherein Unadjusted Value(k) is the unadjusted probability for item “

k”

, “

n”

is the number of said content items, and “

j”

is an index of iteration of unadjusted values;

probabilistically selecting at least one of said plurality of content items in accordance with each item'"'"'s probability value; and

presenting said at least one selected content item to said user through said device.