24253 results about "Third party" patented technology

A method and system that provides filtered data from a data system. In one embodiment the system includes an API (application programming interface) and associated software modules to enable third party applications to access an enterprise data system. Administrators are enabled to select specific user interface (UI) objects, such as screens, views, applets, columns and fields to voice or pass-through enable via a GUI that presents a tree depicting a hierarchy of the UI objects within a user interface of an application. An XSLT style sheet is then automatically generated to filter out data pertaining to UI objects that were not voice or pass-through enabled. In response to a request for data, unfiltered data are retrieved from the data system and a specified style sheet is applied to the unfiltered data to return filtered data pertaining to only those fields and columns that are voice or pass-through enabled.

A method for providing automatic, personalized information services to a computer user includes the following steps: transparently monitoring user interactions with data during normal use of the computer; updating user-specific data files including a set of user-related documents; estimating parameters of a learning machine that define a User Model specific to the user, using the user-specific data files; analyzing a document to identify its properties; estimating the probability that the user is interested in the document by applying the document properties to the parameters of the User Model; and providing personalized services based on the estimated probability. Personalized services include personalized searches that return only documents of interest to the user, personalized crawling for maintaining an index of documents of interest to the user; personalized navigation that recommends interesting documents that are hyperlinked to documents currently being viewed; and personalized news, in which a third party server customized its interaction with the user. The User Model includes continually-updated measures of user interest in words or phrases, web sites, topics, products, and product features. The measures are updated based on both positive examples, such as documents the user bookmarks, and negative examples, such as search results that the user does not follow. Users are clustered into groups of similar users by calculating the distance between User Models.

A community media playlist sharing system is disclosed, wherein system users can upload media playlists which are automatically converted to a standardized format, media playlists can be shared with other users of the community media playlist sharing system, users can link to other playlists and obtain media from playlists automatically from third party points of purchase, users can provide recommendations, ratings and rankings relative to other playlists by system users and receive recommendations from other users and an editorial staff, participate in social networking functions including forums, discussions, weblogs, playlist topic groups and inter-user communications based on affinity for similar playlists, create playlists manually, automatically, or in real time, and wherein system users can obtain points for participation and popularity in the system and obtain profit by meta-affiliate sharing of profit for purchases of music made through playlists submitted by that user as well as through playlist toolbars distributed to third party websites.

A mobile robot guest for interacting with a human resident performs a room-traversing search procedure prior to interacting with the resident, and may verbally query whether the resident being sought is present. Upon finding the resident, the mobile robot may facilitate a teleconferencing session with a remote third party, or interact with the resident in a number of ways. For example, the robot may carry on a dialogue with the resident, reinforce compliance with medication or other schedules, etc. In addition, the robot incorporates safety features for preventing collisions with the resident; and the robot may audibly announce and / or visibly indicate its presence in order to avoid becoming a dangerous obstacle. Furthermore, the mobile robot behaves in accordance with an integral privacy policy, such that any sensor recording or transmission must be approved by the resident.

The present invention consists of a secure interactive electronic account statement delivery system suitable for use over open networks such as the Internet. The invention utilizes a certification hierarchy to insure that electronic bills, invoices, and other account statements can be securely sent over open networks. The participants in the system are a certification authority, certificated banks, billers, and customers. The certification authority grants digital certificates to the certificated banks, which in turn grant digital certificates to billers and customers. Digital certificates form the basis for encryption and authentication of network communications, using public and private keys. The certificates associate a customer and biller with a certificated bank and with the electronic billing system, much like payment cards associate a customer with a payment card issuer and a particular payment card system. Digital signatures are used for authentication and non-repudiation. The certificates may be stored as digital data on storage media of a customer's or biller's computer system, or may be contained in integrated circuit or chip cards physically issued to billers and customers. The electronic bill itself may be a simple text message containing the equivalent of summary information for the bill, or may be more elaborate. In one embodiment of the invention, the electronic bill contains a number of embedded links, for example an embedded URL of a biller's world wide web server that allows the customer to interactively bring up detailed billing information by activating the link. The e-mail message may also include links to third party websites.

Third party cache appliances are configured into a content delivery service to enable such devices to cache and serve content that has been tagged for delivery by the service. The invention enables the content delivery service to extend the reach of its network while taking advantage of high performance, off-the-shelf cache appliances. If the third party caches comprise part of a third party content delivery network, the interconnection of caches to the CDS according to the present invention enables the CDS and the third party network to share responsibility for delivering the content. To facilitate such “content peering,” the CDS may also include a traffic analysis mechanism to provide the third party network with preferably real-time data identifying the content delivered by the CDS from the third party caches. The CDS may also include a logging mechanism to generate appropriate billing and reporting of the third party content that is delivered from the cache appliances that have been joined into the CDS.

Systems and methods consistent with the present invention enable explicit and multilateral trust across a community of federated servers via a network. A trusted third party establishes a framework of policies and procedures governing a federation. Organizations joining the federation submit to an audit process of internal policies and procedures to ensure compliance with the policies and procedures of the federation. Upon successful completion of an audit, an organization may receive a digital certificate containing the digital public key of the organization and indicating approval of the trusted third party. The organization may then use the associated digital private key for signing security assertions associated with a request for resources from another federation service provider. The service provider may trust the assertion from the organization based on trust placed in trusted third party by the service provider and the trust placed in the organization by the trusted third party.

A system for eliminating unauthorized email sent to a user on a network employs an email-receiving server connected between the network and the user's email client for receiving email addressed to the user and rejecting those in which the sender address does not match any of sender addresses maintained on an “authorized senders” list (ASL list). The ASL lists are maintained by an ASL manager in an ASL database operable with a spam processor module. A redirector module rejects the email if, upon sending a request for validation to the spam processor module, the sender's address does not match any authorized sender address on the ASL list. Email rejected by the redirector module is redirected to a web-based messaging (WBM) module which sends a message to the sender to confirm that the sender is a legitimate sender of email to the intended recipient. If the sender logs on to confirm their status, the WBM module executes an interaction procedure which can only be performed by a human, in order to ensure that the confirmation procedure is not performed by a mechanical program. The ASL manager maintains the ASL lists based upon sender address data collected from various sources and analyses of various email usage factors, including sent email, received email, contact lists maintained by the user, user preference inputs, third party programs, etc.

The invention describes an identity management system (IDMS) based on the concept of peer-to-peer protocols and the public identities ledger. The system manages digital identities, which are digital objects that contain attributes used for the identification of persons and other entities in an IT system and for making identity claims. The identity objects are encoded and cryptographically encapsulated. Identity management protocols include the creation of identities, the validation of their binding to real-world entities, and their secure and reliable storage, protection, distribution, verification, updates, and use. The identities are included in a specially constructed global, distributed, append-only public identities ledger. They are forward- and backward-linked using the mechanism of digital signatures. The linking of objects and their chaining in the ledger is based on and reflect their mutual validation relationships. The identities of individual members are organized in the form of linked structures called the personal identities chains. Identities of groups of users that validated identities of other users in a group are organized in community identities chains. The ledger and its chains support accurate and reliable validation of identities by other members of the system and by application services providers without the assistance of third parties. The ledger designed in this invention may be either permissioned or unpermissioned. Permissioned ledgers have special entities, called BIX Security Policy Providers, which validate the binding of digital identities to real-world entities based on the rules of a given security policy. In unpermissioned ledgers, community members mutually validate their identities. The identity management system provides security, privacy, and anonymity for digital identities and satisfies the requirements for decentralized, anonymous identities management systems.

A method is provided for protecting a payment instrument in non-face-to-face transactions. The payment instrument is issued by an issuing entity and associated with an authorized instrument holder. The authorized instrument holder is subject to authentication by a trusted third party with whom the payment instrument holder has previously registered. The method includes: the authorized instrument holder communicating with the issuing entity to block, on a default basis, authorization of the payment instrument for non-face-to-face transactions unless authorized to unblock the payment instrument by the trusted third party; prior to a non-face-to-face transaction, the authorized instrument holder communicating with the trusted third party to subject him or herself to authentication and to request that the payment instrument be unblocked; and the trusted third party authenticating the authorized instrument holder, and if the authentication result is positive, communicating with the issuing entity to request unblocking of the payment instrument.