Streaming Audio and Media at Different Electronic Devices

A content streaming system can be used for streaming audio and video of a multimedia content at different electronic devices. The content streaming system receives an instruction to play video of a multimedia content at a first electronic device. The system then determines whether to play audio of the multimedia content at a second electronic device which is capable of audio output. Accordingly, the system streams the audio of the multimedia content to the second electronic device and the video of the multimedia content to the first electronic device

Withholding Content and Recommendation Delivery to Avoid Spoilers

Online news portals, personalized feeds, etc. can include content spoilers that can ruin a user’s online experience by revealing details of the plot of content such as television shows, movies, etc. This disclosure describes techniques to avoid spoilers by delaying the presentation of material pertaining to various types of content until a user has consumed the content. With user permission, a user’s content consumption history is accessed and utilized to identify news articles and other media that can be a content spoiler. Analysis of articles and other media can be performed using machine learning models or other suitable techniques to determine whether a particular article is a content spoiler for content that the user is interested in

METHODS AND APPARATUS TO SCALE ANNOTATIONS FOR DESIRABLE VIEWING IN AUGMENTED REALITY ENVIRONMENTS

In at least one general aspect, a computer-implemented method can include inserting an annotation associated with an augmented reality (AR) object in an augmented environment, the annotation being a textual information, and changing a size of the annotation based on a threshold distance from the AR object

Use of Augmented Reality to Enable Comparisons between Physical and Virtual Objects

Augmented reality (AR) shopping is typically thought of as the filling up of an empty space with virtual objects to assess the fit of that object to that space. This formulation ignores the portion of shopping that involves the replacement of an item. While a user can take a photo of an item, without an AR model of the item, the user cannot determine the fit or suitability of the item to their spaces. Current AR tools cannot identify and describe the key differences between what a user has and what the user wants to purchase. This disclosure describes techniques that enable the recognition of an object in an image and the automatic downloading and casting of AR models of that and related objects. A user can use the AR models to test the fit of the object in various spaces and virtually compare the object with its variants in various spaces

Automatically Switching Query Response Modality Based On Physical Gestures

When a user is using earbuds to receive device audio, responses to spoken queries are delivered to the earbuds in audio format. Audio delivery can be slower and inefficient compared to the user looking at the same response on a screen. Moreover, long responses delivered as audio can be cognitively difficult to process. Further, it is difficult to skim the content of a long response or skip portions, when the response is delivered as audio. This disclosure describes techniques that enable a user to perform a physical gesture in response to which the query response is provided on the screen of an available device. For example, the user can raise their wrist to view the response on the screen of a smartwatch

Glare Removal From Visual Codes Using Multi-Frame Voting

A system and method for overcoming glare in the scanning of visual codes treats each bit of a two-dimensional array defining a pattern of the visual code as discrete. As the visual code is scanned and image frames are sequentially captured, this allows the image frames to be combined to form a composite image of the visual code, and the eventual completion and resolution of the visual code

Position Localization for Non Ultra-wideband Devices

The high-frequency, broad-spectrum properties of the UWB (ultra-wide bandwidth) communications protocol enable very accurate, e.g., millimeter-level, spatial and directional localization of devices. The high-precision localization ability of UWB enables fine-grained interactions with devices, e.g., the ability to send commands to specific devices when multiple devices are present in a space. This disclosure describes techniques to bootstrap precise positioning on non-UWB devices, such that UWB-style, fine-grained interactions are enabled even on non-UWB devices. The techniques leverage the presence of two or more UWB-enabled devices, e.g., one on a stationary device and another on a wearable device (or other non-stationary device), to precisely locate non-UWB devices

Using Eye Gaze for Interactive Computing

User input to desktop and laptop computers is largely via the keyboard, pointing devices such as a mouse/trackpad, and to some extent, the touchscreen. Thus far, using eye gaze as an input, based on data from on-device cameras (e.g., laptop or desktop cameras) requires calibration steps; even so, since such cameras are relatively far from the user, the resulting input lacks precision. This disclosure describes techniques for human-computer interaction based on eye gaze derived from the user’s smart glasses. With user permission, the user’s eye movements, as captured by the camera on the user’s smart glasses, provides an additional interactive channel to the user’s other devices (e.g., laptop, desktop, etc.) to enable eye-gaze based actions such as scroll focus, text focus, notifications dismissal, window focus, auto-scrolling of text, etc

Visual Determination of the Speed of an Exercise Bicycle

Smart exercise bicycles and other equipment include sensors that measure various parameters. The measurements are used to provide useful features such as visual speed feedback on a monitor while the user is in an online or prerecorded workout. However, smart bicycles are expensive. This disclosure describes low-cost techniques of estimating the rotations-per-minute (RPM), or equivalently the miles-per-hour (MPH), of an exercise bicycle using an available camera and displaying the measured parameters on a monitor. By utilizing an available camera, e.g., a smartphone or other device camera, and display, there is no need for specialized sensors/displays is eliminated. Thus, the user need not use an expensive smart bicycle to measure and view parameters related to their workout

A goal-oriented user interface for personalized semantic search

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, February 2006.Includes bibliographical references (v. 2, leaves 280-288).Users have high-level goals when they browse the Web or perform searches. However, the two primary user interfaces positioned between users and the Web, Web browsers and search engines, have very little interest in users' goals. Present-day Web browsers provide only a thin interface between users and the Web, and present-day search engines rely solely on keyword matching. This thesis leverages large knowledge bases of semantic information to provide users with a goal-oriented Web browsing experience. By understanding the meaning of Web pages and search queries, this thesis demonstrates how Web browsers and search engines can proactively suggest content and services to users that are both contextually relevant and personalized. This thesis presents (1) Creo, a Programming by Example system that allows users to teach their computers how to automate interactions with their favorite Web sites by providing a single demonstration, (2) Miro, a Data Detector that matches the content of a Web page to high-level user goals, and allows users to perform semantic searches, and (3) Adeo, an application that streamlines browsing the Web on mobile devices, allowing users to complete actions with a minimal amount of input and output.(cont.) An evaluation with 34 subjects found that they were more effective at completing tasks when using these applications, and that the subjects would use these applications if they had access to them. Beyond these three user interfaces, this thesis also explores a number of underlying issues, including (1) automatically providing semantics to unstructured text, (2) building robust applications on top of messy knowledge bases, (3) leveraging surrounding context to disambiguate concepts that have multiple meanings, and (4) learning new knowledge by reading the Web.by Alexander James Faaborg.S.M