Recent Patents in Signal Processing (March 2012) - SigPro for Social Networks

For our March 2012 edition, we focus on signal processing methods for social networking. In recent years, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and businesses connected to these networks have penetrated into many aspects of our daily lives, some of which could not have been foreseen even just a few years ago. Below, we cover some of the recent inventions in the area of social networking which have drawn on abstract notions from signal processing, networking and digital communications.

In related news, The IEEE Signal Processing Magazine has a recent issue  with several articles covering security and privacy issues in social networking. If you have an interesting patent to share when we next feature patents on signal processing methods for social networking, or if you are especially interested in a signal processing research field that you would want to be highlighted in this section, please send email to Shantanu Rane (rane AT merl DOT com).

US 8,126,973, "System and method for incorporating social networking maps in collaboration tooling and devices", by R. Bryant and V. Moses, filed 28 December 2007, issued 28 February 2012, assigned to International Business Machines Corporation (Armonk, NY).

US 8,010,460, "Method and system for reputation evaluation of online users in a social networking scheme", by J. Work, A. Blue and R. Hoffman, filed 1 September 2005, issued 30 August 2011, assigned to Linkedin Corporation (Mountain View, CA).

US 8,098,170, "Full-windshield head-up display interface for social networking", by J. Szczerba, T. Seder and D. Cui, filed 8 October 2010, issued 17 January 2012, assigned to GM Global Technology Operations LLC (Detroit, MI).

US 8,086,543, "Charity auctions on social networks for optimizing contributions to fundraising campaigns", by A. Ghosh and M. Mahdian, filed 31 October 2007, issued 27 December 2011, assigned to Yahoo! Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA).

US 8,031,595, "Future location determination using social networks", by R. Hamilton, N. Katz, B. O'Connell, and K. Walker, filed 21 August 2007, issued 4 October 2011, assigned to International Business Machines Corporation (Armonk, NY).

US 7,890,501, "Visual tags for search results generated from social network information", by C. Lunt, N. Galbreath and J. Winner, filed 30 March 2010, issued 15 February 2011, assigned to Facebook, Inc. (Palo Alto, CA).

US 7,856,411, "Social network aware pattern detection", by T. P. Darr, filed 12 February 2007, issued 21 December 2010, assigned to 21st Century Technology, Inc. (Austin, TX).

US 7,844,671, "Communication systems and methods with social network filtering", by B. Lawler, E. Loh, P. Martino, and M. Pincus, filed 7 April 2005, issued 30 November 2010, assigned to Cisco Technology, Inc. (San Jose, CA).

US 7,720,037, "Wireless social networking", by D. Bill, filed 3 August 2006, issued 18 May 2010, assigned to AOL Inc. (Dulles, VA).

US 7,668,957, "Partitioning social networks", by D. Achlioptas and F. McSherry, filed 30 June 2004, issued 23 February 2010, assigned to Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA).