Patent Application
20190034792
The present disclosure generally relates to technical problems encountered in performing job searches on computer networks. More specifically, the present disclosure related to the use of semantic similarity in a machine learned job posting result ranking model to solve technical problems such as cross-language retrieval and ranking and retrieval degradation due to query preprocessing errors.
The rise of the Internet has occasioned two disparate phenomena: the increase in the presence of social networks, with their corresponding member profiles visible to large numbers of people, and the increase in the use of these social networks to perform searches for jobs that have been posted on or linked to by the social networks.
Various pre-preprocessing steps commonly performed on job search queries in social networking services rely heavily on low-level natural language processing such as tokenization, normalization, etc., which are relatively mature for popular languages such as English, French, Spanish, etc. However, for retrieval and ranking in other languages, as well as cross-language retrieval (i.e., retrieval across multiple languages with one search), erroneous low-level natural language processing operations prohibit query expansions and rewriting, retrieval, and ranking processes fall back to basic keyword-based similarity measures. What is needed is a way to obviate the need for advanced low-level natural language processing operations, to improve cross-language retrieval.
Additionally, the tokenization and tagging performed by a query tagger and rewriter can be error prone, which propagates the errors to jobs retrieval and ranking phases. For example, consider the queries “software engineering manager” and “manager software engineering.” The former query is tagged as a title on the whole query, while the latter has “manager” tagged as a title and “software engineering” tagged as a skill. The impact of difference in tagging is a difference in query construction, with the former query retrieving with an emphasis on title only and the latter query including jobs that match both the skill and the title. Moreover, this difference in tagging propagates to a ranking phase, where tags for titles and skills contribute differently to the ranking algorithm. What is needed is a way to reduce or eliminate this retrieval degradation due to query preprocessing errors.
Furthermore, current job search mechanisms expand “important” tokens in queries with their synonyms using a pre-defined list of similar keywords. This manual step, however, is not scalable to different domains and locales. What is needed is a way to represent the query in a way that obviates the need for this step.
Some embodiments of the technology are illustrated, by way of example and not limitation, in the figures of the accompanying drawings.
The present disclosure describes, among other things, methods, systems, and computer program products that individually provide various functionality. In the following description, for purposes of explanation, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the various aspects of different embodiments of the present disclosure. It will be evident, however, to one skilled in the art, that the present disclosure may be practiced without all of the specific details.
In an example embodiment, a deep machine learning architecture is used to rank semantically similar job postings in response to a query. Specifically, a training system is provided that can learn embeddings of queries and job postings into a semantic space where similarity can be defined mathematically. A ranking system can then use the trained embeddings in its ranking phase. Additionally, a method of combining rankings of retrieved jobs from queries from term-based and semantic-based retrieval engines is provided.
The result is that low recall queries can be handled, where the number of documents scored in a retrieval phase is limited because of either limited (e.g., only keyword-based) query understanding, or because of a lack of a semantic model of document retrieval. Additionally, ranking in job searches with semantic features learned from clickthough job search data can be improved.
An application program interface (API) server 114 and a web server 116 are coupled to, and provide programmatic and web interfaces respectively to, one or more application servers 118. The application server(s) 118 host one or more applications 120. The application server(s) 118 are, in turn, shown to be coupled to one or more database servers 12.4 that facilitate access to one or more databases 126. While the application(s) 120 are shown in
Further, while the client-server system 100 shown in
The web client 106 accesses the various applications 120 via the web interface supported by the web server 116. Similarly, the programmatic client 108 accesses the various services and functions provided by the application(s) 120 via the programmatic interface provided by the API server 114.
FIG, 1 also illustrates a third party application 128, executing on a third party server 130, as having programmatic access to the networked system 102 via the programmatic interface provided by the API server 114. For example, the third party application 128 may, utilizing information retrieved from the networked system 102, support one or more features or functions on a website hosted by a third party. The third party website may, for example, provide one or more functions that are supported by the relevant applications 120 of the networked system 102.
In some embodiments, any website referred to herein may comprise online content that may be rendered on a variety of devices including, but not limited to, a desktop personal computer (PC), a laptop, and a mobile device (e.g., a tablet computer, smartphone, etc.). In this respect, any of these devices may be employed by a user to use the features of the present disclosure. In some embodiments, a user can use a mobile app on a mobile device (any of the machines 110, 112 and the third party server 130 may be a mobile device) to access and browse online content, such as any of the online content disclosed herein. A mobile server (e.g., API server 114) may communicate with the mobile app and the application server(s) 118 in order to make the features of the present disclosure available on the mobile device.
In some embodiments, the networked system 102 may comprise functional components of a social networking service.
As shown in
An application logic layer may include one or more various application server modules 214, which, in conjunction with the user interface module(s) 212, generate various user interfaces (e.g., web pages) with data retrieved from various data sources in a data layer. In some embodiments, individual application server modules 214 are used to implement the functionality associated with various applications 120 and/or services provided by the social networking service,
As shown in
Once registered, a member may invite other members, or be invited by other members, to connect via the social networking service. A “connection” may constitute a bilateral agreement by the members, such that both members acknowledge the establishment of the connection. Similarly, in some embodiments, a member may elect to “follow” another member. In contrast to establishing a connection, the concept of “following” another member typically is a unilateral operation and, at least in some embodiments, does not require acknowledgement or approval by the member that is being followed. When one member follows another, the member who is following may receive status updates (e.g., in an activity or content stream) or other messages published by the member being followed, or relating to various activities undertaken by the member being followed. Similarly, when a member follows an organization, the member becomes eligible to receive messages or status updates published on behalf of the organization. For instance, messages or status updates published on behalf of an organization that a member is following will appear in the member's personalized data feed, commonly referred to as an activity stream or content stream. In any case, the various associations and relationships that the members establish with other members, or with other entities and objects, are stored and maintained within a social graph in a social graph database 220.
As members interact with the various applications 120, services, and content made available via the social networking service, the members' interactions and behavior (e.g., content viewed, links or buttons selected, messages responded to, etc.) may be tracked, and information concerning the members' activities and behavior may be logged or stored, for example, as indicated in
In some embodiments, the databases 218, 220, and 222 may be incorporated into the database(s) 126 in
Although not shown, in some embodiments, the social networking service system 210 provides an API module via which applications 120 and services can access various data and services provided or maintained by the social networking service. For example, using an API, an application may be able to request and/or receive one or more navigation recommendations. Such applications 120 may be browser-based applications 120, or may be operating system-specific. In particular, some applications 120 may reside and execute (at least partially) on one or more mobile devices (e.g., phone or tablet computing devices) with a mobile operating system. Furthermore, while in many cases the applications 120 or services that leverage the API may be applications 120 and services that are developed and maintained by the entity operating the social networking service. Nothing other than data privacy concerns prevents the API from being provided to the public or to certain third parties under special arrangements, thereby making the navigation recommendations available to third party applications 128 and services.
Although the search engine 216 is referred to herein as being used in the context of a social networking service, it is contemplated that it may also be employed in the context of any website or online services. Additionally, although features of the present disclosure are referred to herein as being used or presented in the context of a web page, it is contemplated that any user interface view (e.g., a user interface on a mobile device or on desktop software) is within the scope of the present disclosure.
In an example embodiment, when member profiles are indexed, forward search indexes are created and stored. The search engine 216 facilitates the indexing and searching for content within the social networking service, such as the indexing and searching for data or information contained in the data layer, such as profile data (stored, e.g., in the profile database 218), social graph data (stored, e.g., in the social graph database 220), and member activity and behavior data (stored, e.g., in the member activity and behavior database 222), as well as job postings. The search engine 216 may collect, parse, and/or store data in an index or other similar structure to facilitate the identification and retrieval of information in response to received queries for information. This may include, but is not limited to, forward search indexes, inverted indexes, N-gram indexes, and so on.
This “query” may be sent to a job posting database query formulation component 304, which formulates an actual job posting database query, which will be sent via a job posting database interface 306 to job posting database 308. Job posting results responsive to this job posting database query are sent to the first pass job posting result ranking engine 310, again via the job posting database interface 306. The first pass job posting result ranking engine 310 then performs a first pass at ranking the job posting results. A second pass job posting result ranking engine 312 performs a second pass at ranking the job posting results and then sends the ranked job posting results back to the user interface for display to the user.
Traditionally the job posting database query formulation component 304, first pass job posting result ranking engine 310, and second pass job posting result ranking engine 312 all utilized keyword-based algorithms that did not factor in semantic similarity. In an example embodiment, one or more of these components are modified to factor in semantic similarity.
In an example embodiment, a Siamese network-based deep machine learning model is utilized. Here, a machine learning algorithm trains a pair of machine learning models, one for queries (utilized, for example, in the job posting database query formulation component 304) and one for search results (utilized, for example, in the first pass job posting result ranking engine 310 and second pass job posting result ranking engine 312). Parameters are shared between the models. In an example embodiment, this Siamese network-based machine learning algorithm utilizes Deep Semantic Similarity Measures (DSSM). It acts to train a deep network model using clickthrough data (e.g., the number of times members selected the job posting results or, alternatively, the number of times members applied for jobs corresponding to the job posting results), with cosine similarity on top layer embeddings.
In a convolutional variant of the above technique, a convolution is trained on the sequence of words in both the query and the document.
While the Siamese network-based deep machine-learning model works well for single types of inputs (features), such as company, locations, etc., it may fail to capture interactions between query and document input features. In an example embodiment, an interaction network-based deep machine-learning model is utilized. The interaction network-based deep machine-learning model captures feature interactions while constructing the deep networks. This can be extended with residual training that can train deeper layers with a residual-based objective function. The interaction among features can be captured at different layers.
In an example embodiment, the ranking phases (e.g., performed by the first pass job posting result ranking engine 310 and/or second pass job posting result ranking engine 312 of
In an example embodiment, the semantic representation used in the semantic ranking is learned using a deep neural network.
An embedding layer 704 takes the previously hashed tokens and represents them in a vector space. In an example embodiment, this vector space has 300 dimensions. Non-linear activation layers 706A-706C comprise the learning layers of the deep neural network 700. They may take, for example, tan h as the activation unit. Finally, a cosine similarity layer 708 takes the representations from the query and job title and computes cosine similarity among these representations. The cosine similarity score may then be used as the feature in the second pass ranking stage 612.
In an example embodiment, the non-linear activation layers 706A-706C work as follows. If x is denoted as the input term vector, y as the output vector, li, i=1, . . . , N−1, as the intermediate hidden layers, Wi as the i-th weight matrix, and bi as the i-th bias term, then:
l1=W1x
l
i
=f(Wili−1+bi), i=2, . . . , N−1
y=f(WNlN−1+bN)
where tan h is used as the activation function at the output layer and the hidden layers li, i=2, . . . , N−1:
The semantic similarity score between a query Q and a document D is then measured as
where yQ and yD are the concept vectors 414, 416 of the query and document, respectively.
Here, at operation 814, a job search query is received from a member of the social networking service. At operation 816, the job search query is augmented using the deep semantic similarity neural network. Specifically, the semantic similarity of terms in the job search query as compared to other terms in the semantic vector space is determined and those semantically similar terms can be added to the job search query. At operation 818, the job search query is submitted to a job posting database 308 to obtain a plurality of job posting search results.
In the ranking phase 806, at operation 820 a first pass ranking operation is performed. This first pass ranking operation may or may not utilize the deep semantic similarity neural network as part of its ranking algorithm. While not pictured, this first pass ranking operation may involve looping through each of the plurality of job posting search results and calculating a score for each of the job posting search results according to some ranking algorithm. The plurality of job posting results may then be sorted according to their scores. At operation 822, a second pass ranking operation is performed on the sorted job posting search results.
At operation 902, it is determined if there are any additional sorted job posting search results in the plurality of sorted job posting search results. If so, then the method 822 loops to operation 900 for the next sorted job posting search result in the plurality of sorted job posting search results.
If not, then at operation 904, the plurality of sorted job posting search results are sorted based on the semantic similarity score for each of the job posting search results.
Certain embodiments are described herein as including logic or a number of components, modules, or mechanisms. Modules may constitute either software modules (e.g., code embodied on a machine-readable medium) or hardware modules. A “hardware module” is a tangible unit capable of performing certain operations and may be configured or arranged in a certain physical manner. In various example embodiments, one or more computer systems (e.g., a standalone computer system, a client computer system, or a server computer system) or one or more hardware modules of a computer system (e.g., a processor or a group of processors) may be configured by software (e.g., an application or application portion) as a hardware module that operates to perform certain operations as described herein.
In some embodiments, a hardware module may be implemented mechanically, electronically, or any suitable combination thereof For example, a hardware module may include dedicated circuitry or logic that is permanently configured to perform certain operations. For example, a hardware module may be a special-purpose processor, such as a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) or an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC). A hardware module may also include programmable logic or circuitry that is temporarily configured by software to perform certain operations. For example, a hardware module may include software executed by a general-purpose processor or other programmable processor. Once configured by such software, hardware modules become specific machines (or specific components of a machine) uniquely tailored to perform the configured functions and are no longer general-purpose processors. It will be appreciated that the decision to implement a hardware module mechanically, in dedicated and permanently configured circuitry, or in temporarily configured circuitry (e.g., configured by software) may be driven by cost and time considerations.
Accordingly, the phrase “hardware module” should be understood to encompass a tangible entity, be that an entity that is physically constructed, permanently configured (e.g., hardwired), or temporarily configured (e.g., programmed) to operate in a certain manner or to perform certain operations described herein. As used herein, “hardware-implemented module” refers to a hardware module. Considering embodiments in which hardware modules are temporarily configured (e.g., programmed), each of the hardware modules need not be configured or instantiated at any one instance in time. For example, where a hardware module comprises a general-purpose processor configured by software to become a special-purpose processor, the general-purpose processor may be configured as respectively different special-purpose processors (e.g., comprising different hardware modules) at different times. Software accordingly configures a particular processor or processors, for example, to constitute a particular hardware module at one instance of time and to constitute a different hardware module at a different instance of time.
Hardware modules can provide information to, and receive information from, other hardware modules. Accordingly, the described hardware modules may be regarded as being communicatively coupled. Where multiple hardware modules exist contemporaneously, communications may be achieved through signal transmission (e.g., over appropriate circuits and buses) between or among two or more of the hardware modules. In embodiments in which multiple hardware modules are configured or instantiated at different times, communications between such hardware modules may be achieved, for example, through the storage and retrieval of information in memory structures to which the multiple hardware modules have access. For example, one hardware module may perform an operation and store the output of that operation in a memory device to which it is communicatively coupled. A further hardware module may then, at a later time, access the memory device to retrieve and process the stored output. Hardware modules may also initiate communications with input or output devices, and can operate on a resource (e.g., a collection of information).
The various operations of example methods described herein may be performed, at least partially, by one or more processors that are temporarily configured (e.g., by software) or permanently configured to perform the relevant operations. Whether temporarily or permanently configured, such processors may constitute processor-implemented modules that operate to perform one or more operations or functions described herein. As used herein, “processor-implemented module” refers to a hardware module implemented using one or more processors.
Similarly, the methods described herein may be at least partially processor-implemented, with a particular processor or processors being an example of hardware. For example, at least some of the operations of a method may be performed by one or more processors or processor-implemented modules. Moreover, the one or more processors may also operate to support performance of the relevant operations in a “cloud computing” environment or as a “software as a service” (SaaS). For example, at least some of the operations may be performed by a group of computers (as examples of machines including processors with these operations being accessible via a network (e.g., the Internet) and via one or more appropriate interfaces (e.g., an API).
The performance of certain of the operations may be distributed among the processors, not only residing within a single machine, but deployed across a number of machines. In some example embodiments, the processors or processor-implemented modules may be located in a single geographic location (e.g., within a home environment, an office environment, or a server farm). In other example embodiments, the processors or processor-implemented modules may be distributed across a number of geographic locations.
The modules, methods, applications 120, and so forth described in conjunction with
Software architectures are used in conjunction with hardware architectures to create devices and machines tailored to particular purposes. For example, a particular hardware architecture coupled with a particular software architecture will create a mobile device, such as a mobile phone, tablet device, or so forth. A slightly different hardware and software architecture may yield a smart device for use in the “Internet of Things,” while yet another combination produces a server computer for use within a cloud computing architecture. Not all combinations of such software and hardware architectures are presented here, as those of skill in the art can readily understand how to implement the inventive subject matter in different contexts from the disclosure contained herein.
In the example architecture of
The operating system 1004 may manage hardware resources and provide common services. The operating system 1004 may include, for example, a kernel 1020, services 1022, and drivers 1024. The kernel 1020 may act as an abstraction layer between the hardware and the other software layers. For example, the kernel 1020 may be responsible for memory management, processor management (e.g., scheduling), component management, networking, security settings, and so on. The services 1022 may provide other common services for the other software layers. The drivers 1024 may be responsible for controlling or interfacing with the underlying hardware. For instance, the drivers 1024 may include display drivers, camera drivers, Bluetooth® drivers, flash memory drivers, serial communication drivers (e.g., Universal Serial Bus (USB) drivers), Wi-Fi® drivers, audio drivers, power management drivers, and so forth depending on the hardware configuration.
The libraries 1006 may provide a common infrastructure that may be utilized by the applications 1010 and/or other components and/or layers. The libraries 1006 typically provide functionality that allows other software modules to perform tasks in an easier fashion than by interfacing directly with the underlying operating system 1004 functionality (e.g., kernel 1020, services 1022, and/or drivers 1024). The libraries 1006 may include system libraries 1030 (e.g., C standard library) that may provide functions such as memory allocation functions, string manipulation functions, mathematical functions, and the like. In addition, the libraries 1006 may include API libraries 1032 such as media libraries (e.g., libraries to support presentation and manipulation of various media formats such as MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG), graphics libraries (e.g., an OpenGL framework that may be used to render 2D and 3D graphic content on a display), database libraries (e.g., SQLite that may provide various relational database functions), web libraries (e.g., WebKit that may provide web browsing functionality), and the like. The libraries 1006 may also include a wide variety of other libraries 1034 to provide many other APIs to the applications 1010 and other software components/modules.
The frameworks 1008 (also sometimes referred to as middleware) may provide a higher-level common infrastructure that may be utilized by the applications 1010 and/or other software components/modules. For example, the frameworks 1008 may provide various graphic user interface (GUI) functions, high-level resource management, high-level location services, and so forth. The frameworks 1008 may provide a broad spectrum of other APIs that may be utilized by the applications 1010 and/or other software components/modules, some of which may be specific to a particular operating system 1004 or platform.
The applications 1010 include third-party applications 1066. Examples of representative built-in applications 1066 may include, but are not limited to, a contacts application, a browser application, a book reader application, a location application, a media application, a messaging application, and/or a game application. The third-party applications 1066 may include any of the built-in applications 1040 as well as a broad assortment of other applications. In a specific example, the third-party application 1066 (e.g., an application developed using the Android™ or iOS™ software development kit (SDK) by an entity other than the vendor of the particular platform) may be mobile software running on a mobile operating system such as iOS™, Android™, Windows® Phone, or other mobile operating systems. In this example, the third-party application 1066 may invoke the API calls 1021 provided by the mobile operating system such as the operating system 1004 to facilitate functionality described herein.
The applications 1010 may utilize built-in operating system 1004 functions (e.g., kernel 1020, services 1022, and/or drivers 1024), libraries 1006 (e.g., system libraries 1030, API libraries 1032, and other libraries 1034), and frameworks/middleware 1008 to create user interfaces to interact with users of the system. Alternatively, or additionally, in some systems, interactions with a user may occur through a presentation layer, such as the presentation layer 1044. In these systems, the application/module “logic” can be separated from the aspects of the application/module that interact with a user.
The machine 1100 may include processors 1110, memory/storage 1130, and I/O components 1150, which may be configured to communicate with each other such as via a bus 1102. In an example embodiment, the processors 1110 (e.g., a central processing unit (CPU), a reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processor, a complex instruction set computing (CISC) processor, a graphics processing unit (GPU), a digital signal processor (DSP), an ASIC, a radio-frequency integrated circuit (RFIC), another processor, or any suitable combination thereof) may include, for example, a processor 1112 and a processor 1114 that may execute the instructions 1116. The term “processor” is intended to include multi-core processors that may comprise two or more independent processors (sometimes referred to as “cores”) that may execute the instructions 1116 contemporaneously. Although
The memory/storage 1130 may include a memory 1132, such as a main memory, or other memory storage, such as static memory 1134, and a storage unit 1136, both accessible to the processors 1110 such as via the bus 1102. The storage unit 1136 and memory 1132 store the instructions 1116 embodying any one or more of the methodologies or functions described herein. The instructions 1116 may also reside, completely or partially, within the memory 1132, within the storage unit 1136, within at least one of the processors 1110 (e.g., within the processor's cache memory), or any suitable combination thereof, during execution thereof by the machine 1100. Accordingly, the memory 1132, the storage unit 1136, and the memory of the processors 1110 are examples of machine-readable media 1138.
As used herein, “machine-readable medium” means a device able to store instructions 1116 and data temporarily or permanently and may include, but is not limited to, random-access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), buffer memory, flash memory, optical media, magnetic media, cache memory, other types of storage (e.g., erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM)), and/or any suitable combination thereof. The term “machine-readable medium” should be taken to include a single medium or multiple media (e.g., a centralized or distributed database, or associated caches and servers) able to store the instructions 1116. The term “machine-readable medium” shall also be taken to include any medium, or combination of multiple media, that is capable of storing instructions e.g., instructions 1116) for execution by a machine (e.g., machine 1100), such that the instructions 1116, when executed by one or more processors of the machine 1100 (e.g., processors 1110), cause the machine 1100 to perform any one or more of the methodologies described herein. Accordingly, a “machine-readable medium” refers to a single storage apparatus or device, as well as “cloud-based” storage systems or storage networks that include multiple storage apparatus or devices. The term “machine-readable medium” excludes signals per se.
The 110 components 1150 may include a wide variety of components to receive input, provide output, produce output, transmit information, exchange information, capture measurements, and so on. The specific I/O components 1150 that are included in a particular machine will depend on the type of machine. For example, portable machines such as mobile phones will likely include a touch input device or other such input mechanisms, while a headless server machine will likely not include such a touch input device. It will be appreciated that the I/O components 1150 may include many other components that are not shown in
In further example embodiments, the I/O components 1150 may include biometric components 1156, motion components 1158, environmental components 1160, or position components 1162, among a wide array of other components. For example, the biometric components 1156 may include components to detect expressions (e.g., hand expressions, facial expressions, vocal expressions, body gestures, or eye tracking), measure biosignals (e.g., blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, perspiration, or brain waves), identify a person (e.g., voice identification, retinal identification, facial identification, fingerprint identification, or electroencephalogram based identification), and the like. The motion components 1158 may include acceleration sensor components (e.g., accelerometer), gravitation sensor components, rotation sensor components (e.g., gyroscope), and so forth. The environmental components 1160 may include, for example, illumination sensor components (e.g., photometer), temperature sensor components (e.g., one or more thermometers that detect ambient temperature), humidity sensor components, pressure sensor components (e.g., barometer), acoustic sensor components (e.g., one or more microphones that detect background noise), proximity sensor components (e.g., infrared sensors that detect nearby objects), gas sensors (e.g., gas detection sensors to detect concentrations of hazardous gases for safety or to measure pollutants in the atmosphere), or other components that may provide indications, measurements, or signals corresponding to a surrounding physical environment. The position components 1162 may include location sensor components (e.g., a Global Position System (GPS) receiver component), altitude sensor components (e.g., altimeters or barometers that detect air pressure from which altitude may be derived), orientation sensor components (e.g., magnetometers), and the like.
Communication may be implemented using a wide variety of technologies. The I/O components 1150 may include communication components 1164 operable to couple the machine 1100 to a network 1180 or devices 1170 via a coupling 1182 and a coupling 1172, respectively. For example, the communication components 1164 may include a network interface component or other suitable device to interface with the network 1180. In further examples, the communication components 1164 may include wired communication components, wireless communication components, cellular communication components, near field communication (NFC) components, Bluetooth® components (e.g., Bluetooth® Low Energy), Wi-Fi® components, and other communication components to provide communication via other modalities. The devices 1170 may be another machine or any of a wide variety of peripheral devices (e.g., a peripheral device coupled via a USB).
Moreover, the communication components 1164 may detect identifiers or include components operable to detect identifiers. For example, the communication components 1164 may include Radio Frequency Identification (RFD) tag reader components, NFC smart tag detection components, optical reader components (e.g., an optical sensor to detect one-dimensional bar codes such as Universal Product Code (UPC) bar code, multi-dimensional bar codes such as Quick Response (QR) code, Aztec code, Data Matrix, Dataglyph, MaxiCode, PDF47, Ultra Code, UCC RSS-2D bar code, and other optical codes), or acoustic detection components (e.g., microphones to identify tagged audio signals). In addition, a variety of information may be derived via the communication components 1164, such as location via Internet Protocol (IP) geolocation, location via Wi-Fi® signal triangulation, location via detecting an NFC beacon signal that may indicate a particular location, and so forth.
In various example embodiments, one or more portions of the network 1180 may be an ad hoc network, an intranet, an extranet, a virtual private network (VPN), a local area network (LAN), a wireless LAN (WLAN), a wide area network (WAN), a wireless WAN (WWAN), a metropolitan area network (MAN), the Internet, a portion of the Internet, a portion of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), a plain old telephone service (POTS) network, a cellular telephone network, a wireless network, a Wi-Fi® network, another type of network, or a combination of two or more such networks. For example, the network 1180 or a portion of the network 1180 may include a wireless or cellular network and the coupling 1182 may be a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) connection, a Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) connection, or another type of cellular or wireless coupling. In this example, the coupling 1182 may implement any of a variety of types of data transfer technology, such as Single Carrier Radio Transmission Technology (1× RTT), Evolution-Data Optimized (EVDO) technology, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technology, Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) technology, third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) including 3G, fourth generation wireless (4G) networks, Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard, others defined by various standard-setting organizations, other long range protocols, or other data transfer technology.
The instructions 1116 may be transmitted or received over the network 1180 using a transmission medium via a network interface device (e.g., a network interface component included in the communication components 1164) and utilizing any one of a number of well-known transfer protocols Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)). Similarly, the instructions 1116 may be transmitted or received using a transmission medium via the coupling 1172 (e.g., a peer-to-peer coupling) to the devices 1170, The term “transmission medium” shall be taken to include any intangible medium that is capable of storing, encoding, or carrying the instructions 1116 for execution by the machine 1100, and includes digital or analog communications signals or other intangible media to facilitate communication of such software.
Throughout this specification, plural instances may implement components, operations, or structures described as a single instance. Although individual operations of one or more methods are illustrated and described as separate operations, one or more of the individual operations may be performed concurrently, and nothing requires that the operations be performed in the order illustrated. Structures and functionality presented as separate components in example configurations may be implemented as a combined structure or component. Similarly, structures and functionality presented as a single component may be implemented as separate components. These and other variations, modifications, additions, and improvements fall within the scope of the subject matter herein.
Although an overview of the inventive subject matter has been described with reference to specific example embodiments, various modifications and changes may be made to these embodiments without departing from the broader scope of embodiments of the present disclosure. Such embodiments of the inventive subject matter may be referred to herein, individually or collectively, by the term “invention” merely for convenience and without intending to voluntarily limit the scope of this application to any single disclosure or inventive concept if more than one is, in fact, disclosed.
The embodiments illustrated herein are described in sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice the teachings disclosed. Other embodiments may be used and derived therefrom, such that structural and logical substitutions and changes may be made without departing from the scope of this disclosure. The Detailed Description, therefore, is not to be taken in a limiting sense, and the scope of various embodiments is defined only by the appended claims, along with the full range of equivalents to which such claims are entitled.
As used herein, the term “or” may be construed in either an inclusive or exclusive sense. Moreover, plural instances may be provided for resources, operations, or structures described herein as a single instance. Additionally, boundaries between various resources, operations, modules, engines, and data stores are somewhat arbitrary, and particular operations are illustrated in a context of specific illustrative configurations. Other allocations of functionality are envisioned and may fall within a scope of various embodiments of the present disclosure. In general, structures and functionality presented as separate resources in the example configurations may be implemented as a combined structure or resource. Similarly, structures and functionality presented as a single resource may be implemented as separate resources. These and other variations, modifications, additions, and improvements fall within a scope of embodiments of the present disclosure as represented by the appended claims. The specification and drawings are, accordingly, to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.
