Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Discount or incentive
Reexamination Certificate
1997-11-06
2001-08-28
Trammell, James R. (Department: 2162)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Discount or incentive
Reexamination Certificate
active
06282515
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to audiotex systems designed to provide full access to traditional databases and telecommunications systems, such as local area networks, the Internet, other external databases, telephones and fax machines, etc., and more specifically to audiotext personal ad services.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Audiotex personal ad services are a popular way for people to meet, and are available in most newspapers and on many cable television systems. In a typical service, an advertiser calls a live operator and places a text personal ad. An advertiser then calls an audiotex system and records an audio message, often referred to as a greeting, which expands upon the advertiser's text ad by describing in more detail the advertiser and the type of person he is seeking. Personal ads are then published in a newspaper. A personal ad includes a 900 telephone number and an ad mailbox number permitting a caller to listen to an advertiser'voice greeting. A caller can respond to an ad by recording a reply voice mail message for the advertiser. An advertiser retrieves a message by calling the audiotex system and entering a password given at the time of ad placement. In another format, no live operator is used. An advertiser first records an audio greeting. An operator then listens to the audio greetings off-line and writes a text summary of each audio greeting for publication in the newspaper.
With the expansion of the Internet and other on-line services, personal ad services have been created to take advantage of this new medium. A typical service allows an advertiser to place a text personal ad that is published on the Internet on an HTML (HyperTest Markup Language) page. An Internet user may respond to a personal ad by sending an advertiser a message via electronic mail. The limitation of this approach is that an Internet user cannot listen to an audio recording of an advertiser, a feature that is central to audiotex personal ad services. Another limitation is that most people do not have Internet access, thus limiting the number of advertisers and respondents.
In another format, an attempt is made to integrate audiotex personal ads services with the Internet. Using this approach, a newspaper publishes personal ads in both the newspaper and on the Internet. Each personal ad includes a 900 telephone number and an ad mailbox number permitting a caller to listen to an advertiser's voice greeting. This approach still has the disadvantage of not allowing an Internet user to listen to an advertiser'voice greeting via the Internet. Moreover, an Internet user can only respond to a personal ad via a telephone.
As the use of audiotex services has grown steadily, related telephonic communication techniques have also expanded. In that regard, telephone systems have been developed that permit telephone callers to exchange telephone messages. At the same time, the Internet has made possible the interaction of large numbers of personal computers. Thus, on the one hand, the public telephone network exists as a principal means of voice communication, while the Internet is the major large scale choice for sharing digital data.
To date, both the public telephone network and the Internet have been used for both the sharing of voice files and data files. For example, placing telephone calls via the Internet is possible, while data files are often transferred via the public telephone network. Indeed, most people use the public telephone network to access the Internet. However, a system that optimizes the interaction between the public telephone network and the Internet is elusive. For example, in the voice personals industry, service bureaus provide “800” and “900” numbers for callers to access stored voice files, for exchanging information so that matches can be made, and hence, people can date one another. In that industry, service bureaus often use voice boards, such as those provided by Dialogic Corporation, to answer telephone calls, store and access voice files, and match callers with other voice messages.
Conversely, among Internet users, text messages are stored on a database, and then, users enter various web sites to access messages on diverse so-called bulletin boards or databases. In essence, abstracts of databases can be searched so that users can look for interesting sites to browse.
However, to date, there has not been a seamless database interface constructed that allows telephone users of audiotex systems to access Internet messages, and allows Internet users to access audiotex services.
Accordingly, it is desirable to increase the intelligence of a system for processing telephone calls. It is also desirable to increase the flexibility in a system for processing telephone calls. It is also desirable to provide greater interaction between a caller and a system for processing telephone calls. It is also desirable to provide greater accessibility to information from external systems by a system for processing telephone calls. It is also desirable to augment the existing process of directing calls to service agents. It is also desirable to route a caller to the appropriate agent based on information about the caller. It is also desirable to provide routing of a call and its associated data to the appropriate agent. It is also desirable to provide network reliability in routing a caller to the appropriate agent.
Multi-media messaging involves integrating discrete messages or individual message components of different media, e.g., voice, text, video, and the ability to deliver the integrated messages through a single universal mailbox. For example, the integration of voice and facsimile (fax) messages is well known in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,008,926, discloses an integrated voice-and-facsimile store-and-forward message system that provides for the sending, storage, and delivery of voice messages, fax messages, fax messages annotated with voice messages, and voice messages annotated with fax messages. The disclosed system additionally provides for display of fax messages on terminal screens, and the conversion of fax printed text messages into voice messages via text-to-speech conversion facilities.
Electronic mail, or e-mail, systems are also well known in the art. They provide for the sending, storage, and delivery between computer terminals of displayable data-text and/or graphics-messages.
Integration of e-mail systems with voice-and-fax message systems is highly desirable. For example, it is becoming common for salesmen to work out of “mobile offices”—their cars—which are equipped normally with telephones, often with fax machines, but generally not with data terminals, yet the salesmen would like to have the capability of receiving in their mobile offices messages sent to them in any form—voice, fax, or e-mail. The integration of fax and e-mail messaging is readily accomplished through conversion of e-mail messages into fax messages for delivery to their recipients. But while fax machines are more likely to be available to mobile recipients of the messages than data terminals, they are not as readily available as telephones. Therefore, it is often preferable to instead accomplish the integration of voice and e-mail messaging through conversion of e-mail messages into voice messages for delivery to their recipients. This type of conversion is also readily accomplished if the e-mail messages constitute text only.
A problem arises, however, when e-mail messages constitute information other than text—such as diagrams, charts, special symbols, computer code fragments, pictures, et.—which is not suitable for conversion into a voice message. Attempts to convert such data message segments into speech result in unintelligible garble. This may be avoided by simply identifying and discarding the non-voiceable data message segments, but this results in the delivery of an incomplete message to the recipient—an unacceptable result.
To summarize, existing Internet personal ad services are limited in that they lack many of th
Champagne Donald J.
Trammell James R.
LandOfFree
Integrated audiotext-internet personal ad services does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Integrated audiotext-internet personal ad services, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Integrated audiotext-internet personal ad services will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2527096