Telephonic communications – Audio message storage – retrieval – or synthesis – Voice activation or recognition
Reexamination Certificate
2000-01-11
2002-12-31
Tsang, Fan (Department: 2645)
Telephonic communications
Audio message storage, retrieval, or synthesis
Voice activation or recognition
C379S088170, C379S088250, C379S088190, C704S275000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06501832
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a system and method for registering voice codes (“VCodes”) associated with stored content corresponding to the VCodes, wherein the VCode may be used to access the stored content via telephone by calling a central number and entering the VCode or verbally describing the object, attraction or subject, in which case the verbal description is associated with a VCode or collection of VCodes.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Information is most useful when it is delivered to the right person at the right time. Delivery of the right information to the right person has been a problem that many businesses have attempted to solve over the years. Indeed, an entire industry of decision support technology exists to deliver information to members of a business based on massive amounts of data collected about the businesses. The World Wide Web and the Internet have provided an avenue for information delivery, but current Web-based systems still fail to adequately deliver the right information at the right time. One of the major problems with the World Wide Web is the requirement to utilize a computer and web-browser to access its contents. Although penetration of computers throughout the world has increased, that penetration is far from making information readily available to everyone wherever they happen to be.
Moreover, most computer users connect to the Web through a land line. Most users therefore do not have access to Web content when they are away from a land line. Although technology is being developed to enable World Wide Web access through other mediums, such as web-enabled personal digital assistants, for example, such technology require users to purchase new equipment to access this technology. Given the sparse penetration of personal digital assistants already, this technology does not satisfy the need for delivery of timely information.
Therefore, existing systems do not provide a readily available medium for delivery of the right information at the right time or a system for delivering that information. These and other drawbacks exist with current systems.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
One aspect of the invention relates to creating a novel VCode registration system. A VCode is a code that may be assigned to a particular “page” of content that can be delivered to a user via phone or other delivery device, preferably to enable the user to hear the content. A user may access the content corresponding to the VCode by entering the VCode through an interactive communications device, such as a land or mobile telephone. Also, VCodes may be input through verbal descriptions which are then associated with the desired VCode and corresponding pages or pages of content. A voice-to-text, natural language engine, and/or best fit correspondence engine may be used to interpret verbal descriptions to determine which VCode and corresponding page of content to generate for the user.
These pages of content corresponding to the VCodes are referred to herein as VPages. A VPage can consist of any grouping of content that is stored at a single location. A VPage contains both voice content and a means of structuring it. Voice content may be stored in any format. One possible format is an audio file. Another is a text file, the content of which may be subsequently converted to audio via a text to speech (TTS) engine. A VPage may reference content stored in other locations. In one implementation, VPages may be stored as files on a server's filesystem. In another, they may be records in a database. In one implementation, they may be stored in an XML-based format such as TML (see appendix) or VoiceXML.
VCodes may also be assigned to collections of related VPages. These collections of one or more VPages are referred to herein as VBooks. Each VPage or VBook is stored on a particular server. If multiple servers are used, each server may be assigned a VCode portion to identify the server. If servers are located in different locations or are operated by different voice network access providers, VNAPs, another VCode portion may be used to designate the server location. A VPage may contain other VCodes or other links that may be presented to a user to enable the user to link from an initial VPage to another. For example, the first page of a VBook may provide an indication of other VPages in that VBook that are accessible by entering the appropriate VCode (or other input). Also, when a user accesses one or more VPages, the VPage may provide a voice menu to a user with numbers associates with each menu item to enable a user to access other VPages (in that VBook or otherwise) or other choices. Also, the user may be permitted to use verbal commands to select options within a VPage. Again, voice-to-text, natural language, and best-fit modules may be used to interpret the user's verbal option request and act upon the request accordingly. According to another embodiment, a VPage or VBook may enable a user to be transferred to another VBook, another VNAP, or a VAdvertisement (as described below), among other things.
VCodes provide a means for addressing voice content. A VCode may be any data string that references unambiguously a single voice page. It can take on any of a number of forms. In one implementation, a VCode may be a string of DTMF values (values on a telephone keypad: 1,2,3, . . . 0,#,*). In another, a VCode may be a spoken word or series of words (an automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine may be used here to interpret user input). A VCode may be in any of a number of other formats, provided it unambiguously references a single VPage.
A VCode may be a simple numeric code or an alphanumeric code (including symbols such as # and *) or any other code that may be entered via a keypad of a phone or other interactive communications device or through voice recognition technology now or in the future. For example, but without limitation, the VCode may be a seven digit number. Each unique VCode corresponds to a VPage, a VBook, or in other embodiments, other levels of information relating to a VPage or VBook (e.g., where the VBook or VPage is stored, the “provider of the content,” or other information). For example, different levels of sophistication may be used for a VCode.
A VCode may comprise of one or more fields. A VCode with more than one field will be referred to as a multi-level VCode. A multi-level scheme may be used to specify various aspects of the referenced VPage. For example, a VPage stored as a file on a file server may have a VCode with one field to specify host on which the VPage resides, another to specify its directory, and another to specify its name. The fields of such a multi-level VCode can take on any of a number of forms (DTMF, speech signals, etc.) and be concatenated using any of a number of schemes (in a multi-level DTMF VCode, the fields may be separated by a ‘*’).
It should be noted that multiple VCodes in multiple formats may refer to the same VPage. Such a scheme may be used to allow a single page to be referenced by an easy-to-remember DTMF string (SMITHSONIAN*AIRSPACE# on the telephone keypad, e.g.), and easy-to-type DTMF string (149#), and an easy-to-say text string (“the Smithsonian air and space museum”).
According to one embodiment, the VCode comprises at least two parts—a VBook identifier portion and a VPage identifier portion, with the portions separated by a separation character (e.g., the * key of a telephone keypad). For example, the Smithsonian Museum may have a VBook of VPages for its displays. The Smithsonian VBook number may be 38367 and Monet's Water Lillies painting may have a VPage number of 789. To access the Smithsonian's Monet Water Lillies VPage, the user would enter 38367*789 (VBook * VPage). Also, Van Gogh's Sunflowers painting may have a VPage code of 790. The user may enter 38367*790 to access the voice information corresponding to that painting.
According to another embodiment of the present invention, a VCode may comprise multiple portions, at least one of which may correspond
Garr David A.
Inanoglu Zeynep
Lindsey Benjamin M.
Mahowald Josh
Patnaik Anurag
Foster Roland
Hunton & Williams
Microstrategy, Inc.
Tsang Fan
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