International Business Machines Corporation

David Seager Renshaw

Adam J Pilkington

Nicholas David Butler

Ian O Partridge

Yuk-Lun Wong

Andrew Taylor

Howard Shelton Lambert

Barry Keith Aldred

Samuel David Borman

Harry David Mitchell

Graham Hugh Tuttle

Samuel Jonathan Smith

William John Izard

Matthew James Ponsford

Matthew D Whitbourne

Michael Haden Conner

Ronald John Bowater

Andrew John Smith

Nurcan Coskun

Andrew James Ritchie

David Andrew Clarke

Arthur J Barr

Thomas Van Der Veen

Timothy David Poultney

Simon Christopher Nash

Amir Nathoo

Dale Robinson Hewitt

Steven John Hyatt

Michael John Edwards

Simon Charles Edward Rowland

Jacqueline Bowden

Collaborative help for user applications includes: generating a message, the message being reflective of a user's experience in using a user application; sending the message to a collaborative help server to share the message with other users; and receiving a response from the server providing information regarding one or more other users' experience similar to the user's experience reflected in the message.

Collaborative help for user applications

A method manages substantially continuous delivery of a data stream to a mobile communications device through sequential access thereby to respective receivers from a networked arrangement of wireless transceivers at known locations. A current location and velocity of the mobile communications device is determined. Based on a determined current location and velocity of the mobile communications device, a prediction for a next wireless transceiver to be accessed is generated, and a portion of the data stream is pre-cached at a predicted next wireless transceiver.

Pre-emptive content caching in mobile networks

A method apparatus and computer program product is disclosed for adding instrumentation to a body of code to enable generation of code coverage data for said body of code in which used instrumentation code is arranged to be optimized out by a compiler.

Adding instrumentation to a body of code to enable generation of code coverage data

A method of performing distributed just-in-time compilation includes sending a first request message from a client platform to a dedicated compilation server requesting just-in-time compilation of a bytecode sequence generated from a set of code for a source program executing on the client platform; compiling the bytecode sequence at the compilation server into a set of machine code instructions executable by the client platform; storing the set of machine code instructions in a repository managed by the dedicated compilation server; sending a notification message indicating that the set of machine code instructions are available from the dedicated compilation server to the client platform; sending a second request message from the client platform to the dedicated compilation server requesting the set of machine code instructions; and accessing the repository to send the set of machine code instructions from the dedicated compilation server to the client platform.

Distributed just-in-time compilation

Method, system, and computer program product for building a voice prompt menu for a collection of portlets by acquiring a list of portlets, building a voice menu comprising voice menu items to activate each of the portlets, acquiring a portlet profile containing customization information, and adapting the voice menu using the customization information in the portlet profile. The web portlet may define custom characteristics for consideration by the voice aggregator, for instance, in the positions for its menu items in the hierarchy of the voice portal menu.

Method and apparatus for a voice portal server

A voice processing complex has a plurality of host machines, each host machine supporting one or more voice applications, at least one host in the complex including telephony hardware for providing access to a plurality of telephone lines. Such a host provides telephony functions to the complex. This is achieved by maintaining a mapping of voice applications to telephone lines, and creating a call object in response to an incoming call on one of the lines. It is then determined which voice application to associate with the incoming call on the basis of this mapping, and an identifier to the call object is then passed to the determined voice application. Thereafter the call object is responsive to requests from this voice application for providing telephony functions for the call. This includes receiving a media object from the voice processing application which represents desired output over a telephone line. This media object is then processed into a plurality of output components in accordance with one or more presentation criteria, and these components are then output over the telephone line.

Voice processing system

An interactive voice response method and system comprising a VoiceXML browser for processing an interaction with a user. A music score (for example a MIDI file) describing background music for playing during the interaction, and a music synthesizer for generating background music from the music score and from acoustic parameters are included. Acoustic parameters are generated whereby the music synthesizer may be controlled independently of the music score to change the audio environment during an interaction.

Interactive voice response method and apparatus

This invention relates to the management, in an interactive voice response system, of a plurality of speech technology modules. In particular it relates to an apparatus and a method for dynamically determining which of a plurality of speech technology modules to use during voice interaction between the system and a user. In prior art IVR systems each speech technology module is configured for a specific application or task. Most speech technology modules have different lexicons for the range of functions but it is the full lexicon which can determine an engine's suitability for a language. For instance, one type of speech recognition engine is preferred for certain languages whereas IBM ViaVoice is a good general all rounder. Choosing one speech recognition module according to application or function alone is not entirely satisfactory and there is a need for improvement. The present solution is to select, for each interaction, one of the speech technology modules from the plurality of the modules to be used by the application according to the environment property of the interaction.

Management of speech technology modules in an interactive voice response system

The invention provides a method, system and computer program product for creating a form definition data file using a visual programming development environment on a computer system. The data file is for interpretation by a dialogue management system and is XML-based markup. A graphical program representation of the data file is created in the development environment and is then compiled and executed in order to generate the data file. The program itself is built by linking a main Java bean component and a plurality of Java bean sub-components, all containing characteristic data file information. On running the executable, the main Java bean outputs its respective data file information into the data file and does this by creating a file output stream and writing its respective data file information to that output stream. This action also causes the next and subsequent java bean components to output their respective data file information into the data file.

Form data files generator

A voice processing system is disclosed having a first interface for receiving telephone calls from the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and application software for processing received PSTN telephone calls. The voice processing system supports an API to allow the first interface to inform the application software of the presence of the call. The voice processing system further has a second interface for receiving telephone calls from an internet protocol (IP) network, and a signaling subsystem for routing an IP call from the second interface to the application software. This signaling subsystem uses the same API as is used to inform the application software about PSTN calls. Therefore, it is transparent to the application software whether an incoming call has been received from the IP network rather than the PSTN.

A voice processing system for connection to a telephone line for providing telephony support to voice processing applications having a voice processing application and a media object, the media object having an output element for outputting a set of output components in accordance with one or more presentation criteria such as locale and style; a receiving element for receiving the media object from the voice processing application, the media object representing desired output over a telephone line; and the outputting element outputting the output components over the telephone line.

Voice processing system with mapping of voice applications to telephone lines

Office workers are equipped with a telephone and a desktop computer, the latter including an email system which allows telephony applets to be included in email messages. Thus the recipient of a message which includes an applet might typically be presented with a call back button. When this button is selected, it automatically provides the recipient with a telephone connection through to the sender of the message. This is accomplished by the applet using JTAPI to interact with the appropriate telephony equipment in order to form the desired connection.

Computer email with telephony support

A method and apparatus for subclassing System Object Model (SOM) class objects for a dynamic object-oriented language. A proxy class object is created using the dynamic language that points to the SOM class object. Next, a dynamic language subclass is created. This is followed by the creation of a SOM class object using the SOM interface, which causes certain SOM methods to be overridden by dynamic language redispatch stubs. The dynamic language overrides the SOM dispatch procedures and replaces the dispatcher with its own procedures. The new dispatch procedure will search for a method in the dynamic language class object method table first in response to a message, and if not found, redirects the message to the SOM environment.

Method and apparatus for subclassing system object model classes in dynamic languages

A voice processing system is connected to a switch via multiple telephone lines, and provides a set of line objects, each line object being associated with one of the physical telephone lines. The line object allows a demarcation to be made between the underlying voice processing system software, and external business applications. Thus a line object supports a set of methods such as Get DTMF Tone, Play Audio, Answer Call, and End Call, to allow the external business applications to perform desired operations on a telephone line. These methods are invoked via a set of corresponding IVR action objects, which in turn are integrated into the business application. The business application itself, and its IVR actions, regard the line objects effectively as servers to provide IVR functionality. The business application may therefore run partially or completely on a separate physical machine from the IVR system itself.

A communications system may be used for transmitting and/or receiving data over a network. The communications system includes means responsive to requests for a desired quality of service specifying at least two quality of service parameters, such as bandwidth, latency, error rate, and so on, for determining whether or not the requested quality of service is available. The quality of service requests specify the desired quality of service in terms of logical expressions involving two or more of said at least two quality of service parameters. This allows, for example, a desired quality of service to accept a higher error rate if the available bandwidth is higher. In the preferred embodiment, each quality of service parameter is specified in terms of a range between minimum and a maximum acceptable values.

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Winchester, United Kingdom

David Seager Renshaw