International Business Machines Corporation

Laurence Victor Marks

Gordon Taylor Davis

Charles Bruce Dillon

Baiju Dhirajlal Mandalia

John C Sinibaldi

Lawrence P Andrews

William R Robinson, Jr

Sandra Rhodes

Andre Byungyup Minn

Challis L Purrington, Sr

Edward Earl Harbour

Lee H House

Daniel A Marks

Bryan S Stevens

Paul Leppert

Frank Westbrook Dain

Donald J Donaghy

A mobile phone initially probes while in an open-loop mode with an estimated power level based on the received power level from a base station. If a response is not received, power is incremented, and a subsequent probe is sent. The process is repeated until a response is received or when maximum power is reached. If a response is still not received, the mobile phone tests for changing its location state. When BTS probes are unsuccessful and maximum power is reached, available sensors are sampled and tested for a change of state, e.g., by way of an inclinometer, an accelerometer, a magnetometer, a GPS, standard 802.11, or employing a Bluetooth, and the like. If no state change is detected, a delay block is entered, reducing the probing rate and the power consumption rate. If a state change is detected, the delay block is bypassed and probing resumes immediately.

Enhanced power conservation for mobile devices

Enhanced power conservation for mobile phones

Images captured in a digital form are stored in a digital storage device with already-stored images by determining if a percentage of a finite storage capacity of the digital storage device needed to store the captured and already stored images in the storage device exceeds a pre-set threshold value, wherein storage used of the finite storage capacity to store images may exceed the pre-set threshold value. If the percentage of storage space needed to store the captured and already stored images in the storage device exceeds the pre-set threshold value, then at least one of the captured and already stored images are compressed and all of the captured and already stored images, including all of the compressed images of the captured image and the already stored image, are stored in the storage device.

Adaptive compression quality

Images are captured and are stored (either in compressed or non-compressed form) in non-volatile storage at a predetermined quality or Q level. When the storage fills to a predetermined threshold, some or all of the images are compressed or recompressed to a lower quality, to make room for additional storage; i.e. new images may be captured and compressed at this lower quality or Q level, to minimize the rate at which the remaining storage is consumed; or all of the captured and stored images may be compressed or recompressed to this lower quality or Q level.

Methods, program products, and apparatus for reporting the location of packages or parcels as they move from a reception location through various vehicles and distribution locations to a delivery location. The methods, products, and apparatus enable any interested user to access a consolidated display showing the detailed progress of a package toward delivery, including real-time location information of any delivery vehicle carrying the package.

In-transit package location tracking and reporting

A system and method for providing obscured output from a data processing a system to allow analysis of the output without disclosing sensitive information. In response to an error condition, selected portions of the data being used in the data processing system are replaced by means of an irreversible algorithm to obscure the data, then the data processing is repeated with the obscured data to determine that the error still exists with the obscured data. If the error ceased to exist when one substitution technique is used, the process is repeated with a different technique in an attempt to find a substitution system which repeats the error while masking the data, allowing analysis of the files and correction of the error without divulging the information.

Method and system for providing data output for analysis

An adapter for providing data communications for a personal computer to other remote data communications systems of various communication platforms is disclosed. The remote data communications systems can be a data circuit terminating equipment (DCE) such as a modem, or a data terminating equipment (DTE) such as an ISDN terminal adapter. The adapter comprises a programmable digital signal processing device, a memory device and an assortment of transceiving devices. A software program is stored in the memory device for instructing the programmable digital signal processing device. The transceiving devices are controlled by the programmable DSP device such that the appropriate transceiving device can be activated for providing data communications, according to the type of communication platform utilized by the remote data communications equipment.

Communications adapter having analog and digital interfaces for communications with remote systems

A method, apparatus and article of manufacture are described. In particular two network interface devices that are connected over a path that includes a digital trunk using robbed-bit signaling use a technique to identify the presence of robbed-bit signaling. The network interface devices synchronize to bytes that are subject to robbed-bit signaling. The network interface devices must synchronize to the robbed-bit signaling to avoid transmitting information or receiving information in these signaling positions. The network interface devices then take advantage of the least significant bit positions of frames that are not used for robbed-bit signaling. This results in an increase in data carrying capacity from 56 kps to 62.7 kps.

Network interface device, method and article of manufacture for providing high bit rate access over robbed bit

When two 56K server modems communicate with one another over the public switched telephone network, they signal each other so that they communicate data to each other in a digital pass-through mode whereby essentially there is a direct digital connection between the two modems. This is accomplished by using extended ITU-T Recommendation V.8 protocols.

Modem protocol

A method, apparatus and article of manufacture are described. In particular two network interface devices that are connected over apath that includes a digital trunk using robbed-bit signaling use a technique to identify the presence of robbed-bit signaling. The network interface devices synchronize to bytes that are subject to robbed-bit signaling. The network interface devices must synchronize to the robbed-bit signaling to avoid transmitting information or receiving information in these signaling positions. The network interface devices then take advantage of the least significant bit positions of frames that are not used for robbed-bit signaling. This results in an increase in data carrying capacity from 56 kps to 62.7 kps.

System, method and article of manufacture for high bit rate access over

A method of indicating a state of progress of a task being processed in a computer system by providing a progress-indicating visual pointer on a display device of the computer system. Prior art visual pointers (such as an arrowhead) are responsive to a pointer device such as a mouse, and are used to manipulate features of a graphical user interface (GUI). These prior art pointers do not indicate the state of progress of a task underway, but rather only indicate that the task is still running. The progress-indicating pointer of the present invention can take the form of a wristwatch or clock icon having a face which is filled, e.g., in a clockwise fashion, or the form of an hourglass icon having a portion, e.g., the lower half of the hourglass, which is filled in an amount proportionate to the state of progress of the task being processed. The different states of the icon can easily be presented by providing a plurality of bitmaps (e.g., a 32-by-32 array of pixel elements), and program instructions select one of the bitmaps for the progress-indicating visual pointer based on the state of progress of the task being processed. The progress-indicating pointer may be provided in response to instructions from the operating system or from the application software.

Progress-indicating mouse pointer

A multi-mode time division multiplexing (TDM) interface circuit for interfacing between a serial data port and a data buffer is provided. The TDM interface circuit contains a transmitter and a receiver section. The circuit is programmable to operate in a variety of modes and is capable of supporting various multi-channel TDM interfaces as well as single channel analog interfaces. The circuit is programmable by writing a control word to a control register. In operation the circuit receives a frame synchronization signal, a gated bit clock signal, and a bit clock signal from the circuit with which it is interfacing on the serial data port. A base address input to a base address register provides up to 9 of the most significant bits of a data buffer address. A 12-bit counter is used to generate the remaining (least significant) bits of the data buffer address according to the control word in the control register.

Multi-mode TDM interface circuit

The invention is an ISDN terminal equipment which will maintain connectivity with existing analog modems by setting up a voice-grade connection to existing analog modems and using the power of a digital signal processor DSP to generate the digital equivalent of the analog modem signals for transmission on an ISDN 'B' channel.

System and method for communicating with digital and analog devices via

A processor-based packet memory interface for controlling the transfer of data between multiple communications channels and packet memory in a communications adapter is presented, where the communications adapter uses requestor IDs to identify transmit and receive processes. The processor-based packet memory interface is controlled by a microprocessor configured to perform read and write operations with the communications adapter. The microprocessor is further configured to reserve a plurality of blocks of memory in the packet memory so that the number of communications channels that can be supported is not limited to the number of requestor ID's that can be handled by the communications adapter. The processor-based packet memory interface also includes RAM, for use by the microprocessor, to store pointers to reserved blocks of memory in the packet memory and to temporarily store packet data for transfer between the communications channels and the communications adapter.

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Raleigh, NC, United States of America

Laurence Victor Marks