Tellme Networks, Inc.

Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Speechworks International, Inc.

Matthew T Marx

Lisa Joy Stifelman

Hadi Partovi

Brandon William Porter

Angus Macdonald Davis

David Bryan Alpert

Roderick Steven Brathwaite

Scott James Bailey

Eugene Koh

Haleh Partovi

Kyle D Sims

Darby McDonough Bailey

Eckart Walther

John N Nguyen

James Robert Everingham

Michael Bodell

John Giannandrea

Jeff C Kunins

Mark Arthur Holthouse

Patrick McCormick

Bill Sutton

Andrew Clarke

Tom Thai

Daniel Joseph Howard

Michael Stuart Phillips

Jerry K Carter

Angus MacDonald

Stephen D Seabury

Brett D Phaneuf

Jose L Elizondo-Cecenas

A zero-footprint remotely hosted phone application development environment is described. The environment allows a developer to use a standard computer without any specialized software (in some embodiments all that is necessary is a web browser and network access) together with a telephone to develop sophisticated phone applications that use speech recognition and/or touch tone inputs to perform tasks, access web-based information, and/or perform commercial transactions. For example, in preparation for a sales pitch for selling hosting services, a non-programmer can develop a short application appropriate to the target customer. After the pitch, access to the demonstration could be given to the target customer to allow them to more fully develop the application. When the target customer is satisfied with the application, they can have their application live for their actual (as opposed to test users) at a suitable phone number simply by having the hosting provider configure the appropriate access. Once the source code of phone application is identified to the development environment, the developer can use a telephone to immediately call the application on the hosted development environment. Some embodiments support concurrent call flow tracking that allows a developer to observe, using a web browser, the execution of her/his application. A variety of reusable libraries are provided to enable the developer to leverage well-developed libraries for common playback, input, and computational tasks. This focuses the development on application specific logic. Embodiments of the invention simplify the process of defining speech recognition grammars within their applications. Embodiments of the invention support rapid application deployment from the development environment to hosted application deployment to the intended audience.

Zero-footprint telephone application development

A method and system for providing efficient menu services for an information processing system that uses a telephone or other form of audio user interface. In one embodiment, the menu services provide effective support for novice users by providing a full listing of available keywords and rotating house advertisements which inform novice users of potential features and information. For experienced users, cues are rendered so that at any time the user can say a desired keyword to invoke the corresponding application. The menu is flat to facilitate its usage. Full keyword listings are rendered after the user is given a brief cue to say a keyword. Service messages rotate words and word prosody. When listening to receive information from the user, after the user has been cued, soft background music or other audible signals are rendered to inform the user that a response may now be spoken to the service. Other embodiments determine default cities, on which to report information, based on characteristics of the caller or based on cities that were previously selected by the caller. Other embodiments provide speech concatenation processes that have co-articulation and real-time subject-matter-based word selection which generate human sounding speech. Other embodiments reduce the occurrences of falsely triggered barge-ins during content delivery by only allowing interruption for certain special words. Other embodiments offer special services and modes for calls having voice recognition trouble. The special services are entered after predetermined criterion have been met by the call. Other embodiments provide special mechanisms for automatically recovering the address of a caller.

Providing menu and other services for an information processing system using a telephone or other audio interface

Declarative markup languages for speech applications such as VoiceXML are becoming more prevalent programming modalities for describing speech applications. Present declarative markup languages for speech applications model the running speech application as a state machine with the program specifying the transitions amongst the states. These languages can be extended to support a marker-semantic to more easily solve several problems that are otherwise not easily solved. In one embodiment, a partially overlapping target window is implemented using a mark semantic. Other uses include measurement of user listening time, detection and avoidance of errors, and better resumption of playback after a false barge in.

Handling of speech recognition in a declarative markup language

Providing services for an information processing system using an audio interface

A zero-footprint remotely hosted phone application development environment is described. The environment allows a developer to use a standard computer without any specialized software (in some embodiments all that is necessary is a web browser and network access) together with a telephone to develop sophisticated phone applications that use speech recognition and/or touch tone inputs to perform tasks, access web-based information, and/or perform commercial transactions. Some embodiments support concurrent call flow tracking that allows a developer to observe, using a web browser, the execution of her/his application. A variety of reusable libraries are provided to enable the developer to leverage well-developed libraries for common playback, input, and computational tasks. Embodiments support rapid application deployment from the development environment to hosted application deployment to the intended audience.

Method and apparatus for zero-footprint phone application development

A method and apparatus are disclosed for computing and reporting statistical information that describes the performance of an interactive speech application. The interactive speech application is developed and deployed for use by one or more callers. During execution, the interactive speech application stores, in a log, event information that describes each task carried out by the interactive speech application in response to interaction with the one or more callers. After the log is established, an analytical report is displayed. The report describes selective actions taken by the interactive speech application while executing, and selective actions taken by one or more callers while interacting with the interactive speech application. Information in the analytical report is selected so as to identify one or more potential performance problems in the interactive speech application. The analytical reports are generated based on the information stored in the event logs. Each line of the event log is associated with a particular call and is identified by a unique call number. Each line of the event log is then processed to calculate and extract data needed for the analytical reports.

Statistical computing and reporting for interactive speech applications

Dialogue modules are provided, with each dialogue module includes computer readable instructions for accomplishing a predefined interactive dialogue task in an interactive speech application. In response to user input, a subset of the plurality of dialogue modules are selected to accomplish their respective interactive dialogue tasks in the interactive speech application and are interconnected in an order defining the call flow of the application, and the application is generated. A graphical user interface represents the stored plurality of dialogue modules as icons in a graphical display in which icons for the subset of dialogue modules are selected in the graphical display in response to user input, the icons for the subset of dialogue modules are graphically interconnected into a graphical representation of the call flow of the interactive speech application, and the interactive speech application is generated based upon the graphical representation. Using the graphical display, the method further includes associating configuration parameters with specific dialogue modules. Each configuration parameter causes a change in operation of the dialogue module when the interactive speech program executes. A window is displayed for setting the value of the configuration parameter in response to user input, when an icon for a dialogue module having an associated configuration parameter is selected.

System and method for developing interactive speech applications

A speech recognition system capable of recognizing a word or a plurality of words based on a continuous spelling of the word(s) by a user. The system includes a speech recognition engine with a decoder running in forward mode such that the recognition engine continuously outputs an updated string of hypothesized letters based on the letters uttered by the user. The system further includes a spelling engine for comparing each string of hypothesized letters to a vocabulary list of words. The spelling engine returns a best match for the string of hypothesized letters. The system may also include an early identification unit for presenting the user with the best matching word(s) possibly before the user has completed spelling the desired word(s).

Method and apparatus for continuous spelling speech recognition with

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Ithaca, NY, United States of America

Matthew T Marx