British Telecommunications Public Limited Company

British Telecommunications Corporation

Nader Azarmi

Gery M Ducatel

Zhan Cui

Stephen Leslie Corley

David Lesaint

Behnam Azvine

John G Taylor

Christos Voudouris

Ian S Alletson

John J O'Donoghue

Robert N W Laithwaite

Neill R Taylor

Paul Walker

Kwok C Tsui

David P Djian

Andrew P Noble

Charles D Elfe

Eugene C Freuder

An electronic document retrieval system is disclosed. It has particular utility to World-Wide Web searching. The system requires webmasters to put forward categories into which the pages on their web-site might sensibly be divided, and to provide a list of those categories together with a list of popular keywords associated with those categories to a global search engine. The global search engine is then able to augment one or more of its search results with links to category-heading pages which most closely relate to the query provided by the user. In this way, a user is able to find the page most relevant to his query more rapidly than has hitherto been possible.

Electronic document retrieval system with links to external documents

Video material is dividing into temporal segments. Each segment is examined to determine whether the soundtrack of the segment contains speech sufficient for analysis and if so, metadata are generated based on analysis of the speech. If not, the segment is analysed by comparing frames thereof with those of stored segments that already have metadata assigned to them. One then assigns to the segment under consideration stored metadata associated with one or more stored segments that are similar.

Method and system for annotating video material

An apparatus and operating method for generating a second one or more sequences of elements after receiving a first one or more sequence of elements. The apparatus includes an identifying device that receives a first one or more sequence of elements, accesses stored sequences, and identifies which of the stored sequences each of the first one or more received sequences of elements most closely resembles. The identifying device is operable to output for each received sequence of elements, an identifying signal indicative of the correspondingly identified stored sequence. The apparatus further includes a sequence generator that generates sequences of elements, operates to receive an input, an identifying signal, and generates a sequence of elements in response thereto.

Apparatus for generating sequences of elements

A plurality of resources, typically service operatives, are allocated to a plurality of tasks by a method in which initial information relating to the tasks to be allocated and the resources available to perform the tasks is provided. An initial series of schedules is first generated allocating resources to the tasks, and then modifying the individual schedule of at least one resource in response to updated information. Changes to individual schedules may be made in response to such updated information independently of the schedule generation. The initial, series of schedules may be generated in a two-stage process in which a rule-based system allocates tasks selected as being difficult to allocate (e.g., because they are linked to other tasks). then a stochastic (non-systematic) search system compiles the rest of the schedule. Periodically, the stochastic system may be interrupted to allow a further rule-based system to analyze the schedules created thus far, and fix the best ones in the schedule, so that the stochastic system can then concentrate on improving the remaining schedules. In order to allow the system to handle rapid changes in the requirements for tasks and the resources, on a scale faster than the time required to generate the schedules, a schedule modification system is arranged to make changes in the short term in between schedule updates delivered by the schedule generation system.

Method and apparatus for resource allocation when schedule changes are incorporated in real time

Service management system for use in communications

Network management system for communications networks

Growing community of inventors

Colchester, United Kingdom

Nader Azarmi