Sony Corporation

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation

Ryuichi Watanabe

Masafumi Minami

Hiroto Narioka

Kiyomi Kumozaki

Yasuhiro Suzuki

Noriki Miki

Seiichi Yamano

Takashi Kuwayama

Yasuyuki Okumura

Shinichi Aoyagi

Yoshihiro Takigawa

A digital map display zooming method for continuously enlarging and reducing a displayed portion of a digital map as map information in digital form within a display screen is provided which comprises the steps of displaying the displayed portion of the digital map at the display screen, displaying a scroll part within the display screen for shifting the displayed portion, making the scroll part function as a scale setting part for carrying out enlarging and reducing operations of the displayed portion of the digital map within the display screen, and carrying out enlarging and reducing operations of the displayed portion of the digital map within the display screen by shifting a shifting operation part of the scale setting part.

Digital map display zooming method, digital map display zooming device, and storage medium for storing digital map display zooming program

In a digital map display zooming method for enlarging and reducing a displayed portion of a digital map as map information in digital form within a display screen, continuous enlarging operation and continuous reducing operation of the displayed portion of the digital map within the display screen are designated by operating the first designating part and the second designating part of a pointing device, respectively.

An information processing apparatus is disclosed which comprises: an inputting element for inputting a departure point and a destination; a nearby station retrieving element for retrieving stations located near the departure point and the destination which were input through the inputting element; a train route searching element which, if there are a plurality of stations near at least either the departure point or the destination, the nearby stations having been retrieved by the nearby station retrieving element, then searches for at least one train route for each of all nearby station combinations linking the departure point to the destination; a storing element for storing the train routes retrieved by the train route searching element; a setting element for setting prioritizing conditions to be referenced when the train route searching element searches for train routes; and a ranking element for ranking the train routes stored in the storing element in accordance with the prioritizing conditions set by the setting element.

Information processing apparatus and method, and program storage medium

There is provided an information processing apparatus in which when a route to a destination is searched, a road of the route is displayed with emphasis while a color or shape indicating the type of the road can be checked. When the route to the destination is searched, both sides of the road of the searched route are displayed with emphasis lines. The inside of both the sides of the road is displayed such that the type of the road, such as an expressway or an open load, can be recognized. By this, a user can easily check the searched route, and can check the type of the road of the route. For example, in the route from a current location to a destination, the user can check that a route A is an expressway, and other route B, route C, and route D are open roads.

Information processing apparatus and method, and providing medium

A digital map display scrolling method is provided which is for successively scrolling a displayed portion of a digital map as map information in digital form within a display screen, the method comprising the steps of displaying the displayed portion of the digital map at the display screen, shifting a pointer within the displayed portion of the digital map displayed at the display screen, and making an amount by which the pointer positioned at the displayed portion is shifted correspond to the scrolling speed of the displayed portion of the digital map within the display screen.

Digital map display scrolling method, digital map display scrolling device, and storage device for storing digital map display scrolling program

In a bidirectional optical transmission system between an optical subscriber unit (10; OSU) in a central office and a plurality of optical network units (20A.sub.i ; ONU) in customer premises each coupled with the subscriber unit (10) through an optical fiber cable, the optical subscriber unit (10) has a laser oscillator (11), a device (12) for splitting an output beam of the laser oscillator into n number of beams, a plurality of optical modulators (13-1 through 13-n), coupled with each of the n number of beams, for modulating a related optical beam with a transmission signal S for a respective optical network unit, a plurality of optical detectors (14-1 through 14-n) coupled with each of the optical network units to provide a receive signal R by converting the receive optical signal into electrical form. Each pair of one of the optical modulators and one of the optical detectors are coupled with a respective optical network unit through an optical fiber cable (5-1, 5-2). Each of the optical network units (20-1 through 20-n) has a device for receiving the optical signal from the ONU, to convert the receive optical beam into the electrical signal and for transmitting the optical signal modulated with the transmission signal to the ONU.

Bidirectional optical transmission system

A point-to-multipoint communication system is presented to enable a reliable, high quality communication using multiplexed optical signals between a central office equipment and a plurality of subscriber's equipment. The system is provided with a plurality of office transceivers in the central office equipment, and the each of the subscribers is provided with at least one subscriber transceiver. The system is designed so that a redundancy system is built-in by providing one of either the office transceivers, a plurality of subscriber's transceivers or the optical connection device, to connect the two sets of transceivers at all times. One of these redundancy systems provides an operating connection between each of the office transmitters which are connected to the office transceivers and each of the subscriber transmitters which are connected to the subscriber transceivers. Therefore, when a malfunction occurs somewhere in the optical network, the least number of the malfunctioning components need to be switched over the the normally functioning system to maintain continued communication services. The present communication system is designed with the least number of active components, therefore, the failure probability is significantly decreased, and repairs if necessary can be preformed quickly. The overall effect of the present system is that interactive point-to-multipoint communication services of high quality and reliability are provided at reasonable cost.

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Kanagawa, Japan

Ryuichi Watanabe