Nuance Communications, Inc.

Tracy D Wax

Michael H Cohen

Steven Clive Ehrlich

Debajit Ghosh

Jennifer E Balogh

Madhavan S Thirumalai

Michael A Prince

The present invention allows a user to audibly and interactively browse through a network of audio information, forming a seamless integration of the world wide web and the entire telephone network browsable from any telephone set. Preferably a browser controller allows the user to receive audio information and to transmit verbal instructions. The browser controller links the user to voice pages, which can be any telephone station or world wide web page, in response to voice commands. Upon linking, certain information is played with an audio indicia which identifies a linking capability. If the user repeats the information set off by the audio indicia, the telephone number or URL of the selected link is transmitted to the browser controller. The browser controller establishes a new link with the identified telephone number or URL, and if successful, disconnects the previous link. The originator no longer needs to know of the existence of the receiver nor the telephone number or URL of the receiver because this invention provides a method to browse the entire telephone network and world wide web and to connect to a receiver by saying the name of the hyperlink. This brings the power of the world wide web to the telephone network. In effect, this invention takes the PSTN from its current state as a set of more than 800 million nodes including means to make pairwise connections and converts it to a highly interconnected browsable web, as well as integrating it with the entire world wide web.

System for and method of creating and browsing a voice web

A network comprises a number of speech-enabled sites maintaining a number of voice pages. A central server on the network executes a voice browser which provides users with access to the sites using voice-activated hyperlinks. The server also maintains and brokers information associated with the users based on spoken dialogs between the users and the sites. In response to a user accessing a given ASR site, information about that user is provided by the server for use by that ASR site. The information is used by the ASR site to optimize a spoken dialog between the user and the ASR site by reducing the amount of information the user is required to provide during the dialog. Information about the user can thereby be shared between separate speech enabled sites, in a manner which is transparent to the user, in order to expedite the user's interaction with those sites.

Method and apparatus for optimizing a spoken dialog between a person and a machine

A voice-enabled application, which may be a voice browser, is configured to provide active help to a user. The application maintains a usage history of each user with respect to dialog states. The usage history includes various user-specific variables, some of which are valid across multiple sessions. The application maintains a number of active help prompts capable of being played to a user as speech, each containing information on a different, specific help topic. The application further maintains a number of sets of conditions, each set corresponding to a different one of the active help prompts. The application monitors dialog states during a session of a user and generates an event based on the dialog states. The application applies certain ones of the conditions to certain ones of the user-specific variables in response to the event. The application then plays a active help prompt containing information on a specific help topic to the user if the applied conditions are satisfied.

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Burlingame, CA, United States of America

Tracy D Wax