Lucent Technologies Inc.

Alcatel-lucent USA Inc.

Anexas, Inc.

Vinod Anupam

Narain H Gehani

Bharat Kumar

Kenneth R Rodemann

Viswanath Kadambari

Juliana Freire Silva

Viswanath Poosala

Charles Douglas Blewett

Wim Sweldens

Markus Andreas Hofmann

Eric D Petajan

Richard Baxter Hull

Chitra Phadke

Daniel Francis Lieuwen

Yuri J Breitbart

Gregory L Anderson

Suryanarayan Perinkulam

Shaul Dar

Theodore F Leibfried

Musiri Srivathsan Sriram

A system and method for utilizing information exchanged during an initiation phase (i.e., the 'ringing' phase) of a conventional telephone connection request received from a telephony device, in order to identify and provide a user with content or enhanced services. In a convention telephone call the connection request includes information that identifies the user and/or telephony device that placed the phone call (the originating number) and the dialed phone number (the signaling number). The connection request is rejected and the call is terminated Prior to termination of the call the originating dumber and/or signaling number are extracted and used to identify a task that is desired by a user; content associated with the task is delivered to the user.

System and method for delivering content to a user of a telephony device

Location-based services are provided in a communication system comprising at least a portion of at least one wireless network. One aspect of the invention relates to generation of user movement statistics that may be utilized to facilitate the development of targeted marketing campaigns or other types of message delivery. In this aspect, the user movement statistics are generated based on location and profile information for mobile user devices, and delivery of at least one message to a given one of the mobile user devices is controlled based on the user movement statistics. The user movement statistics may comprise, for example, information sufficient to determine approximately how many users having particular designated characteristics are likely to be in a given location at a given time, and may be utilized to determine prices charged for delivery of messages to the mobile user devices.

Provision of location-based services utilizing user movement statistics

The concept of 'roaming' is extended to wireline networks with a network hosted technique which emulates a wireline telecommunications network user's environment when the user is using a wireline telecommunications device located at a physical location other than his or her 'home' location, or when using a wireline or wireless telecommunications device other than his or her own regardless of the location. Any telephone or other telecommunications device being used by the user advantageously appears to be logically connected directly to his or her home telecommunications network, irrespective of the location of the telephone or other telecommunications device being used and the telecommunications network to which that device is actually connected.

'Roaming' method and apparatus for use in emulating a user's 'home' telecommunications environment

Techniques are provided for use in accordance with such systems as web sites operating electronic commerce (e-commerce) applications, interactive voice response (IVR) systems and workflow systems for providing automated monitoring of user activity and personalized action taking based on such activity, in accordance with an on-line decision support mechanism which combines formal and heuristic reasoning. In a web-based system, for example, the on-line decision support provided in accordance with the invention can be used in a wide variety of e-commerce applications requiring automated, real-time, intelligent interventions, including targeted promotions and discounts, assisting with navigation through self-help material, supporting dynamic price negotiations, and even selecting large portions of page content.

Methods and apparatus for automated monitoring and action taking based on decision support mechanism

A personal Web view is created that includes a plurality of Web clippings. Each Web clipping contains information from a user-selected Web page, which can be essentially any Web page that is accessible on any Web server. In creating the page, the user loads a personalization applet into his browser and retrieves each Web page of interest. The applet then generates an access script for automatically accessing that Web page and the user specifies the attributes of the Web clipping derived from that Web page. A specification of the Web view is then stored in a file. When the Web view specification is later replayed, the Web page for each Web clipping is retrieved and the specified information is extracted. The plural Web clippings are then displayed in a browser in accordance with the specified layout.

Method and apparatus for web-site-independent personalization from multiple sites having user-determined extraction functionality

A method of interactively sharing information between at least two devices in a computer network, each device having a respective browser associated therewith for handling the information, includes retrieving information from an information source in the network for storage in response to receipt of a retrieval request from a first browser associated with a first device. The method further includes sending the stored information to at least a second browser of at least a second device in response to receipt of a similar request therefrom, the second device receiving the request from the first device, such that the devices can share the information retrieved from the information source in response to the single request made to the source. Preferably, a surrogate is established in at least the first device for informing the second device of the request made such that the browser of the second device can make the similar request. Also, the information available from the information source in the computer network may include dynamically changing (i.e., stateful) content.

Methods and apparatus for enabling shared web-based interaction in stateful servers

Shortcuts to Web pages that require multiple steps to be retrieved are enabled by means of a smart bookmark. A smart bookmark is a stored sequence of browsing steps performed by a user, that have been recorded in a transparent manner and which can be automatically played and replayed later when the smart bookmark is accessed. When a user elects to create a smart bookmark, a Java recorder-player applet is invoked that starts the recording process. When the recording process is started and an initial URL is inputted by the user, the responsive Web page at that URL downloaded into the browser is modified to attach event handlers to each element in that page that is associated with actions that the user may take. Each user's click, link traversal to another URL, or input of values to those elements on a form submission are automatically recorded as part of the smart bookmark under creation. The resultant information at each step is recorded in a file. When the smart bookmark is later accessed, the recorder-player Java applet reads the file, and the sequence of recorded steps is played back, including information associated with all link traversals and form submissions. During playback, each intermediate Web page optionally can be displayed in the user's browser, or only the last page can be displayed. Further, during playback, transitions between successive steps can be automatic or can require an input from the user before a next step in the sequence is made.

Method for creating and playing back a smart bookmark that automatically retrieves a requested Web page through a plurality of intermediate Web pages

Computer users may utilize different web browsers to access a server system on the World Wide Web (WWW) to create or join a collaborative session. One or more controllers connect the users or collaborators in a session in the server system. This is realized by establishing a so-called &ldquo;shared Web-top&rdquo;, i.e., a work space, in which different in-document applications can be run and can be interactively, collaboratively shared by a plurality of users. Specifically, this is realized by employing a surrogate that includes a polling loop which periodically checks a shared document structure for changes in prescribed properties, and transmits the detected changes to surrogates of other users, i.e., at least one other collaborator, via a communication channel. To this end, a prospective user of the shared Web-top accesses a system, which transmits mobile code to the user's computer to create a surrogate thereon. The surrogates created for the users of the shared Web-top are connected by at least one controller in the system and individually serve as an interface between the controller and the respective browsers on the users computers. Advantageously, through our unique use of the polling loop in the surrogate, functionality is realized in which, as one user inputs data into a shared document, for example, into one or more forms in a document, the same data appears in the other user's browser, via the detected changes in prescribed properties of the one or more forms being transmitted over the communication channel to the users' computers and, therein, to their surrogates.

Apparatus and method for sharing information in simultaneously viewed documents on a communication system

Computer users may utilize different web browsers to access a server system on the World Wide Web (WWW) to create or join a collaborative browsing session. One or more controllers connect the users or collaborators in a session in the server system. This is realized by establishing a so-called &ldquo;shared Web-top&rdquo;, i.e., a work space, in which different in-document applications can be run and can be interactively, collaboratively shared by a plurality of users. Specifically, this is realized in one embodiment by employing event handlers in the WEB documents that are activated whenever there is a change in the values of prescribed properties of a document. The event handlers notify a so-called surrogate of the changes in the prescribed properties of the document, i.e., that values in elements of a form have changed, and transmit the detected changes to surrogates of other users, i.e., at least one other collaborator, via a communication channel. To this end, a prospective user of the shared Web-top accesses a system that transmits mobile code to the user's computer to create a surrogate thereon. The surrogates created for the users of the shared Web-top are connected by at least one controller in the system and individually serve as an interface between the controller and the respective browsers on the users computers. Alternatively, the surrogate can insert event handlers into the document that communicate with the surrogate, identifying which form elements they apply to and transmit the changed value(s) to other users. The surrogates of the other users then appropriately update the corresponding form elements to reflect the changes.

An arrangement for realizing asymmetric collaboration utilizes a &ldquo;shared Web-top&rdquo;, i.e., a work space, in which different in-document applications can run and be shared. Specifically, in one embodiment of the invention employed in asymmetric collaboration, documents to be collaborated on at different users' terminals are logically identical but structurally different. Indeed, one of the collaborators, for example, a customer service agent, may have access to information that should not be made available to others of the collaborators. This asymmetric collaboration is realized by assigning a unique logical name to each information entity. Then, changes in the entity captured by some detection technique, for example, the use of document polling or event handlers, are propagated along with the name of the entity to the collaborators, where they are processed only if the relevant named entity exists. If the entity exists the logical name of the entity is mapped into its physical name which, therefore, allows asymmetric collaboration. Consequently, the name-based technique allows the collaborators, e.g., customer and agent, to share changes in the logically common portions of documents, which are structurally different.

Method and apparatus for sharing asymmetric information and services in simultaneously viewed documents on a communication system

In a communications arrangement, a computer user accesses a server system to seek customer service over the World Wide Web (WWW). The server system assigns a customer service agent (CSA) to communicate with the user to realize the customer service. In a customer service session, the user and CSA may collaboratively browse hypertext markup language (HTML) documents at different uniform resource locators (URLs) to obtain relevant information. However, in accordance with the invention, the version of each document presented to the user may be different from that presented to the CSA. In particular, the CSA version contains proprietary information which is excluded from the user version.

Technique for obtaining information and services over a communication

Computer users may utilize different web browsers to access a server system on the World Wide Web (WWW) to create or join a collaborative browsing session. The users or collaborators in a session are connected by one or more controllers in the server system. When a collaborator creates or joins a session, mobile code is transmitted from the system to the collaborator's computer to create a surrogate thereon, which monitors the collaborator's interaction with a web browser on the computer. The controllers communicate with all the surrogates of the collaborators to coordinate the collaborative browsing effort. When one of the surrogates detects a change by a collaborator of a uniform resource locator (URL), the new URL is communicated through the controllers to the surrogates of all other collaborators in the session. As such, the collaborators are able to move from one URL to another to browse information in a synchronous manner. In addition, the collaborators can interactively communicate with one another in real time through the respective surrogates during the session.

Technique for obtaining and exchanging information on world wide web

A method and system for visualizing relatively large amounts of data in a limited display space includes segmenting the data, mapping each segment to a node within the display space based on a specified nodal layout, texture mapping each graphical display of each segment of data to its node, and displaying the data in each node of the display space as mapped. This visualization scheme enables a user to map a relation to a specification of an N-dimensional display, by designating how attributes are to be used to get a desired segmentation, layout and presentation and enables a user to explore the data with various exploring features including real time continuous scaling.

Growing community of inventors

Scotch Plains, NJ, United States of America

Vinod Anupam