A control server, or similar central processor, manages the distribution of data (including audio and video), voice, and control signals among a plurality of devices connected via a wired and/or wireless communications network. The devices include audio/visual devices (such as, televisions, monitors, PDAs, notepads, notebooks, MP3, portable stereo, etc.) as well as household appliances (such as, lighting, ovens, alarm clocks, etc.). The control server supports video/audio serving, telephony, messaging, file sharing, internetworking, and security. A portable controller allows a user to access and control the network devices from any location within a controlled residential and/or non-residential environment, including its surrounding areas. The controllers are enhanced to support location-awareness and user-awareness functionality.

Method, system, and computer program product for managing controlled residential or non-residential environments

Disclosed is a semantic user interface system that allows text information to be tagged with machine-readable IDs that are associated with concepts for conveying information without any ambiguity or without being hampered by the limitations of human languages. Typically, a plurality of vocabularies are stored across a network, and each vocabulary includes a plurality of machine-readable IDs each corresponding to a concept and at least one keyword corresponding to each machine-readable ID. An input interface accepts text information, selects those machine-readable IDs whose keywords match up with the text information, and returns a list of candidates each corresponding to one of the selected machine-readable IDs and including a corresponding description. The machine-readable IDs can carry information in the form of concepts without any ambiguity as opposed to text information. This system can be applied to web and database searches, publishing messages to selected subscribers, interfacing of applications software, machine translations and so forth.

System for semantically disambiguating text information

A method for performing multi-touch (MT) data fusion is disclosed in which multiple touch inputs occurring at about the same time are received to generating first touch data. Secondary sense data can then be combined with the first touch data to perform operations on an electronic device. The first touch data and the secondary sense data can be time-aligned and interpreted in a time-coherent manner. The first touch data can be refined in accordance with the secondary sense data, or alternatively, the secondary sense data can be interpreted in accordance with the first touch data. Additionally, the first touch data and the secondary sense data can be combined to create a new command.

Multitouch data fusion

A Mixed Media Reality (MMR) system and associated techniques are disclosed. The MMR system of the present invention provides mechanisms for forming a mixed media document that includes media of at least two types, such as printed paper as a first medium and a digital photograph, digital movie, digital audio file, or web link as a second medium. Furthermore, the MMR system of the present invention facilitates business methods that take advantage of the combination of a portable electronic device, such as a cellular camera phone, and a paper document.

System And Methods For Creation And Use Of A Mixed Media Environment

A system and method for communication and collaboration are disclosed. A generalized annotation based mechanism using an emergent self organization characteristic of the natural language of the annotations allows users to search for relevant items, users to search for relevant users, and items to search for relevant users based on aggregation of stored annotations having associations between keywords, items and users in a context space. Aggregations based on correlations between users, items and keywords, are used to form a collaborative content relevance that allows users to be directed to items or other users, and items to be directed to users.

System for communication and collaboration

Embodiments of the present invention generally provide a system, method and article of manufacture for managing federated queries. In general, the availability of one or more databases targeted by a federated query may be determined prior to running the federated query against the targeted databases. In response to determining one or more of the targeted databases are unavailable, a user may be notified. The user may also be presented with options for running the federated query. The options may include being notified when all of the targeted databases are available, automatically running the federated query (in the background) when all of the targeted databases are available, and modifying the query to run against currently available databases.

Federated query management

The present invention generally provides methods, systems, and articles of manufacture for managing an annotation system that includes storing annotations for a document family, i.e., a series of versions of a data source. Annotations created for one version of the data source may be viewed in context from both subsequent and prior versions of the same data source. Embodiments of the invention associate annotations with both a data source “family identifier” as well as a “version identifier.” Other than adding a family ID to the data source, the data source remains unchanged. The family ID is maintained across different versions of the data source, whereas version IDs are determined for a specific version of the data source. Version IDs can be constructed from each data source directly, and do not need to be stored.

Method for associating annotations with document families

Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture that may be used to attach annotations to a particular view of data described by the annotation are provided. The annotation may be attached in a manner that allows the annotation to be viewed when subsequent views having at least some visible cells in common with the annotated view are displayed. An annotation created for a view of data may be stored with links to each cell visible in the view. When a predetermined set of cells visible in the annotated view are subsequently displayed in another view, the annotation may be retrieved via the cell links and an indication of the annotation may be provided.

Attaching and displaying annotations to changing data views

Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture for managing annotations made for a variety of different type data objects manipulated (e.g., created, edited, and viewed) by a variety of different type applications are provided. Some embodiments allow users collaborating on a project to create, view, and edit annotations from within the applications used to manipulate the annotated data objects, which may facilitate and encourage the capturing and sharing of tacit knowledge through annotations. Further, annotations may be stored separate from the application data they describe, decoupling the tacit knowledge captured in the annotations from the applications used to manipulate the annotated data.

Douglas R. Fish

Papers

Federated query management

Method for associating annotations with document families

Attaching and displaying annotations to changing data views

Federated annotation browser

Associating annotations with document families