Systems and methods are provided for receiving speech and non-speech communications of natural language questions and/or commands, transcribing the speech and non-speech communications to textual messages, and executing the questions and/or commands. The invention applies context, prior information, domain knowledge, and user specific profile data to achieve a natural environment for one or more users presenting questions or commands across multiple domains. The systems and methods creates, stores and uses extensive personal profile information for each user, thereby improving the reliability of determining the context of the speech and non-speech communications and presenting the expected results for a particular question or command.

Systems and methods for responding to natural language speech utterance

A mobile system is provided that includes speech-based and non-speech-based interfaces for telematics applications. The mobile system identifies and uses context, prior information, domain knowledge, and user specific profile data to achieve a natural environment for users that submit requests and/or commands in multiple domains. The invention creates, stores and uses extensive personal profile information for each user, thereby improving the reliability of determining the context and presenting the expected results for a particular question or command. The invention may organize domain specific behavior and information into agents, that are distributable or updateable over a wide area network.

Mobile systems and methods of supporting natural language human-machine interactions

A conversational, natural language voice user interface may provide an integrated voice navigation services environment. The voice user interface may enable a user to make natural language requests relating to various navigation services, and further, may interact with the user in a cooperative, conversational dialogue to resolve the requests. Through dynamic awareness of context, available sources of information, domain knowledge, user behavior and preferences, and external systems and devices, among other things, the voice user interface may provide an integrated environment in which the user can speak conversationally, using natural language, to issue queries, commands, or other requests relating to the navigation services provided in the environment.

System and method for providing a natural language voice user interface in an integrated voice navigation services environment

A method of determining a geographic location of an Internet user involves determining if the host is on-line, determining ownership of the host name, and then determining the route taken in delivering packets to the user. Based on the detected route, the method proceeds with determining the geographic route based on the host locations and then assigning a confidence level to the assigned location. A system collects the geographic information and allows web sites or other entities to request the geographic location of their visitors. The database of geographic locations may be stored in a central location or, alternatively, may be at least partially located at the web site. With this information, web sites can target content, advertising, or route traffic depending upon the geographic locations of their visitors. Through web site requests for geographic information, a central database tracks an Internet user's traffic on the Internet whereby a profile can be generated. In addition to this profile, the central database can store visitor's preferences as to what content should be delivered to an IP address, the available interface, and the network speed associated with that IP address.

Systems and methods for determining, collecting, and using geographic locations of internet users

A routing mechanism, service or system operable in a distributed networking environment. One preferred environment is a content delivery network (CDN) wherein the present invention provides improved connectivity back to an origin server, especially for HTTP traffic. In a CDN, edge servers are typically organized into regions, with each region comprising a set of content servers that preferably operate in a peer-to-peer manner and share data across a common backbone such as a local area network (LAN). The inventive routing technique enables an edge server operating within a given CDN region to retrieve content (cacheable, non-cacheable and the like) from an origin server more efficiently by selectively routing through the CDN's own nodes, thereby avoiding network congestion and hot spots. The invention enables an edge server to fetch content from an origin server through an intermediate CDN server or, more generally, enables an edge server within a given first region to fetch content from the origin server through an intermediate CDN region.

Optimal route selection in a content delivery network

In an electronic messaging system which has multiple sites, and in which each site is defined by a unique address space and has connectivity to at least one other site, messages are sent by receiving at a first site message routing information from a second site. The message routing information defines routes from the second site to one or more of the plurality of sites. The received message routing information is assimilated into previously known routing information to generate an updated accumulation of routing information. The updated accumulation of routing information is used to route messages to one or more of the plurality of sites. The updated accumulation of routing information may be replicated to still other sites in the messaging system, which in turn assimilate the information into their respective collections of known routing information. This process of receiving, assimilating and replicating may be repeated until each of the sites has substantially the same updated accumulation of routing information.

Method of automatic updating and use of routing information by programmable and manual routing information configuration based on least lost routing

A discrete speech recognition system has a default grammar with keywords and non-keywords. Upon detecting a non-keyword, the speech recognition system performs the function associated with the detected word. Upon detecting a keyword in the default grammar, the speech recognition system temporarily expands its active grammar list from the default grammar to a ballooned grammar that includes both the words in the default grammar and the additional words triggered by detection of the keyword. In this manner, the operator still has the option to select a word from the original grammar, or choose a word from the additional second-tier list. The ballooned grammar remains active until the operator makes a new selection. The speech recognition system then returns to the default grammar.

Discrete speech recognition system with ballooning active grammar

A speech recognition system has an operator interface that helps a user navigate new or changing grammars. The speech recognition system includes an application, a vocabulary that holds a set of utterances applicable to the application, and an active grammar that holds a subset of the utterances in the vocabulary. The active grammar includes a help command as well as other options. The speech recognition system has a speech recognition engine to recognize the utterances in the active grammar, including the help command. When the help command is detected, the operator interface verbally enunciates the utterances in the grammar so that the user can hear the available options in a hands-free, eyes-off operating environment. In this way, any time the user does not know or forgets the available options, he/she simply speaks the help command, such as asking “What can I say.” The system responds verbally with a list of currently available words and/or phrases in the active grammar.

Speech recognition system with changing grammars and grammar help command

Message traffic is balanced between a plurality of alternative message routes connecting a plurality sites in an electronic messaging system by assigning a cost to each potential message route between the plurality of sites. The cost defines a desired relative frequency of usage for the corresponding message route. A weight is calculated for each potential message route based on its assigned cost of connecting one site to another site. A message route between the one site and the other site is chosen based on the collective calculated weights and a message is transmitted over the chosen message route from one site to the other site.

Steven P. Masters

Papers

Method of automatic updating and use of routing information by programmable and manual routing information configuration based on least lost routing

Discrete speech recognition system with ballooning active grammar

Speech recognition system with changing grammars and grammar help command

Load balancing between E-mail servers within a local area network