Abstract: A pulse of heat or cold is applied and conducted transversely through a ball grid array device and a printed circuit board via a selected one of the solder joints between them. Heat diffused through the other solder joints is neutralized by a thermal bias shield. The shield is then removed and a thermographic image of the printed circuit board is taken. The process is repeated for each solder joint, and the images are compared to identify defective solder joints.

Abstract: An automatic appointment reminder system uses location and/or direction of travel of the reminder recipient relative to appointments to affect the time of sending of appointment reminders to the user, and thus enhances the user's ability to be on-time for appointments.

Abstract: The shell of an electronic handheld device is adapted for easy and repeated—even frequent—assembly with and disassembly from the electronics, and the shell is washable, preferably in a dishwasher. Preferably, the shell comprises a plurality of parts that can be easily and repeatedly assembled and disassembled by hand without use of tools. For example, the parts of a telephone handset shell are made to be easily snapped together around, and unsnapped from, the handset's electronics, thereby enabling the shells of the handsets of telephones to be washed to have this function performed by unskilled personnel.

Abstract: A process determines for a search string which, if any, of the strings in a text list have edit distance from the search string less than a threshold. The process uses dynamic programming on a grid with search string characters corresponding to rows and text characters corresponding to columns. For each text string, computation proceeds by columns. If successive text strings share a prefix, then the columns corresponding to the prefix are re-used. If the minimum value in a column is at least the threshold, then the prefix corresponding to that and previous columns causes edit distance to be at least the threshold. So the computation for the present text is abandoned, and computations for any other texts that share the prefix are avoided.

Abstract: An ultra-high-frequency notch filter (100) comprises a capacitor (102) defining a conductive trace (106) on its body (103) and extending between its terminals (104). The trace has an inductance that forms a parallel LC circuit with the capacitance of the capacitor. When mounted on a printed circuit board (120) to connect two segments of a signal line (124), the notch filter and a ground plane (122) of the PCB form a virtual conductive loop having an inductance and a capacitance whose product is the center frequency of the notch of the notch filter. The center frequency is tuned by varying the width of the trace.

Abstract: Disclosed are new calculations of packet loss bursts, packet re-ordering, and an indication of relative alternate network path delay metrics, based upon differences between received and expected packet sequence numbers, for determining packet network performance.

Abstract: Teletype (TTY, also known as Telecommunication Device for the Deaf, or TDD) transmissions are moded. The same sequence of tones may code for a letter or for a figure. When a TTY device is transmitting to a text-based Internet Protocol display device, via a TTY-to-text conversion gateway, the text will not be displayed properly if the TTY device and gateway are out of mode synchronization. To fix the problem, either a signal received from the destination terminal causes the gateway to change its conversion mode from letter to figure or vice versa, or a signal input by the end user or automatically generated by the destination terminal causes the destination terminal to display the other character than the received letter or figure that is coded to the same TTY tone sequence.

Abstract: A resource task-completion forecaster (122) of an ACD (104) determines a probability that an agent (156) will complete servicing a presently-assigned call by a specified time horizon h. The forecaster determines (202) the type of call that the agent is servicing, determines (204) the amount of time t that the agent has already been servicing the call, retrieves (206) the mean and the variance of time historically spent by agents on servicing this type of call to completion, fits (208) the mean and the variance to a lifetime closed-form cumulative-probability distribution F, such as a Weibull distribution, to determine parameters of dispersion and central tendency, evaluates (210, 212) the distribution for t and h+t, computes (216) the probability of the agent not having completed servicing the call by now as Q=1?F(t), and computes (218) the probability that the agent will have completed servicing the call by the time horizon as P = F ? ( t + h ) - F ? ( t ) Q .

Abstract: An RJ 45 connector for unshielded CAT5 cable has electromagnetic-interference-suppression circuitry to meet the Class B conducted and radiated emissions standard. The connector comprises, in addition to signal-conditioning transformers, a current-blocking ferrite and a plurality of pairs of common-mode filters, one pair for each conductor of each active twisted pair of the cable. Each pair of filters is connected in series with each other between a conductor of an active twisted pair and a transformer winding, and meets or exceeds the impedance, reactance, and resistance curves of FIGS. 2-4. The ferrite is connected in series with each conductor of each inactive pair of the cable and across a capacitor to ground, and meets or exceeds the impedance, reactance, and resistance curves of FIGS. 5-7.

Abstract: A feedback control for a predictive dialer employs three feedback loops. A first feedback loop adjusts the dialer's call initiations to compensate for error between the desired, reference, service level and a service level realized by calls that were initiated by the predictive dialer to steer the realized service level to the reference service level. A second loop adjusts the predictive dialer's call initiations for margin between the number of non-nuisance calls (successes) initiated by the predictive dialer over a time and the number of successes that would have been sufficient to produce the reference service level to force the realized service level to converge to the reference service error while ensuring that the oscillations of the realized service level stay above the reference service level.

Abstract: A switching system adjunct (120) monitors a call between a calling and a called party and reestablishes the call when one of the parties has been or is being dropped. The reestablishment may be effected to a same or a different phone number of the dropped party, and may be effected via the same or a different medium (e.g., wired or wireless). The call record of the original call is merged into the call record of the reestablished call, thus preserving the context of entities involved in the call that exists at the time that the party is dropped.

Abstract: A user interface (132)—be it graphical (GUI) or telephony (TUI) to an application (120) is defined by stored interface and feature description documents (122,124) written in XML and JavaScript, so that the user interface and changes thereto can be effected without access to source code. Interface description documents define the appearance and the behavior of the user interface toward the user, while feature description documents define the interaction of the user interface with the interfaced-to application, both in conformity with a user-interface object model (310). Stored connector object plug-ins (126) define connector objects for rendering elements of feature description documents, and stored layout object plug-ins (128) define layout objects for rendering elements of interface description documents of one or more interfaces.

Abstract: The process generates a parser to extract records from a set of documents. The process operates on a sample document from the set. The sample document is an XML document or is converted to an XML document. Simple Xpaths of the XML document are identified. Complex extensions of the simple Xpath are clustered according to common substructures. The complex Xpath clusters are scored according to content in instances or differences in content among instances. Candidate parsers are created. Each candidate consists of a single record Xpath and one or more field value Xpaths that are descendents of the record Xpath. The candidate parsers are ranked using the Xpath scores.

Abstract: A voice activity detector (100) filters (204) out noise energy and then computes a high-frequency (2400 Hz to 4000 Hz) versus low-frequency (100 Hz to 2400 Hz) signal energy ratio (224), total voiceband (100 Hz to 4000 Hz) signal energy (214), and signal periodicity (208) on successive frames of signal samples. Signal periodicity is determined by estimating the pitch period (206) of the signal, determining a gain value of the signal over the pitch period as a function of the estimated pitch period, and estimating a periodicity of the signal over the pitch period as a function of the estimated pitch period and the gain value.

Abstract: A method and system for coordinating media and messaging operations in an information processing system includes the ability for streaming media and messages in an information processing system from a switching mechanism to a plurality of user nodes. The invention receives a plurality of unsynchronized media and messages from said plurality of user nodes in a synchronizer. Instructions of the present invention further control the streaming of media and messages from said switching mechanism to said plurality of user nodes using said synchronizer. Streaming media may include, for example, chat, audio and video elements, video conference transmissions, teleconference transmissions, and combinations of such media elements.

Abstract: A queued task/queued resource state forecaster employs a binomial distribution fitter to fit a composite binomial distribution to operational data of a work management system, such as a call center. The fitter obtains arrival statistics for calls and agents in the call center, determines moments for the net calls in-queue from the obtained arrival statistics, determines parameters of binomial distributions that corresponds to the moments, and fits the determined moments to a linear combination of offset binomial distributions to obtain a composite binomial distribution. The composite binomial distribution is then evaluated by a scheduler which adjusts the operation of the call center accordingly. For example, a task scheduler evaluates the distribution to obtain a probability of an additional call being enqueued by the future point in time in order to determine whether an outbound call should be launched.

Abstract: A firewall fault-tolerant network interface system includes a switch circuit configured to detect when a firewall fails in a multi-firewall local network. When a failed firewall is detected, the switch circuit waits for a time-out period to expire to allow convergence. The switch circuit then intervenes when traffic from a server to the failed firewall is detected. The switch circuit translates the MAC address of the failed firewall to the MAC address of a functional firewall. Traffic from a server originally directed to the failed firewall is then redirected to a functional firewall. In a further refinement, the switch circuit provides the MAC address of a functional firewall in response to an ARP request from a server to the failed firewall. Thus, traffic from this server will be directed to the functional firewall without further intervention, reducing the overhead of the switch circuit.

Abstract: In a blended inbound/outbound call center (100), an outbound call-pacing function (122) decides whether or not to initiate an additional outbound call for a particular skill. It determines (206) whether the number of available agents for the skill plus the number of resting agents for the skill exceeds the number of available inbound calls for the skill plus the number of outstanding outbound calls for the skill. It also determines (312) whether a target service time for the skill exceeds an estimated wait time of each of the available inbound calls for the skill assuming that pending outbound calls for the skill plus one take precedence over the inbound calls. If both determinations are affirmative, the call pacing function initiates (318) an additional call for the skill. If either determination is negative, the function forbears (321) from initiating an additional call for the skill.

Abstract: A workflow system (FIG. 1) employs a selection engine (114) that attempts to match work items (100) with resources (104) in such a way that it brings the most value to all of the stakeholders in the workflow. Under resource or work-item surplus conditions (FIG. 4 or 5), the selection engine determines either those available resources that possess skills needed by an available work item or those available work items that need skills possessed by an available resource, for each determined resource determines both a business value (RSBV) of having that resource service the work item and either a value (RTV) to that resource of servicing the work item or a value (WTV) to that work item of being serviced by the resource, and then selects the resource that has a best combined value of the business value and the value to the resource or work item.

Abstract: The architecture of a multimedia customer care center (100) is divided into three separate application layers: a contact layer (104), a communications layer (106) and a business layer (108). The contact layer comprises media-specific handlers (200–212) that manage their media-specific resources, connect customer contacts to resources (220) and report events, including status to the communications layer. The communication includes media-independent software (106) that manages shared resources, that tracks, accumulates, and reports events reported by the contact layer, and that directs handling of events by the contact layer according to business information. The business layer includes software (108) that provides an interface to the customer contact center for the business that is served by the center.