Abstract: The present breakout room technique provides breakout rooms, or smaller sub-sets of a larger meeting, with full collaboration capabilities in live web-based conferencing applications. It provides for the capability to easily create sub-meetings or breakout rooms and the ability to assign individuals to breakout rooms. It provides a seamless experience in joining into breakout rooms with audio provisioning. The present breakout room technique also seamlessly brings back breakout room attendees to the main room with audio provisioning. Furthermore, it provides the ability for the instructor to roam between rooms, the ability to assign content to breakout rooms, and the ability to review content from breakout rooms in the main room. It also provides a transition screen to let meeting attendees know they are being transitioned from the main meetings to sub-meetings, and back.

Abstract: The present panoramic video technique embodied in the unified client provides panoramic video and other data from various sources for live web-based conferencing applications. In one embodiment, the panoramic video is provided by a panoramic collaboration and communication device, termed a RoundTable Device (RTD). The RTD is a collaboration tool with a 360-degree camera and a microphone or microphone array that, together with the unified client, delivers an immersive conferencing experience that extends the meeting room across multiple locations. This enables live network meeting scenarios that were not possible before.

Abstract: Internet web pages displayed via an Internet web browser or other applications are automatically customized. Dynamic “Web Components” are used to automatically customize web pages. Further, these Web Components use the same script and HTML for all implementations or instantiations of the Web Component regardless of which, or how many, unique local clients make use of the Web Component. This code reuse is accomplished by using entry web pages, or “entry points,” as described in further detail below, to set the value of function properties or parameters of the Web Component for dynamically and automatically generating a web page. The script and/or HTML source code of the Web Component pages does not change based on each new implementation or instantiation. Consequently, little setup work is required for each implementation, and only a basic verification test pass is needed for each unique automatically customized Internet web page.

Abstract: A method for transliterating languages in a computer system is disclosed. The method includes using a phonetic mapping engine to map languages to phonetic strings and vice versa. A user unfamiliar with a keyboard layout for a particular language may type phonetic strings using a known keyboard layout of a language known to the user. The typed input is captured by a keyboard hook, and based on a predefined phonetic mapping scheme, can be converted to the desired language.

Abstract: A “speech onset detector” provides a variable length frame buffer in combination with either variable transmission rate or temporal speech compression for buffered signal frames. The variable length buffer buffers frames that are not clearly identified as either speech or non-speech frames during an initial analysis. Buffering of signal frames continues until a current frame is identified as either speech or non-speech. If the current frame is identified as non-speech, buffered frames are encoded as non-speech frames. However, if the current frame is identified as a speech frame, buffered frames are searched for the actual onset point of the speech. Once that onset point is identified, the signal is either transmitted in a burst, or a time-scale modification of the buffered signal is applied for compressing buffered frames beginning with the frame in which onset point is detected. The compressed frames are then encoded as one or more speech frames.