Abstract: An interface for accessing data from one or more information systems using a wireless telephone or other user device. The interface is presented to a user as an abstraction of a unified mailbox and permits access by the user to messaging and other services from the wireless device. The interface is coupled to one or more converting modules to convert user inputs from the format in which they are received into a format that may be input to the desired information system.

Abstract: A computer system includes a plurality of interdependent processors for operating a common set of applications. Each interdependent processor executes an independent operating system image without sharing file system state information. Each interdependent processor has a network access card with a first network connection and a second network connection. The computer system includes a first active backplane coupled to each first network connection of each processor; a second active backplane coupled to each second network connection of each processor, the second active backplane operating in lieu of the first active backplane in case of a fail-over; and one or more directors coupled to the first and second active backplanes, each of the one or more directors load-balancing requests directed at a plurality of servers.

Abstract: A computer system includes a plurality of interdependent processors. Each interdependent processor executes an independent operating system image without sharing file system state information, and each interdependent processor further has a network access card with a first network connection and a second network connection. The computer system has a first active backplane coupled to each first network connection of each processor; a second active backplane coupled to each second network connection of each processor, the second active backplane operating in lieu of the first active backplane in case of a fail-over; and one or more peripherals connected to each of the first and second active backplanes and responsive to data requests transmitted over the first and second active backplanes.

Abstract: A computer system has a plurality of processors, each processor executing an independent operating system image without sharing file system state information. The system includes an active backplane coupled to the plurality of processors; and one or more data storage devices coupled to the active backplane for satisfying data requests from the plurality of processors, each of the data storage devices being adapted to secure a file when one processor writes to the file and to release the file when the processor completes operation on the file.

Abstract: A speech signal distribution system includes a transmitting subsystem and one or more receiving subsystems. The transmitting subsystem has a text to speech converter for converting text into a data stream of formant parameters. A supplemental parameter generator inserts into the data stream supplemental data, including linguistic boundary data indicating which parameters in the stream of formant parameters are associated with predefined linguistic boundaries in the text. In one preferred embodiment, the boundary data indicates which formant parameters in the data stream are associated with sentence boundaries. In addition, the supplemental parameter generator optionally inserts the text, lip position data corresponding to phonemes in the text, and voice setting data into the data stream. The resulting data stream is compressed and transmitted to the receiving subsystems.