Abstract: Distribution schemes and related payment models and methods for subscriber-created content are described herein. The methods may include receiving content uploaded from a subscriber who created the content, and collecting a payment from the subscriber in exchange for enabling the subscriber to upload the content. One or more recipients for the content are identified in a community that is associated with the subscriber, where the recipients joined the community in response to an invitation extended by the subscriber.

Abstract: Virtual environments are presented on displays along with multimedia programs to permit viewers to participate in a social interactive television environment. The virtual environments include avatars that are created and maintained in part using continually updated animation data that may be captured from cameras that monitor viewing areas in a plurality of sites. User input from the viewers may be processed in determining which viewers are presented in instances of the virtual environment. Continually updating the animation data results in avatars accurately depicting a viewer's facial expressions and other characteristics. Presence data may be collected and used to determine when to capture background images from a viewing area that may later be subtracted during the capture of animation data. Speech recognition technology may be employed to provide callouts within a virtual environment.

Abstract: Using cell phones or other wireless devices to notify users of those devices of impending arrival at a selected customer location. The current location of the wireless device is determined and compared with the known location of the destination. When the wireless device is within a predetermined distance or at a predetermined estimated arrival time from the selected destination, an alert is sent to the wireless device and, if authorized, an alert also is sent to the destination. In response to the impending arrival, the destination may provide information for the user concerning offerings at that destination.

Abstract: A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, network device having a controller programmed to track a number of times that a particular service channel is distributed to a subscriber device from at least a network device selected from the group of a unicast stream server, a multicast stream router, or a digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) which is used in an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) network when the subscriber device is initially tuned to the particular service channel and to obtain real time viewership information by polling the network device in the IPTV network to determine how many subscriber devices are tuned to each service channel in the IPTV network. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Abstract: A method is provided for multi-pass echo residue detection. The method includes detecting audio data, and determining whether the audio data is recognized as speech. Additionally, the method categorizes the audio data recognized as speech as including an acceptable level of residual echo, and categorizes categorizing unrecognizable audio data as including an unacceptable level of residual echo. Furthermore, the method determines whether the unrecognizable audio data contains a user input, and also determines whether a duration of the user input is at least a predetermined duration, and when the user input is at least the predetermined duration, the method extracts the predetermined duration of the user input from a total duration of the user input.

Abstract: A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, a set top box (STB) comprising a controller programmed to receive measurement data stored in a first wireless device serving as a portable monitoring gateway that collects subscriber collected data and store and analyze the measurement data at the STB using the received measurement data received from the first wireless device and optionally from a remote server or a local storage space having stored measurement data to provide analyzed results. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Abstract: A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, a computer-readable storage medium having computer instructions to present a plurality of unassociated media programs from a single presentation device having overlapping presentation periods, and cause the single presentation device to present a user interface for one of the plurality of unassociated media programs responsive to detecting a request for the user interface. Each of the plurality of unassociated media programs can be viewable only with a viewing apparatus. The viewing apparatus can be configured for viewing one of the unassociated media programs at a time. Other embodiments are disclosed and contemplated.

Abstract: A method includes receiving, at a device, a request to initiate a call with respect to a contact and a communication device associated with a caller. In a particular embodiment, the method may further include initiating presentation, at a display device, of a selectable call placement indicator to initiate the request. In another particular embodiment, the method may further include sending display data to the display device, where the display data indicates that the call has been placed to the contact.

Abstract: A system and method is provided for combining active and unsupervised learning for automatic speech recognition. This process enables a reduction in the amount of human supervision required for training acoustic and language models and an increase in the performance given the transcribed and un-transcribed data.

Abstract: Disclosed are systems, methods, and computer readable media for performing speech synthesis. The method embodiment comprises applying a first part of a speech synthesizer to a text corpus to obtain a plurality of phoneme sequences, the first part of the speech synthesizer only identifying possible phoneme sequences, for each of the obtained plurality of phoneme sequences, identifying joins that would be calculated to synthesize each of the plurality of respective phoneme sequences, and adding the identified joins to a cache for use in speech synthesis.

Abstract: A method includes receiving, from a set-top box device, data that indicates selected media content from a list of available media content. The method includes locating one or more content sources for the selected media content. The method includes selecting a particular content source from the one or more content sources. The method includes locating an access rules source for the selected media content. The method includes instructing the particular content source to send the selected media content to the set-top box device. The method also includes instructing the access rules source to send an access rule associated with the selected media content to the set-top box device.

Abstract: A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, a server having a controller to receive 3D image content with a plurality of left eye frames and a plurality of right eye frames, remove a portion of pixels from each left eye frame and from the corresponding right eye frame, combine remaining pixels from each left eye frame of the plurality of left eye frames with remaining pixels from the corresponding right eye frame of the plurality of right eye frames to form a plurality of transport frames where the combined remaining pixels form an alternating pattern of pixels based on either alternating rows of pixels or alternating columns of pixels from each left eye frame and the corresponding right eye frame, and encode the plurality of transport frames for delivery to a media processor. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Abstract: Systems and methods are disclosed for mobile payment using dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signals. A mobile device equipped with at least a speaker and an input is used to connect to a server on the mobile network. Upon authentication of a user of the mobile device, the server generates the payment key, translates the key to DTMF signals, and plays the DTMF signals over the speaker of the mobile device. The user holds the mobile device speaker close to a microphone of a DTMF scanner at a POS terminal. The DTMF scanner includes logic that extracts the payment key from the DTMF signals, and the POS terminal uses the payment key to bill the user. The POS terminal transmits the bill with the payment key to the server on the network. The server ensures that the key is active, and debits an account for the user based on the amount presented in the bill. The key is de-activated after a specified time period or one use, whichever occurs first.

Abstract: A system and method of generating a watermarked signal are disclosed. The system segments the signal into overlapping blocks using a window function and processes the overlapping blocks according to whether each block is odd- or even-numbered. The system windows the odd-numbered blocks, modulates the phase of each block in the frequency domain, transforms each modulated block in the time domain, windows each block transformed into the time domain and overlap-adds each odd-numbered block with each even-numbered block to generate the watermarked signal.

Abstract: Method and system of auditing databases for security compliance. The method and system relating to querying databases for security parameters and auditing the queried parameters against authorized security parameters to determine security compliance of the databases.

Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer-readable media are disclosed for providing location-specific information. One such method includes receiving location information corresponding to communication devices. The location information is determined based on characteristics of Internet communications and/or mobile wireless communications of the communication devices. A determination is then made based on the location information that a communication device is located within a certain remote area. Location-specific information that is based on the remote area is then transmitted to the communication device.

Abstract: A method and system for monitoring an automated dialog system for the automatic recognition of language understanding errors based on a user's input communications in a task classification system. If the user's input communication cannot be understood and a task classification decision cannot be made, then further dialog may be conducted with the user if a probability of understanding the user's input communication exceeds a first threshold. Otherwise, the user may be directed to a human for assistance. In another possible embodiment, the method operates as above except that if the probability exceeds a second threshold, then further dialog may be conducted with the user using the current dialog strategy. However, if the probability falls between a first threshold and a second threshold, the dialog strategy may be adapted in order to improve the chances of conducting a successful dialog with the user.

Abstract: A message, which is to be routed to one of a plurality of authorized parties comprising a first authorized party and a second authorized party, is received by a routing system. A Web service is polled to detect for a presence of the first authorized party. After determining that the presence of the first authorized party remains undetected over an allocated time interval, the Web service is polled to detect for a presence of the second authorized party. In response to detecting the presence of the second authorized party, the message is routed to an active communication device associated with the second authorized party.

Abstract: Managing network traffic to improve availability of network services by classifying network traffic flows using flow-level statistical information and machine learning estimation, based on a measurement of at least one of relevance and goodness of network features. Also, determining a network traffic profile representing applications associated with the classified network traffic flows, and managing network traffic using the network traffic profile. The flow-level statistical information includes packet-trace information and is available from at least one of Cisco NetFlow, NetStream or cflowd records. The classification of network flows includes tagging packet-trace flow record data based on defined packet content information. The classifying of network flows can result in the identification of a plurality of clusters based on the measurement of the relevance of the network features.

Abstract: Access by a subscriber (12) to a fee-based service is managed so that the subscriber, when qualified, receives the service. If the subscriber is found unqualified, then the subscriber is prompted to enter qualifying information, either in the form of the identity of a purchased product, or a bank credit card number. Once the subscriber is qualified, then the subscriber receives the service in the same manner as if he or she were initially found qualified.