Abstract: According to one aspect of the disclosed system, a user supplies character-based queries to retrieve and display a record from a structured database. For every character the user enters, a progressively reduced list of indexes that start with the entered characters is displayed. When a desired index identifying the record is among those indexes being displayed, the user may cease the character entry and scroll a zoom window upon the desired index to explore the record. According to another aspect of the disclosed system, the zoom window maintains a display of an index and at least one field of a record. Consequently, the user can access and display pertinent information of a certain record from a database quickly and efficiently with less keystrokes.

Abstract: Improved techniques for providing electronic mail services across a network are disclosed. A mail server and its clients communicate through a network. Although the mail server centrally manages the electronic mail services, the clients are able to themselves locally perform certain electronic mail services when the network is unavailable. Accordingly, clients seeking to perform electronic mail services no longer endure significant delays when the network is unavailable. The network can be unavailable for a variety of reasons, including: congestion, out of range, network failure, etc. The network can be wired or wireless. The invention is particularly well suited for networks having sporadic connectivity, high latencies or excessive traffic.

Abstract: The present invention discloses a system for transcoding character sets between Internet hosts and thin client devices over data networks. A proxy server is provided as an intermediary between the Internet hosts and the thin client devices, and is informed when a specific character set is preferred by the client device. The client character set preference is communicated to the proxy server prior to the client receiving information from an Internet host. When a communication session is established between one of the Internet hosts and one of the thin client devices, the proxy server performs the character set transcoding if the character sets of the Internet host and the client device are not the same. Apart from any existing techniques, the proxy server handles the task of character set transcoding so as to alleviate the mobile computing devices from performing the transcoding locally.

Abstract: A method retrieves a multi-media segment from a signal stream having an audio component and a closed caption component. This includes separating the audio component and the closed caption text component from the signal stream, generating an audio pattern representative of the start of the multi-media segment, locating the audio pattern in the audio component, and temporally aligning the text from the closed caption text component with the audio pattern in the audio component. Locating the audio pattern in the audio component includes retrieving text from the closed caption text component; and comparing the text against one or more keywords delimiting the multi-media segment. Once located, the multi-media segment may be played on-demand. In addition, an apparatus retrieves a multi-media segment from a signal stream, the signal stream having an audio component and a closed caption text component.

Abstract: The present invention has been made in consideration of thin devices efficiently communicating ideas and transactions into data networks by using other devices with fill functional user interface in the networks. According to one aspect of the present invention, the thin device exclusively controls the authentication of a rendezvous that is associated with a user account in a server. The thin device running a micro-browser provisions the rendezvous with a set of credential information in an authenticated and secure communication session so that the provisioning process is truly proprietary. To access the user account, the other devices equipped with well known browsers must submit the correct credential information to the rendezvous for verification in the server.

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.