Abstract: A method of establishing a communications link uses automatic sensing of a computer user's presence and activity state to record user attributes in a form accessible to other computers in a communications network. Such automatic sensing may include keyboard/mouse monitors, cameras with associated image processing algorithms, speech detectors, RF radiation detectors, and infrared sensors. Preferably, the attribute recording is done in a server process which can be accessed by other computer programs. A first application of this method is to inform persons at remote locations whether the party to be called is available to receive a call. A second application of the method is to use a Connection Agent to determine whether all desired participants for a conference, or at least a quorum of them, are present and available, so that the conference can be started.

Abstract: A videoconferencing method automatically detects, within an image generated by a camera, locations and relative sizes of faces. Based upon the detection, a control system tracks each face and keeps a camera pointed at and focused on each face, regardless of movement about a room or other space. Preferably, multiple cameras are used, and an automatic algorithm selects a best face image and resizes the face image to substantially fill a transmitted frame. Preferably, an image encoding algorithm adjusts encoding parameters to match a currently amount of bandwidth available from a transmission network. Brightness, contrast, and color balance are automatically adjusted. As a result of these automatic adjustments, participants in a video conference have freedom to move around, yet remain visible and audible to other participants.