Abstract: An improved system and method to provide important information either, as voice, text, picture, holographic image or video from the called party to a calling party before the called party answers a telephone. The information may be a recorded voice, text, image or video message. The called party may send a voice message, for example, and send it along with a call alerting message. The voice message may be recorded beforehand. Instead of the calling party's telephone playing a ringback signal, the recorded voice message is played or a data/bearer stream is heard. The calling party hears the voice message instead of the ringback tone normally heard when there is an incoming telephone call. If the calling and called party have telephones, such as mobile phones, IP phones, IP softphones, PDA with telephony capabilities, etc., which allow for multimedia messages such as text, images and video messages, the called party's recorded voice message may include text, images or video.

Abstract: The present invention provides methods and systems for automatically threading multiple media into a single document. More specifically, a single conversation may be distributed among a number of different contacts and replies to those contacts. The distributed contacts and the corresponding replies may be chronologically ordered and analyzed. Then the repetitive portions of the documents and replies are removed. After repetitive portions of the conversation have been removed, the multiple documents are threaded together as a single representation of the conversation.

Abstract: A method and apparatus provide feedback of facial expressions of participants during communication by capturing facial expressions of participants; extracting facial information from the captured facial expressions; transmitting the extracted facial information to communication terminals; and displaying the transmitted facial information by the communication terminals in a symbolic form.

Abstract: The present invention is directed toward a method and system for determining changes in a customer that have occurred between contact center visits. The invention is operable to compare data captured from a previous interaction and data captured from a current interaction and compare the two in order to determine if the customer has had any changes to their appearance or otherwise since their last contact center visit.

Abstract: A meeting management application that permits the manipulation of meetings by groups is provided. The meeting management application incorporates or is associated with a scheduling application for receiving and maintaining meeting information. The scheduling application may additionally check for conflicts between scheduled meetings and other meetings and events. The meeting management application may additionally include or be associated with a grouping application. The grouping application may permit the creation of groups of meetings having one or more specified items of associated information. Once a group of meetings is defined, modifications to information associated with each meeting within the group can be applied to the included meetings globally.

Abstract: An integrated communications system is provided wherein video conferencing is conducted and participants sharing a video resource may be identified. Application of the present invention is particularly suited for videoconferencing when there are a plurality of communication endpoints, and at least one of the communication endpoints includes multiple participants at the shared video resource. A video or audio processing technique takes place to identify locations of conference participants at the communication endpoints. Each participant has an assigned RFID identifier during the conference. The RFID identifiers are interrogated by an RFID reader that downloads data from the identifiers to the system. The gathered RFID data is then matched with the processed video or audio data in order to identify each of the conference participants. A user interface is provided to allow the participants to view the other remote participants along with the identifying data of the remote participants.

Abstract: The present invention provides for the dynamic video equalization of images. Face tracking is used to identify a portion of an image corresponding to a human face. Those areas of the image identified as corresponding to a human face are optimized as compared to other areas of the image. Optimization is performed by allocating a greater number of image parameters to the area of the image corresponding to a human face than are allocated to other areas of the image. Accordingly, the portion of an image containing the human face is of higher quality as compared to other portions of the image.

Abstract: A method and apparatus route telecommunication calls in a telecommunication switching system by receiving visual information for a caller of one of the telecommunication calls; analyzing the received visual information for characteristics of the telecommunication calls; and routing the one of the telecommunication calls based on the analyzed visual information.

Abstract: A system and method to improve the automatic adaptation of one or more speech models in automatic speech recognition systems. After a dialog begins, for example, the dialog asks the customer to provide spoken input and it is recorded. If the speech recognizer determines it may not have correctly transcribed the verbal response, i.e., voice input, the invention uses monitoring and if necessary, intervention to guarantee that the next transcription of the verbal response is correct. The dialog asks the customer to repeat his verbal response, which is recorded and a transcription of the input is sent to a human monitor, i.e., agent or operator. If the transcription of the spoken input is correct, the human does not intervene and the transcription remains unmodified. If the transcription of the verbal response is incorrect, the human intervenes and the transcription of the misrecognized word is corrected. In both cases, the dialog asks the customer to confirm the unmodified and corrected transcription.

Abstract: The present invention is directed toward a method, device, and system for providing a high quality communication session. The system provides a way of determining speech characteristics of participants in the communication session and adjusting, if necessary, signals from a speaker to a listener such that the listener can more intelligibly understand what the speaker is saying.

Abstract: A method and apparatus control the use of transmission bandwidth by detecting a change in presentation of a video picture on a receiving telecommunication terminal; transmitting the detected change to a transmitting telecommunication terminal; and adjusting the transmission rate of the video picture in response to the detected change by the transmitting telecommunication terminal.

Abstract: The present invention provides a video conference system that is capable of adjusting image window sizes based on the number of video conference participants included in an image window. In particular, face recognition technology is applied to determine the number of persons included within an image associated with a video call. The information regarding the number of participants in the video call is used as a factor in determining the area of a video output device in which the image from the video call is presented at another video endpoint. The sizing of individual image windows may also be determined based on the total number of participants in a video conference.

Abstract: The present invention provides a device, system, and method for identifying interconnect cables used in a network and the locations in the network where the interconnect cables are deployed. The identification information may be used to audit, for example, patch panel connections in a computer or communications network. The preferred embodiments include RFID transponders incorporated at the cable ends. An RFID scanner is used to interrogate the transponders, and the retrieved information is stored and acted on as appropriate. In a first embodiment, secondary contacts are used on the network components for mating with primary contacts on the cable ends in order to generate information as to the location where the cable ends are connected. In a second embodiment, memory modules are incorporated in the components for providing information reflective of connection locations.

Abstract: The present invention provides an interconnect cable having an electroluminescent element disposed therein in order to facilitate locating the interconnect cable. The electroluminescent element is activated by a driver that may be selectively applied to specified driver ports located on end connectors of the cable. The electroluminescent element may be incorporated within the entire length of the cable, or only along selected sections of the cable.

Abstract: A video telecommunications system 100 for effecting a communication between at least first and second participants including an image alteration agent 358 that (i) removes desired and/or undesired image information 370 and 374 from the acquired image information 362 to form filtered image information 378 and the removed information and (ii) combines the filtered image information 378 and/or the image information 370 and 374 with substitute image information 382 to form composite image information 366; and a video communication infrastructure 304 that transmits the composite image information 366 to a communication device associated with the second participant 120. The composite image information 366 excludes undesired image information 374.