Abstract: A device is comprised of processing circuitry operable for providing a speech interface to facilitate a speech dialog with a user or generates commands for a user. An RFID reader, operably coupled with the processing circuitry, is operable for reading data from an RFID tag. In one aspect, the reading occurs in the context of a speech dialog. In another aspect, the data is used to generate speech commands. In another aspect, information is stored to an RFID tag during the speech dialog.

Abstract: A communications system transmits messages via a wireless network to multiple users nearly simultaneously in real-time. Each user has a terminal that receives a message and plays the message for the user. The terminal may also wait for the user to verbally acknowledge the arrival of the message before continuing with its normally executing application. The sender of the message may track, for each intended recipient, the delivery of the message, the accessing of the message by the user, and the acknowledgement by the user that the message was understood.

Abstract: Dialog manager and methods for integrating multi-modal data capture device inputs or speech recognition inputs with speech output capabilities. A work flow description is extracted from objects in a graphical user interface and a multi-modal user interface is defined. A dialog engine synchronizes the flow of information, in accordance with the work flow description, between input/output devices and an application. The prompts for inputting data, which are output via a plurality of peripheral devices, are controlled in an intelligent manner by the dialog engine based on the input state of the peripheral devices. Functionality such as barge-in, prompt-holdoff, priority prompts, and talk-ahead is provided.