Abstract: A virtual being database (154) made up of a set of hierarchically-arranged fields, wherein each field is tagged with access control information (152) controlling which parties (or computers) (110, 112, 114 and 116) are allowed to access each field, and which parties (or computers) (110, 112, 114 and 116) are allowed to revise each field. Some fields of the virtual being relate to personality traits (162), while other fields relate to body measurements. Also, data requests to be made by a plurality of virtual beings (154) to a remote networked computer (102) are aggregated into a single request in order to improve communication efficiency.

Abstract: A planar sheet, non circularly shaped digital media hangtag has a centrally positioned circular band adapted for storage and/or retrieving of digital data in the form of a CD/DVD recording. The disk has a centrally positioned hole the same as a standard CD/DVD, so the hangtag is compatible with transport on standard record/playback devices. Because the circular recording area of hangtag does not fill the entire recordable sheet, there are unrecordable regions of the hangtag. This permits a hole to be pierced through the disc in an unrecorded region that will not interfere with the recorded material, and allows the attachment of the hangtag to a product by a plastic filament threaded through the hole. To protect the recording surface, a plastic cover, which may also carry printed information, is glued to a non recording area at the cover's edges over the recording area.

Abstract: The invention anticipates the interests of the user and accordingly generates updated data. Updates are accurately inferred from the user's offline browsing pattern on a local CD or other digital media, and from online browsing of sites on the Internet. When the user is offline, a profiling program at the user's location tracks the CD or other digital media files accessed by the user, and stores this information in an addressable file of the user's computer. Correspondingly, when online, the user's server tracks and profiles the content of the web sites visited by the user. In both cases, the resultant profiles are available at the user's server, and by determination of the basic content that characterizes the accumulated data, the server derives a statistically based pattern of the user's current interest. The server retrieves relevant information based on this pattern, and accordingly updates the media.

Abstract: In formatting a digital data stream for interleaved recording with included resynchronization sequences inserted into the data stream, rather than recurrently recording the resynchronization sequences at the boundaries of the interleave blocks or recording many resynchronization sequences throughout the data, the present invention teaches staggered recording of the resynchronization sequences throughout the page of interleaved code words in a pseudo-random fashion. This staggering of the resynchronization sequences throughout the interleave blocks "randomizes" the errors due to tape drop outs so that errors are more uniformly distributed among the positions in the code words, and attendantly, are more likely to be correctable.

Abstract: Correction of PCM digital image data by encoding of the redundancy present in blocks of the data may be subject to faulty encoding for certain amounts of redundancy. This occurs at the boundaries where the data values change from 255-256, 127-128 and 63-64, because all the binary bits of the representation change at these values. The improved apparatus of the invention encodes the redundancy in blocks of data by assignment of check bits in terms of the data magnitudes, and does not rely on the PCM binary representation to express the redundancy. Upon decoding, the recovered data redundancy is compared to the redundancy represented by the received check bits, and its magnitude is used to determine the data in error. The value in error is replaced by the average of the data values in the same block.

Abstract: The sample values of a digitized image are encoded utilizing the amount of redundancy in the digital data to generate check bits which are attached to blocks of the data prior to transmission or recording. After transmission or recording, the recovered data is re-encoded using the original encoding rules, and any resultant errors which have changed the redundancy are reflected in the re-encoded check bits. The original check bits attached to the data are compared to the re-encoded check bits to determine if the errors are correctable, and, if so, what steps must be taken to correct the errors and to restore the original redundancy to the recovered data. Two implementations for the practice of the invention are presented.