Telephonic Conference Access System
First Claim
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1. A telephone conference call system comprising:
- an electronic computer executing a stored program held in non-transient media and communicating electronically with a public switched telephone network, the electronic computer executing the stored program to;
(a) identify a set of conference call participants and telephone numbers;
(b) at a time of the conference call, initiate calls to the call participants;
(c) upon pickup of the computer initiated calls by the call participants, joining the call participants together in a conference call.
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Abstract
A conference call system provides multidimensional indexing of recorded audio data through connecting the audio stream to adjunct data generated by the conference call participants during the conference call or thereafter and or/by automatic audio analysis of the audio data. The conference call may be initiated by outgoing calls to the conference participants reducing the burden to those participants for remembering and connecting to the conference call.
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Citations
22 Claims
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1. A telephone conference call system comprising:
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an electronic computer executing a stored program held in non-transient media and communicating electronically with a public switched telephone network, the electronic computer executing the stored program to; (a) identify a set of conference call participants and telephone numbers; (b) at a time of the conference call, initiate calls to the call participants; (c) upon pickup of the computer initiated calls by the call participants, joining the call participants together in a conference call. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4)
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5. A method of improving the accessibility of recorded telephone conversations among individuals participating in a telephone call using at least one electronic computer executing a program stored in non-transient media to execute the steps of:
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(a) receiving from one or more telephones associated with the individuals an audio stream of sampled audio data associated with time values; (b) receiving adjunct data related to the audio stream and associated with the time values; (c) recording the audio stream and adjunct data linked through the time values to the audio data; and (d) accepting a search request from an individual for a portion of the audio stream related to either or both of dimensions of time value and adjunct data to output a portion of the audio stream related to the time value or adjunct data. - View Dependent Claims (6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. A method of improving an accessibility of recorded telephone conversations using at least one electronic computer executing a program stored in non-transient media to execute the steps of:
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(a) interconnecting multiple conference users over a public telephone switch network to exchange audio data over the public telephone switch network; (b) interconnecting the multiple conference users over the Internet to exchange non-audio data over the Internet contemporaneous with the exchange of audio data; and (c) recording the audio data with the non-audio data to provide indexing of the audio data by the non-audio data.
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18. A method of accessing audio stream data indexed by time and non-audio stream data linked to portions of the audio stream data wherein the non-audio stream data represents episodic annotations of the audio stream data comprising the steps of:
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(a) displaying visual representations of the episodic non-audio stream data; (b) accepting input from a user designating a displayed visual representation of the episodic non-audio stream data to return a portion of the audio stream data linked to the non-audio stream data associated with the visual representation. - View Dependent Claims (19, 20, 21)
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22. A data structure for recording telephone conversations as electronic data fixed in non-transient media, the data structure comprising:
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a header indicating that the electronic data is annotated audio data; an audio stream providing audio samples at a predetermined sample interval; adjunct data related to a content of the audio stream and linked to portions of the audio stream; and electronic documents related to the audio stream having portions linked to the audio stream.
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Specification