E-mail fetching/reading apparatus and recording medium

• US 20020035476A1
• Filed: 12/01/2000
• Published: 03/21/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 09/21/2000
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Hideshi Yasuda, Masato Numabe, Tadamitsu Ryu
• Original Assignee: Hideshi Yasuda, Masato Numabe, Tadamitsu Ryu
• Inventors: Ryu, Tadamitsu, Numabe, Masato, Yasuda, Hideshi
• Application Number:
  US09/729,471
• Publication Number:
  US 20020035476A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/272
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/08 Text analysis or generation of parameters for speech synthesis out of text, e.g. grapheme to phoneme translation, prosody generation or stress or intonation determination
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/224 providing notification on incoming messages, e.g. pushed notifications of received messages

Abstract

This invention relates to an e-mail fetching/reading apparatus and recording medium capable of reading by voice whether there is any mail and the content of the mail automatically and remove troublesome and burdensome operations. Thee-mail fetching/reading apparatus according to the invention is structured to notify a user by voice whether there is any e-mail addresses to the user and received at the mail server 1 by making access to the mail server 1 automatically through the network and read by voice the number of received messages, appointed information such as the dates, sender'"'"'s names, title in the mailer information and/or the content of the e-mail mentioned as the body.

Claims

1. An e-mail fetching/reading apparatus structured to notify a user by voice whether there is any e-mail addressed to the user and received at a mail server by making access to the mail server automatically through a network.

2. An e-mail fetching/reading apparatus as defined in claim 1, characterized in that said apparatus reads by Voice the number of received messages addressed to the user in the mail server, appointed information such as the dates, sender'"'"'s names or titles included in mailer information s and/or the content of the e-mail mentioned as the body.

3. An e-mail fetching/reading apparatus as defined in claim 2, characterized in that said apparatus includes, an e-mail fetching part which makes access to the mail server automatically through the network, acquires e-mail(s) addressed to the user,

a mailer information analyzing part which extracts appointed information from the mailer information in the header section of the acquired e-mail and converts the information to words in the data form determined in advance,

a sentence editing part which inserts said appointed information analyzed in the mailer information into appointed place(s) in the appointed sentence and edits,

a voice compounding process part which compounds the content recorded as the mailer information and the body into a voice signal,

an electric sound converting means which converts the voice signal to a voice and makes an output.

4. An e-mail fetching/reading apparatus as defined in claim 3, characterized in that the mailer information analyzing part practices an analysis with referring to a pre-instituted information table about the words such as the dates, sender'"'"'s names and titles included in the mailer information, identifies an attribute for each word, attaches the attribute to the each word and converts into a word in the predetermined data form, and rearranges the words into an appointed order.

5. An e-mail fetching/reading apparatus as defined in claim 3, characterized in that the sentence editing part inserts the words, which are analyzed and rearranged by said mailer information analyzing part, into the appointed place in the appointed sentence, deletes meaningless words or characters when read by voice, and edits so that the sentence is easy to understand.

6. An e-mail fetching/reading apparatus as defined in claim 3, characterized in that said apparatus includes,

a dictionary with proper nouns and other words, which are likely to appear in the e-mail(s), and their pronunciations corresponding thereto, and,

the voice compounding process part has a function which refers this dictionary and compounds the voice signal.

7. An e-mail fetching/reading apparatus as defined in any of claims 3 to 6, characterized in that at least the electric sound converting means of the e-mail fetching/reading apparatus is put inside the stuffed animal.

8. A computer readable recording medium which has a program to notify a user by voice whether there is any e-mail addressed to the user and received at a mail server by making access to the mail server automatically through a network.

9. A computer readable recording medium as defined in claim 8, characterized in that the computer is functioned to read by voice the number of received messages addressed to the user in the mail server, appointed information such as the dates, sender'"'"'s names, the title in the mailer information and/or the content of the e-mail mentioned as the body.