Method and systems for accessing data from a network via telephone, using printed publication

• US 20050180401A1
• Filed: 02/10/2005
• Published: 08/18/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 02/13/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cerence Operating Company (Cerence Inc.)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Carro, Fernando Incertis
• Granted Patent: US 7,864,929 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/352
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/39 using speech synthesis speech synthesis per se G10L13/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2201/60 Medium conversion
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4938 comprising a voice browser which renders and interprets, e.g. VoiceXML

Abstract

A method and systems to access information related to items printed on publications, or any kind of hard-copy document, from a network, by means of voice commands generated by a user through a telephone, pronouncing the name of these items, are disclosed. To access additional information, the user dials on a telephone the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) service identifier, the publication identifier, and preferably the identifier of the page containing the item associated to the required additional information. The publication link table associated to the publication identifier is retrieved from a proxy server providing the list of all the item names defined by the editor on the selected publication and page and the addresses of the related information. The publication link table is used as a restricted vocabulary by a speech recognizer on the IVR to recognize the name of the item pronounced by the user and to determine the address associated to this name. Then, the proxy server accesses the information located at this address and forwards it to the IVR wherein it is converted by means of a text-to-speech unit to synthetic speech which is transmitted to the user'"'"'s telephone.

Claims

1. A method, in a voice server connected to a network, for providing digital information associated to at least one item contained in a publication, to a user, via telephone, said digital information being stored in said network, said voice server having access to a publication link table associated to said publication, said publication link table comprising at least said one item and a corresponding network address wherein said digital information can be accessed, said method comprising the steps of:

upon reception of an identifier of said publication in said voice server, establishing a list of the items of the publication link table, corresponding to said publication identifier;

upon reception of utterances in said voice server, determining if said utterances correspond to at least one item of said list of items;

if said utterances correspond to at least one item of said list of items, determining if one network address is associated to said at least one item;

if one network address is associated to said at least one item, accessing the digital information from said network address; and

transmitting said accessed digital information to said user.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of converting said accessed digital information to speech before transmitting said accessed digital information to said user.

3. The method of either claim 1, wherein said publication identifier is received as dual tone multi-frequency tones.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of upon reception of a page identifier in said voice server, selecting a sub-list of items in said list of items, according to said page identifier wherein said sub-list of items replaces said list of items to determine the network address associated to said utterances.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein said page identifier is received as dual tone multi-frequency tones.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein said network address is a uniform resource locator.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said at least one item is highlighted, underlined, colored, or numbered.

8. An apparatus comprising means adapted for carrying out each step of the method according to claim 1.

9. A computer-like readable medium comprising instructions for carrying out each step of the method according to claim 1.