Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080282080 | Method and apparatus for adapting a communication network according to information provided by a trusted client - Hosts connecting to the network implement an adaptive networks client that monitors other applications on the host and provides information to an adaptive networks server to provide information about traffic being generated by the host. The client may also capture information about the user, host, access type, and other information of interest. The information provided by the adaptive network client may allow the network to adapt to the user, the device, the application, and the protocol being used. Users and applications can be authenticated and trusted. From a network standpoint, having a trusted client associated with the host allows the same benefits as deep packet inspection, regardless of whether the traffic is encrypted, and without requiring the network elements to actually perform deep packet inspection. The administrator may also centrally apply policy to control which applications are allowed to run on the hosts. | 11-13-2008 |
20090129565 | Method and apparatus for overlaying whispered audio onto a telephone call - Information may be provided to a telephony customer from an overlay service by causing a second stream of audio information to be overlayed on a primary stream of audio information. The overlayed information may be whispered to the user by causing the overlayed information to be compressed into a limited frequency spectrum which is inserted into a manufactured gap in the primary audio stream. This allows the user to continue to hear the main audio stream while also hearing the overlayed information. The overlay service may provide administrative information, advertisements, music, and/or Internet search results via the overlayed audio. Users may issue commands to the overlay service, to have particular information transmitted via overlayed audio. Where the user is also associated with a telephony application running on a computer platform, the overlayed information may be incorporated onto the information being shown to the user on a computer display. | 05-21-2009 |
20090240359 | Realistic Audio Communication in a Three Dimensional Computer-Generated Virtual Environment - A participant in a three dimensional computer-generated virtual environment is able to control a dispersion pattern of his Avatar's voice such that the Avatar's voice may be directionally enhanced using simple controls. The audio dispersion envelope is designed to extend further in front of the Avatar and less to the sides and rear of the Avatar. The audio dispersion envelope may be static or controllable by the participant to enable the distance that the Avatar's voice travels within the virtual environment to be adjusted. This enables the Avatar to whisper or “shout” in the virtual environment such that other Avatars normally outside of hearing range of the Avatar may selectively receive audio generated by the user. Separate audio streams are mixed for each user from audio generated by users with Avatars within their Avatar's dispersion envelope. The volume of audio from a user in the mixed audio stream depends on the separation of the Avatars within the virtual environment. | 09-24-2009 |
20090240818 | Method and Apparatus for Reconstructing a Communication Session - Each person to a communication session records their contributions to the communication session. Metadata is maintained for each contribution to identify the time of the contribution and any other useful information to enable the content of the contribution to be accessed at a later point in time. When a portion of the communication session is to be recreated, the people involved in the communication session are requested to provide their contributions for a particular period of time or all contributions associated with a particular topic. Users will then select and forward previously recorded contributions that they are willing to have included in the recreation. By collecting contributions from the individuals involved in the communication session, the intended portion of the communication session may be recreated. Since each person is recording their own contribution to the communication session, no explicit permission is required to record the conversation. | 09-24-2009 |
20090241037 | Inclusion of Web Content in a Virtual Environment - A virtual environment server records and broadcasts a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), browser state information, and optionally clipping parameters, that are to be associated with a three dimensional (3D) surface in a virtual environment. When a user's Avatar encounters the 3D surface in the virtual environment, the client obtains the URL and browser state information, and obtains the web content using a standard web browser. The web content is stored into an off-screen buffer. The content from the off-screen buffer is then rendered locally as a texture map onto the 3D surface of the virtual environment. Whenever one of the users interacts with the web content, a new URL and new browser state information is used to obtain the updated web content in the same way. The new URL and new browser state information is also passed from the client to the server, so that the server may update the URL and new browser state information in each of the other clients associated with each of the other users. | 09-24-2009 |
20100106512 | MANAGING USER IDENTITY IN COMPUTER GENERATED VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS - The present application relates to a virtual environment that is capable of using data stored on external content servers to help at least one participant in the virtual environment identify one or more other participants in the same virtual environment. One example of external content server is a social networking server of a social networking site such as Facebook™, Myspace™, LinkedIn™ and Cyworld™, which stores millions of detailed user profiles. | 04-29-2010 |
20100164946 | Method and Apparatus for Enhancing Control of an Avatar in a Three Dimensional Computer-Generated Virtual Environment - A method and apparatus for enhancing control of an Avatar in a three dimensional computer-generated virtual environment is provided. In one embodiment, a user can control one or more controllable aspects of an Avatar directly via interacting with a touch sensitive user input device such as a touchpad or touch sensitive screen. Interaction with the touch sensitive user input device enables more precise control and more direct control to be implemented over the action of the Avatar in the virtual environment. Multiple aspects of the Avatar may be controlled, such as the Avatar's forward motion, orientation, arm movements, and grasping of objects. | 07-01-2010 |
20100164956 | Method and Apparatus for Monitoring User Attention with a Computer-Generated Virtual Environment - Avatars focal points are monitored as the Avatars move within a virtual environment to determine, statistically, where users are looking at in the virtual environment. The Avatar's focal point may be used to control a virtual brush that may paint the virtual environment in an attention monitoring function. A statistical distribution about the focal point is used to affect the coloration, and other known information about the virtual environment may be used to affect the statistics. As attention records from multiple users are collected, they may be overlaid to obtain a very accurate picture of how users are interacting with the virtual environment and with objects in the virtual environment. The attention monitoring function may generate a thermal overlay to the virtual environment to visually show where users tend to focus within the virtual environment. Users' attention on three dimensional and graphic objects may be monitored as well. | 07-01-2010 |
20100169795 | Method and Apparatus for Interrelating Virtual Environment and Web Content - Interaction with web content in a web browser can control actions in an embedded virtual environment, and events in the virtual environment can be used to update content and applications running in the web browser. In one embodiment, particular events in the virtual environment are passed to a mapping component that listens for triggers and issues commands in the web browser. A JavaScript mapping component may be used to listen for the triggers, capture parameters associated with the trigger, lookup the trigger type in a mapping table, and call a mapped JavaScript function with the trigger parameters. In the reverse direction, if a JavaScript function call is entered in the web browser, the JavaScript function invokes a function exposed by a virtual environment plugin. The plug-in invokes an event within the virtual environment so that interaction with the web content can control actions in the virtual environment. | 07-01-2010 |
20100169796 | Visual Indication of Audio Context in a Computer-Generated Virtual Environment - A method and apparatus for providing a visual indication of audio context in a computer-generated virtual environment is provided. In one embodiment, visual indicators of which other Avatars are within communication distance of an Avatar may be generated and provided to the user associated with the Avatar. The visual indication may be provided for Avatars within the viewing area regardless of whether the other Avatar is visible or not. The visual indication may be provided for Avatars outside of the viewing area as well. When Avatars are engaged in a communication session, an indication of which Avatars are involved as well as which Avatar is currently speaking may be provided. Context may be user specific and established for each user of the virtual environment based on the location of that user's Avatar within the virtual environment and the relative location of other users' Avatars within the virtual environment. | 07-01-2010 |
20100169797 | User Interface for Orienting New Users to a Three Dimensional Computer-Generated Virtual Environment - When new users are first introduced to virtual environments, the new users may be confused and uncertain as to how to interact with the virtual environment. Several new user orientation features have been added to the virtual environment user interface to help orient new users to the three dimensional computer-generated virtual environment and to prevent the new users from making common mistakes. Example beginning user orientation features include clearly distinguishing when the user is interacting with the virtual environment and when the user is interacting with virtual environment application controls, limiting the vertical field of view of the new user's Avatar to prevent the user from becoming stuck looking straight up or straight down, providing the user with visual feedback when switching between first and third person points of view, and providing the user with clear instructions as to how to control their Avatar and how to reenter the virtual environment. | 07-01-2010 |
20100169798 | Visual Indication of User Interests in a Computer-Generated Virtual Environment - Users create profiles containing their interests, professional qualifications, and/or personal information. When users encounter each other in the virtual environment, the information contained in the personal profiles is used to provide visual indications of the profile information so that other users know some modicum of information about the user associated with the Avatar. The user associated with the personal profile may control what information is provided publicly and what information is provided privately. Information in other users' profiles may be filtered to enable relevant information to be presented to the user. Filtering may be explicit and based on user-defined criteria. Filtering may be inherent as well and implemented to select visual indications based on similarities between the user's profile information and the other users' profile information. Inherent matching of attributes may be exact, based on pre-defined similarities or groups, or based on learned similarities between types of attributes, or based on previous interactions of the user with other users in the virtual environment. | 07-01-2010 |
20100169799 | Method and Apparatus for Enabling Presentations to Large Numbers of Users in a Virtual Environment - A method and apparatus for enabling interaction with a large number of participants in a three dimensional computer-generated virtual environment is provided. In one embodiment, a participant in a three dimensional computer-generated virtual environment is able to simultaneously exist in multiple areas of a sliced virtual environment or in multiple instances of an instanced virtual environment. In this embodiment, the user's Avatar is replicated across the multiple regions/instances to simultaneously appear to users supported by multiple servers. Since users on multiple servers are able to see and hear the replicated Avatar, the virtual environment may be used to present information to a larger number of users than would be able to see the presenter's Avatar in the virtual environment hosted by a single virtual environment server. | 07-01-2010 |
20100169837 | Providing Web Content in the Context of a Virtual Environment - Information URLs may be associated with three dimensional objects in a three dimensional virtual environment. When a URL is selected, an overlay web rendering engine renders a web page associated with the URL over the object in the three dimensional virtual environment. The web page may include rich content, interactive content, or any other type of web content supported by the user's local browser and browser plugging. The user may interact with the content in the overlay web rendering engine to obtain successive layers of content or to affect the object in the virtual environment. The web page is rendered with a transparent background so that the three dimensional content of the virtual environment continues to be visible through the web page and provides context for the overlayed content. Information URLs may be used to provide information about objects, Avatars, or the virtual environment itself. | 07-01-2010 |
20110047267 | Method and Apparatus for Managing Communication Between Participants in a Virtual Environment - A method and apparatus for managing communication between participants in a virtual environment enables the participants to elect to automatically connect with each other via a preferred communication mechanism, manually connect with each other, or choose not to connect with each other. The connection may be point-to-point between two participants or may include multiple participants. Establishment of a connection, or the ability to establish a connection, may be based on the proximity of the participants, or the Avatars representing the participants, in the virtual environment. Once the connection is established, the connection may be managed so that the connection is maintained while the Avatars remain proximate each other and is automatically severed once the Avatars move away from each other. Environmental noise and other audio aspects may be included in the connection to simulate a real-world conversation. | 02-24-2011 |
20110221865 | Method and Apparatus for Providing a Video Representation of a Three Dimensional Computer-Generated Virtual Environment - A server process renders instances of a 3D virtual environment as video streams that may then be viewed on devices not sufficiently powerful to implement the rendering process natively or which do not have native rendering software installed. The server process is broken down into two steps: 3D rendering and video encoding. The 3D rendering step uses knowledge of the codec, target video frame rate, size, and bit rate from the video encoding step to render a version of the virtual environment at the correct frame rate, in the correct size, color space, and with the correct level of detail, so that the rendered virtual environment is optimized for encoding by the video encoding step. Likewise, the video encoding step uses knowledge of motion from the 3D rendering step in connection with motion estimation, macroblock size estimation, and frame type selection, to reduce the complexity of the video encoding process. | 09-15-2011 |
20110227913 | Method and Apparatus for Controlling a Camera View into a Three Dimensional Computer-Generated Virtual Environment - Motion sensors on a portable computing device are used to control a camera view into a three dimensional computer-generated virtual environment. This allows the user to move the portable computing device to see into the virtual environment from different angles. For example, the user may rotate the portable computing device about a vertical axis toward the left to cause the camera angle in the virtual environment to pan to the left. Likewise, rotational motion about a horizontal axis will cause the camera to move up or down to adjust the vertical orientation of the user's view into the virtual environment. By causing the view in the virtual environment that is shown on the display to follow the movement of the portable computing device, the display of the portable computing device appears to provide a window into the virtual environment which provides an intuitive interface to the virtual environment. | 09-22-2011 |
20120059880 | Method and Apparatus for Managing Communication Between Participants in a Virtual Environment - A method and apparatus for managing communication between participants in a virtual environment enables the participants to elect to automatically connect with each other via a preferred communication mechanism, manually connect with each other, or choose not to connect with each other. The connection may be point-to-point between two participants or may include multiple participants. Establishment of a connection, or the ability to establish a connection, may be based on the proximity of the participants, or the Avatars representing the participants, in the virtual environment. Once the connection is established, the connection may be managed so that the connection is maintained while the Avatars remain proximate each other and is automatically severed once the Avatars move away from each other. Environmental noise and other audio aspects may be included in the connection to simulate a real-world conversation. | 03-08-2012 |
20120174184 | Method and Apparatus for Enabling Enhanced Control of Traffic Propagation Through a Network Firewall - A distributed firewall system is used to implement a network firewall with enhanced control over network traffic to allow policy to be implemented on a per-user basis, a per-application basis, a per-user and application basis, and to allow ports to be dynamically opened and closed as needed by the applications. The distributed firewall system may include application identifiers associated with applications running on a network element, one or more firewall agents instantiated on the network element hosting the applications, and a firewall configured to interface with the firewall agents. Communications between the distributed components are secured to allow the firewall to detect if an agent has been compromised, and to allow the firewall agent to determine if the application has been compromised. The distributed firewall system may work in a VPN environment, such as in connection with a VPN server, to implement firewall policy at the point where VPN traffic enters the protected network. | 07-05-2012 |
20120192088 | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PHYSICAL MAPPING IN A VIRTUAL WORLD - A method and system for capturing user actions in the real world and mapping the users, their actions, and their avatars into a three dimensional virtual environment. Data representing real world users are captured, collected and sent to a virtual proxy bridge, which transforms the data into control signal for avatars, which are then mapped to the virtual environment. The real world avatars move around in parallel with the users in the real world via the use of data capture devices such as radio frequency identification (“RFID”) readers, triangulation or global positioning satellite (“GPS”) systems, and cameras. Real world users can therefore be represented as virtual users, thus removing the distinction between real world users and virtual environment users. | 07-26-2012 |
20120229446 | METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR TOPIC BASED VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS AND EXPERTISE DETECTION - A method and system for creating a topic-based 3D virtual environment. The inventive method and system provides a 3D virtual environment that includes images, scenery, and content that relate to the topic of discussion in the virtual environment. If the virtual “meeting” should be adjourned or ended, the system saves the data, discussions that occurred during the meeting, and all the scenery and content related to the virtual meeting so that the meeting can be continued with all of the content and imagery in place. A virtual environment template containing this information is loaded and used for subsequent virtual meetings discussing the same topic. | 09-13-2012 |
20120259712 | ADVERTISING IN A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT - A method and system for placing advertising content in a three-dimensional virtual environment. A predefined space is selected for receiving the advertising content from an advertising provider. Information regarding the context of the space within the virtual environment is used by the advertising provider to select appropriate advertising content that relates to the context of the space within the virtual environment where the advertising content is to be placed. The advertising content can be content already existing on an advertisement server. The advertising content can change and alternate content can be substituted for the original content upon the occurrence of certain events. | 10-11-2012 |
20130014032 | SYSTEM AND METHOD OF ENHANCED COLLABORATION THROUGH TELEPORTATION - Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to a system and method enhanced collaboration through teleportation. In one or more embodiments, there is provided a system for moderating an enhanced collaboration environment for at least a set of participants, comprising a server for facilitating a 2-D federated collaboration environment for the at least one set of participants; a server for facilitating a 3-D virtual collaboration environment for the at least one set of participants; and a gateway server for facilitating teleportation of at least two participants of the at least one set of participants from the 2-D federated collaboration environment to form a teleported collaboration group in the 3-D virtual collaboration environment. | 01-10-2013 |
20130081126 | SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR TRANSPARENT SINGLE SIGN-ON - A method for transparent single sign-on authentication on computers in a networked environment. An embodiment includes receiving an authentication request from an operating system of a first computer, requesting credentials of an application making the authentication request, authenticating the credentials, storing the credentials if the authentication is successful, and transmitting the credentials to a second computer. On subsequent access requests made by the user on the second computer, the credentials can be retrieved from the secure store, eliminating the need to prompt the user to re-enter authentication information. | 03-28-2013 |
20130142087 | Method and Apparatus for Overlaying Whispered Audio onto a Telephone Call - Information may be provided to a telephony customer from an overlay service by causing a second stream of audio information to be overlayed on a primary stream of audio information. The overlayed information may be whispered to the user by causing the overlayed information to be compressed into a limited frequency spectrum which is inserted into a manufactured gap in the primary audio stream. This allows the user to continue to hear the main audio stream while also hearing the overlayed information. The overlay service may provide administrative information, advertisements, music, and/or Internet search results via the overlayed audio. Users may issue commands to the overlay service, to have particular information transmitted via overlayed audio. Where the user is also associated with a telephony application running on a computer platform, the overlayed information may be incorporated onto the information being shown to the user on a computer display. | 06-06-2013 |
20130159419 | SYSTEM AND METHOD OF ENHANCED COLLABORATION THROUGH TELEPORTATION - Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to a system and method enhanced collaboration through teleportation. In one or more embodiments, there is provided a system for moderating an enhanced collaboration environment for at least a set of participants, comprising a server for facilitating a 2-D federated collaboration environment for the at least one set of participants; a server for facilitating a 3-D virtual collaboration environment for the at least one set of participants; and a gateway server for facilitating teleportation of at least two participants of the at least one set of participants from the 2-D federated collaboration environment to form a teleported collaboration group in the 3-D virtual collaboration environment. | 06-20-2013 |