Voice Recognition Dialing For Alphabetic Phone Numbers

Abstract

Systems, methods and media for determining a phone number from a spoken alphabetic phone number are disclosed. Embodiments may include a method for determining a phone number that includes receiving spoken alphanumeric content from a user, the spoken alphanumeric content having one or more alphabetic characters, such as letters, numbers or words. The spoken alphanumeric content may include termination words or separation words in addition to alphabetic characters. The method may also include parsing the received spoken alphanumeric content to determine equivalent numbers for alphabetic characters in the alphanumeric content, such as by parsing spoken received spoken letters, numbers and / or words to determine their equivalent numbers. The method may also include determining the phone number based on the received spoken alphanumeric content and the determined equivalent numbers. Further embodiments may include dialing the determined phone number after determining the phone number.

Description

FIELD OF INVENTION[0001]The present invention is in the field of communication devices such as telephones and, in particular, to communication devices that support voice dialing functions.BACKGROUND[0002]Telephone numbers typically represent one of the primary ways an individual can communicate with another person or an organization such as a business or governmental agency. As telephone numbers have continued to pervade every aspect of modern life, entities (particularly businesses) often attempt to acquire a phone number that is easy to remember. One common way to make a phone number more memorable is to have the number correspond to letters, or alphabetic characters, that correspond to words or acronyms. Example phone numbers would include 800-GO-FEDEX, 800-IBM-HELP, 800-PICK-UPS, and many others. Each letter in a phone number corresponds to a number on a standard keypad for a phone. The letters ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, for example, correspond to the number ‘2’ on a standard keypad, ‘D’, ‘...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0005]The problems identified above are in large part addressed by systems, methods and media for determining a phone number from an alphabetic phone number. Embodiments may include a method for determining a phone number that includes receiving spoken alphanumeric content from a user, the spoken alphanumeric content having one or more alphabetic characters, such as letters, numbers or words. The spoken alphanumeric content may include one or more of termination words or separation words in addition to alphabetic characters. The method may also include parsing the received spoken alphanumeric content to determine equivalent numbers for alphabetic characters in the alphanumeric content, such as by parsing spoken received spoken letters, numbers, or words to determine their equivalent numbers. The method may also include determining the phone number based on the received spoken alphanumeric content and the determined equivalent numbers. Further embodiments may include dialing the determined phone number after determining the phone number.

[0006]Another embodiment provides a machine-accessible medium containing instructions effective, when executing in a data processing system, to cause the system to perform a series of operations for determining a phone number from a spoken alphabetic phone number. The series of operations generally includes receiving spoken alphanumeric content from a user, the spoken alphanumeric content having one or more alphabetic characters, such as letters, numbers, or words. The series of operations may also include parsing the received spoken alphanumeric content to determine equivalent numbers for alphabetic characters in the alphanumeric content, such as by parsing spoken received spoken letters, numbers, or words to determine their equivalent numbers. The series of operations may also include determining the phone number based on the received spoken alphanumeric content and the determined equivalent numbers. Further embodiments may include a series of operations for dialing the determined phone number after determining the phone number.

[0007]A further embodiment provides a communication device to place phone calls over a communication network, where the communication device includes a voice recognition dialing system to determine a phone number. The voice recognition dialing system may include a controller interface to communicate with other components of the communications device and an alphabetic parser to receive spoken alphanumeric content having one or more alphabetic characters and to parse the received alphanumeric content to determine equivalent numbers for the alphabetic characters in the received alphanumeric content. The alphabetic parser may also include a phone number analyzer to determine a phone number based on the received spoken alphanumeric content and the determined equivalent numbers. In some embodiments, the alphabetic parser may determine equivalent numbers for spoken letters, numbers and / or words in the received alphabetic characters.

Problems solved by technology

While alphabetic phone numbers are easier to remember for many people, they often prove more difficult to dial than traditional numbers (i.e., phone numbers that consist entirely of numbers).

A user of one of these phones would need to look at the keypad to find each letter and then press the number associated with the letter, a process which may significantly add to the time and complexity of dialing the phone number and thus reduces user satisfaction.

Moreover, a user attempting to translate letters into numbers is likely to become more distracted, a problem which can be exacerbated if the user is also performing another task simultaneously, such as driving.

One solution to this problem is for organizations or others to refrain from using alphabetic phone numbers, but such a solution negates the established advantages of alphabetic numbers.

Such a solution, however, fails to provide flexibility for a user and forces users to program each alias they wish to set up for alphabetic (or other) numbers.

This solution accordingly is inefficient as the user is forced to manually create the aliases and cannot quickly respond to new alphabetic phone numbers that they wish to dial.

In addition, most phones with voice recognition dialing also have a limit on the number of aliases available, forcing the user to use valuable alias capability for alphabetic phone numbers.

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