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26 Nov 2011

The call centre that knows when you're angry

The new technology could be used in automated call centres to route enquiries differently according to the anxiety level of the caller.

Scientists at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and the Universidad de Granada (UGR) said “the system created can be used to automatically adapt the dialogue to the user’s situation, so that the machine’s response is adequate to the person’s emotional state.”

“Thanks to this new development, the machine will be able to determine how the user feels and how the caller intends to continue the dialogue”, claimed one of its creators, David Grill, a professor in UC3M’s Computer Science Department.

The researchers looked closely at the anger, boredom and doubt that people often experience when talking to automated call centre voices. By examining tone of voice, the speed of speech, the duration of pauses, the energy of the voice signal and up to a total of sixty different ‘acoustic parameters’, they have produced computer models of what people sound like according to the emotions they are feeling.

The authors of the study, which has been published in the Journal on Advances in Signal Processing, said it is important that the machine be able to predict how the rest of the dialogue is going to continue. "To that end, we have developed a statistical method that uses earlier dialogues to learn what actions the user is most likely to take at any given moment", they claimed.

Source: The Telegraph

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22 Nov 2011

How to Enable the New YouTube Design Now

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Word on the street is that YouTube has a slick new design. It’s a revamped homepage with some pretty tightGoogle+ social integration and content discovery features.

But if you’ve fired up your trusty Internet machine and the new YouTube hasn’t yet appeared for you, don’t fret. Our friends at The Verge have figured out an easy way (via Google+ user Mortiz Tolxdorff) to turn on the new features right the heck now.

At present, the trick only seems to work in Firefox and Chrome. Open up your browser’s development tools:

In Firefox: Ctrl + Shift + K (Win) | Cmd + Shift + K (Mac)

In Chrome: Ctrl + Shift + J (Win) | or Cmd + Alt + J (Mac)

Then add this string of delicious and nutritious code to the console:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=ST1Ti53r4fU";

Close your development tools, then reload The YouTubes. Voila! A fresh homepage for videos.

Once you get the new design, a message will pop up, prompting you to take a tour.

This Article was originally posted on Mashable

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19 Nov 2011

The 18 most important patents Google takes home with Motorola

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We all knew patents were a crucial part of the Google-Motorola acquisition, and here are the specific properties that are most important to arming the Android ecosystem.

Last week Google acquired Motorola in order to “protect” its Android ecosystem, as well as to contribute to its hardware future. Google has been the victim of more than a few lawsuits involving patent litigation, and while buying Motorola’s many assets can be a benefit for the company’s mobile business in a variety of ways, it mostly means it will have more intellectual property in its arsenal to fight its court battles.

Of course Motorola’s got some baggage Google will have to deal with (in the form of its own legal issues), those 17,000 pending patents are enough to make it a valuable commodity in Android’s eyes. And of those nearly thousands, there are 18 that actually stand to securely back Google’s mobile platform.

Patent lawyer David Mixon tells Bloomberg that this group, which dates back to 1994, was the backbone of Motorla’s lawsuits against Apple. He calls these the company’s “strongest patents,” which revolve around locations services, atenna designs, wireless email, touchscreen motions, software application management, multi-device synchronization, and 3G wireless services. Here are the 18 important properties Google can now lay claim to.

US patent #5,311,516 – Paging systems using message fragmentation to redistribute traffic
US patent #5,319,712 – Method and apparatus for providing cryptographic protection of a data stream
US patent #5,490,230 – Digital speech coder having optimized signal energy parameters
US patent #5,572,193 –Method for authentication and protection of subscribers in telecommunications systems”
US patent #6,175,559 – Method for generating preamble sequences in a code division multiple access systems
US patent #6,359,898 – Method for performing a countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system
US patent #5,359,317 – Method and apparatus for selectively storing a portion of a received message in a selective call receiver
US patent #5,636,223 – Methods of adaptive channel access attempts
US patent #6,246,697 – Method and system for generating a complex pseudonoise sequence for processing a code division multiple access signal
US patent #6,246,862 – Sensor controlled user interface for portable communication device
US patent #6,272,333 – Method and apparatus in a wireless communication system for controlling a delivery of data
US patent #7,751,826 – System and method for E911 location privacy protection
US patent #5,710,987 – Receiver having concealed external antenna
US patent #5,754,119 – Multiple pager status synchronization system and method
US patent #5,958,006 – Method and apparatus for communicating summarized data
US patent #6,008,737 – Apparatus for controlling utilization of software added to a portable communication device
US patent #6,101,531 – System for communicating user-selected criteria filter prepared at wireless client to communication server for filtering data transferred from host to said wireless client
US patent #6,377,161 – Method and apparatus in a wireless messaging system for facilitating an exchange of address information

When Motorola took on Apple last year, it was battling the company’s “late entry into the telecommunications market” and ignored licensing fees. And four of the patents Motorola used to seek payment from Apple found the company past success when it sued RIM. The BlackBerry maker settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends