JPH10187191A - Method for information processing, information processor, and storage medium therefor - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To efficiently read mails in a short time by judging their significance of extracted attributes, judging significance for reading the stored mails accord ing to significance of each mail, and especially, reading important mails. SOLUTION: A mailer's score calculation part 107 calculates a score of each mailer from the reading out situation of their e-mails. The significance of each e-mail is judged according to the score values of the mailers by an e-mail significance judgment part 109. And mailer names, significance, and painter to these e-mail are held in an e-mail holding part 111. And the e-mails held in the e-mail holding part 111 is sorted by an e-mail ordering part 110 in order of the significance degree. The result of the sorting is held in the e-mail holding part 111 again. And e-mail is read out in holding order in the e-mail holding part 111.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an information processing method, apparatus, and storage medium, and more particularly, to an electronic mail reading system that makes it possible to make a telephone call from home or outside and read an electronic mail addressed to the user by voice synthesis. The present invention relates to an information processing method and apparatus in a system and a storage medium.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art With the advancement of speech synthesis technology, it has become possible to read out an e-mail addressed to oneself held in a host computer by using a telephone from whereabouts. In this case, a command can be input by a push button operation, and operations such as reading out and canceling the e-mail can be performed.

[0003]

However, as the number of received e-mails increases, there may be a case where there is no time to listen to all e-mails. In such a case, there is a desire of the user to select and listen to only important mail.

However, in the conventional apparatus, it is not possible to read out the e-mail only in the held order or in the n-th mail specified by the user in the held order. I can't respond to the request to selectively listen only to e-mail. Also, even with the function of reading out the e-mail by specifying "the number of the e-mail", the order of the target e-mail is not known until all the e-mails are heard once, In addition, since it is necessary to memorize the number of the intended mail, the above request cannot be met in this case.

[0005]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, the present invention extracts an attribute of an e-mail from a stored e-mail and judges the importance of the extracted attribute. And an information processing method and apparatus for determining the reading importance of the stored electronic mail according to the determined importance of each electronic mail, and a storage medium.

[0006] In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, according to the present invention, preferably, the reading importance is the reading order.

[0007] In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, according to the present invention, preferably, the reading importance is set to whether or not to read aloud.

[0008] In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, the present invention preferably stores a plurality of e-mails, and judges the importance of the attribute for each of the plurality of stored e-mails. The reading order of the plurality of e-mails is determined according to the determined importance, and the plurality of e-mails are read out according to the determined reading order.

[0009] In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, the present invention preferably stores a score for an attribute extracted from the electronic mail in advance, and determines the importance of the attribute from the previously stored score. Judge.

In order to solve the above-mentioned problem of the prior art, the present invention preferably determines the importance of the attribute by calculating from the score.

[0011] In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, in the present invention, preferably, the attribute is a sender.

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, according to the present invention, preferably, the attribute is a keyword of an electronic mail text.

[0013] In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, according to the present invention, preferably, the attribute is a receiver.

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, according to the present invention, preferably, the body of the electronic mail is a text.

[0015] In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, according to the present invention, preferably, the body of the mail is audio information.

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, the present invention preferably outputs the voice to be read out through a public network.

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, the present invention preferably outputs the voice to be read out from a telephone connected via a public network.

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, according to the present invention, preferably, the reading instruction is input from a telephone connected via a public network, and the respective processes are executed in accordance with the reading instruction. I do.

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, the present invention preferably stores a threshold value of the importance of the attribute, and selects and reads out an e-mail exceeding the stored threshold value.

In order to solve the above-mentioned problem of the prior art, the present invention preferably stores a plurality of the thresholds.

In order to solve the above-mentioned problem of the prior art, the present invention is preferably arranged such that an instruction as to whether or not to judge the importance of the e-mail is input, and an instruction to judge the importance is input. In the case where it is performed, each of the above-described processes is executed.

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, according to the present invention, preferably, the reading of the electronic mail is performed by a synthesized voice.

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, according to the present invention, preferably, the score corresponds to a history in which an electronic mail having the extracted attribute has been read out in the past.

[0024] In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, according to the present invention, preferably, the score corresponds to a history in which reading of an electronic mail having the extracted attribute was interrupted in the past.

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art, the present invention preferably updates the score every time an electronic mail is read out.

[0026]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

In FIG. 1, reference numeral 101 denotes a telephone. The telephone 101 includes a means for the user to input a command (push button or the like) and a means for outputting a synthesized voice (speaker or the like)
Doubles.

Reference numeral 102 denotes a public network; 103, a command recognition unit for recognizing a command input by a user; 104, an e-mail or system message (text or voice information).
Is a speech synthesis unit that converts the information into a synthesized voice, 105 is a sender extraction unit that extracts the sender information from the received e-mail, and 106 is a reading status monitoring unit that monitors the reading status of the e-mail. A sender score calculation unit that calculates a score for each sender from the reading status of the e-mail, a sender score storage unit that stores the sender score obtained by the sender score calculation unit 107, and an important value of each e-mail 109 E-mail importance determining unit 110 for determining the degree of importance, 110 is an e-mail sorting unit that sorts e-mails according to the weight determined by the importance determining unit 109, 111 is the sender name for each e-mail to be read The e-mail holding unit 112 holds the importance, importance, and a pointer to the e-mail. Sage generation unit, 113 e-mail server, 114 is an e-mail storage unit for holding the electronic mail addressed to the user to use this device.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a hardware configuration of the above-described device.

In the figure, reference numeral 201 denotes a control memory for storing a program of a control procedure shown in the flowcharts of FIGS. This may be ROM or RAM
It may be.

Reference numeral 202 denotes a central processing unit that performs processing according to a control program stored in the control memory 201.

Reference numeral 203 denotes a memory, and a sender score holding unit 1
08, the electronic mail holding unit 111 is realized.

Reference numeral 204 denotes a D / A for generating a synthesized voice.
It is a conversion device.

Reference numeral 205 denotes a disk, which implements the electronic mail storage unit 114.

Reference numeral 206 denotes a telephone.

Reference numeral 207 denotes a modem, which mediates transmission and reception of data between the telephone 206 and other components.

Reference numeral 208 denotes a bus for connecting each component.

FIG. 3 is a flow chart showing a processing procedure of a mail reading operation in the apparatus shown in FIG.

The operation of the embodiment according to the present invention will be described with reference to FIG.

This processing is started in response to a command input by pressing a push button from a telephone 206 connected via a public network and input of a user ID and an instruction to "read out mail".

In step 301, the entered user I
A check is made to see if any of the e-mails transmitted to the address corresponding to D and stored on the disk 205 remains to be read out.

If there are, go to step 302,
If not, the process proceeds to step 306. Here, the electronic mail to be read out is an unopened mail.
In step 302, one e-mail to be read out is extracted via the e-mail server 113, and the sender extraction unit 105 extracts sender information from the header. This can be easily performed by pattern matching with the From line of the e-mail.

In step 303, referring to the sender score holding unit 108, it is checked whether or not the sender score of the sender is defined in the sender score holding unit 108. If the sender has ever sent an email, the sender score is defined. Its defined,
The stored score information is as shown in FIG. If it is defined, the process proceeds to step 305; otherwise, the process proceeds to step 304.

In step 304, if a sender score is not defined, a default value is given as a score.
The sender identification information and the default score are additionally stored in the sender score holding unit 108.

In step 305, the electronic mail importance determining unit 109 determines the importance of the electronic mail from the value of the sender score. For example, the determination of the importance may be obtained by calculation such as multiplying the reciprocal of the score by a predetermined coefficient. The sender name, importance, and a pointer to this e-mail are stored in the e-mail storage unit 111.

In step 306, the e-mail holding unit 11
The e-mail held in the e-mail sorting unit 110
In the order of importance. The result of the sorting is held in the e-mail holding unit 111 again. Here, for example, when the sender of each unopened mail stored in the electronic mail storage unit 114 is as shown in FIG.
The result sorted by 6 is as shown in FIG. Here, FIG.
The numbers are in the order in which the mail arrives, and the numbers in FIG. 7 are in the reading order after sorting.

In step 307, the e-mail holding unit 1
The e-mails are read out in the order held in step 11, and the process is terminated. The reading of the e-mail is performed by the voice synthesis unit 104.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart for explaining the "mail reading-out process" of step 307 in the flowchart shown in FIG. 3 in more detail. The operation of the "mail reading process" will be described with reference to FIG.

In step 401, the e-mail holding unit 1
It is checked whether an unprocessed e-mail remains in 11. If any remain, the process proceeds to step 402. If not, the process ends.

At step 402, the header information of the selected electronic mail is read out. This reads, for example, the sender name and title. At this time, the message generation unit 112
A message such as "Do you want to read this mail?" May be output to prompt the user who is listening to this message to input a command.

Upon hearing this, the user decides whether or not to read out the mail, and inputs an instruction with a push button. In step 403, a command input by the user is received. The command here may be prepared such as "read out the current mail", "skip the current mail and move to the next mail".

In step 404, the command recognition unit 10
In step 3, it is determined whether the command input by the user is "mail reading". In the case of "mail reading out", the process proceeds to step 405. In the case of “mail skip”, the process proceeds to step 406.

In step 405, the electronic mail text is read out.

In step 406, the sender score calculator 107 updates the sender score of the current sender of the electronic mail. The sender score can be defined, for example, as a percentage of what was read in the sender's email. Assuming that the total number of mails received from a sender so far is N and the number of those read out is n, the sender score is expressed as n / N. The reading status monitoring unit 106 monitors the current reading status of the e-mail, and when this e-mail is read, the new sender score is (n + 1) / (N + 1), and when it is not read, n / (N + 1). And The result is stored in the sender score storage unit 108.

In the above description, as the sender score, the ratio of those who read the e-mail was used, but other formulas may be used. For example, the number of e-mails simply read out may be used.

In the above description, the sender is used as the attribute of the electronic mail, but other header information may be used.
For example, a recipient (To field) may be used as an attribute.

In the above description, an example is described in which the sender is used as the attribute of the e-mail which is used as the criterion for determining the degree of importance.
This may be used as an attribute. For example, a keyword score calculation unit (not shown) is provided, and a score of each keyword is calculated from an e-mail reading history and stored in a keyword score storage unit (not shown). 109 calculates the importance of the e-mail based on the sum of the keyword scores. The method of keyword extraction may be a generally known method, for example,
The keyword may be specified by the user during the reading or display confirmation, or may be a keyword that frequently appears in one mail or that has been emphasized such as bold, underlined, or colored. Automatic determination may be made.

In the above description, the value of the sender score is changed depending on whether or not the electronic mail is read out. However, a case where the reading of the electronic mail is interrupted may be considered.

For example, when the original score is n / N, no speech is read out → n / N, interrupted halfway → (n + ／) /
N, read out to the end → (n + 1) / (N + 1).

In the above description, the value of the sender score is changed depending on whether or not the e-mail is read out. However, the total time of reading out the e-mail is held for each sender, and the sender is calculated based on the ratio to the total reading time. The score may be determined.

In the flowchart of FIG. 3, it is possible to give an instruction by a push button as to whether or not to judge the importance and change the reading order. If no instruction to make the determination and change is made, steps S302 to S306 are omitted. You may.

In the above description, all the e-mails in the e-mail holding unit 111 are read out after sorting, but only a predetermined number of higher-order e-mails or e-mails whose importance exceeds a predetermined threshold are read out. You may do so. After reading out the selected upper-level mail, a message “Do you want to continue reading out?” May be output, and the user may be prompted to input an instruction using a push button. Alternatively, a plurality of selection levels may be prepared, and the determination of whether to continue reading the selected mail and the subsequent mail may be repeated.

The present invention may be applied to a system composed of a plurality of devices or to an apparatus composed of one device. A recording medium storing the software program code for realizing the functions of the above-described embodiments is supplied to a system or an apparatus, and a computer (or CPU or MPU) of the system or the apparatus reads out the program code stored in the recording medium. Needless to say, it can also be achieved by executing.

In this case, the program code itself read from the recording medium implements the functions of the above-described embodiment, and the recording medium on which the program code is recorded constitutes the present invention.

As a recording medium for supplying the program code, for example, a floppy disk, hard disk, optical disk, magneto-optical disk, CD-ROM, C
DR, magnetic tape, nonvolatile memory card, ROM
Etc. can be used.

When the computer executes the readout program code, not only the functions of the above-described embodiment are realized, but also the OS and the like running on the computer are actually executed based on the instructions of the program code. It goes without saying that a part or all of the above-described processing is performed, and the functions of the above-described embodiments are realized by the processing.

Further, after the program code read from the recording medium is written into a memory provided in a function expansion board inserted into the computer or a function expansion unit connected to the computer, based on the instruction of the program code, It goes without saying that the CPU provided in the function expansion board or the function expansion unit performs a part or all of the actual processing, and the processing realizes the functions of the above-described embodiments.

[0069]

As described above, according to the present invention,
Extracting the attribute of the electronic mail from the stored electronic mail, determining the importance of the extracted attribute, and reading the stored electronic mail according to the importance of each of the determined electronic mails By judging, the important mail is particularly read aloud, so that the reading of the mail can be performed efficiently in a short time.

As described above, according to the present invention, the read-out importance is set in the read-out order, so that the important ones are read out, so that the necessary mail can be heard quickly.

As described above, according to the present invention, it is possible to retrieve and listen to only necessary mails by determining whether the reading importance is to be read or not, which is efficient.

As described above, according to the present invention, a plurality of electronic mails are stored, the importance of the attribute is determined for each of the plurality of stored electronic mails, and the determined importance is determined. The reading order of the plurality of e-mails is determined according to, and by reading out the plurality of e-mails according to the determined reading order, the important ones are read out, so that the important ones can be heard first. It is also possible to interrupt the listening at an appropriate place.

As described above, according to the present invention, the score for the attribute extracted from the electronic mail is stored in advance, and the importance of the attribute is determined from the previously stored score. , The importance of the score can be determined appropriately.

As described above, according to the present invention, the determination of the importance of the attribute is calculated and obtained from the score, so that an appropriate determination of the importance according to the score can be quickly obtained. .

As described above, according to the present invention, by setting the attribute to be a sender, it is possible to determine an appropriate importance according to the sender.

As described above, according to the present invention, by setting the attribute as a keyword in an electronic mail text, it is possible to determine an appropriate degree of importance according to the keyword.

As described above, according to the present invention, by setting the attribute as the receiver, it is possible to determine the appropriate importance according to the sender.

As described above, according to the present invention, the text of the e-mail is text, so that the e-mail received in text can be heard.

As described above, according to the present invention, an electronic mail received as voice information can be heard by using the text of the mail as voice information.

As described above, according to the present invention, by outputting the voice to be read out through a public network, an e-mail can be efficiently obtained through the public network.

As described above, according to the present invention, by outputting the voice to be read out from a telephone connected via a public network, an e-mail can be obtained more efficiently by telephone.

As described above, according to the present invention, the read-out instruction is input from a telephone connected via a public network, and the above-described processing is executed in accordance with the read-out instruction, whereby the read-out is performed. The user can efficiently listen to the e-mail at the appropriate time by inputting the instruction.

As described above, according to the present invention, the threshold of the importance of the attribute is stored, and the e-mail exceeding the stored threshold is selected and read out, thereby selecting the important e-mail. Can be performed automatically.

As described above, according to the present invention, by storing a plurality of the threshold values, it is possible to select a level to be selected as important.

As described above, according to the present invention, when an instruction to judge the importance of the e-mail is input, and when the instruction to judge the importance is input, By executing each process, the user can select whether or not to determine the importance.

As described above, according to the present invention, by reading out the e-mail by using the synthesized voice, it is possible to cope with various e-mails.

As described above, according to the present invention, the score is based on the history read aloud in the past, by corresponding to the history read aloud in the past, the e-mail having the extracted attribute. Appropriate importance can be determined.

As described above, according to the present invention, the score has been interrupted in the past because the score corresponding to the history of the e-mail having the extracted attribute was interrupted in the past. Appropriate importance can be determined based on background.

As described above, according to the present invention, an appropriate score can always be provided by updating the score each time an electronic mail is read out.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a basic configuration diagram of an apparatus according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a system configuration according to the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing an overall processing procedure according to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing a detailed processing procedure of a mail reading step according to the present invention.

FIG. 5 is an exemplary diagram of a sender list of an incoming electronic mail.

FIG. 6 is a view showing an example of a sender score.

FIG. 7 is a view showing an example of a result sorted by importance.

Claims (23)

[Claims] 1. An attribute of the electronic mail is extracted from the stored electronic mail, the importance of the extracted attribute is determined, and the stored electronic mail is determined according to the determined importance of each electronic mail. An information processing method characterized by determining the importance of reading a mail. 2. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein the reading importance is a reading order. 3. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein the reading importance is determined as to whether or not to read aloud. 4. A method for storing a plurality of e-mails, determining the importance of the attribute for each of the plurality of stored e-mails, and determining a reading order of the plurality of e-mails according to the determined importance. 2. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein a decision is made, and the plurality of e-mails are read out in accordance with the decided reading order. 5. The information according to claim 1, wherein a score for an attribute extracted from the electronic mail is stored in advance, and importance of the attribute is determined from the previously stored score. Processing method. 6. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein the determination of the importance of the attribute is obtained by calculating from the score. 7. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein the attribute is a sender. 8. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein the attribute is a keyword of an electronic mail text. 9. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein the attribute is a recipient. 10. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein the body of the electronic mail is text. 11. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein the body of the mail is audio information. 12. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein the voice to be read is output via a public network. 13. The system according to claim 1, wherein the voice to be read is output from a telephone connected via a public network.
The information processing method according to 1. 14. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein the reading instruction is input from a telephone connected via a public network, and the processing is executed in accordance with the reading instruction. . 15. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein a threshold value of the importance of the attribute is stored, and an electronic mail exceeding the stored threshold value is selected and read out. 16. The information processing method according to claim 15, wherein a plurality of the thresholds are stored. 17. An instruction is input as to whether or not the importance of the electronic mail is to be determined. When an instruction to determine the importance is input,
2. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein each of the processes is executed. 18. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein the reading of the electronic mail is performed by a synthesized voice. 19. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein the score corresponds to a history in which the e-mail having the extracted attribute has been read aloud in the past. 20. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein the score corresponds to a history in which reading of the electronic mail having the extracted attribute was interrupted in the past. 21. The information processing method according to claim 1, wherein the score is updated each time an e-mail is read out. 22. Attribute extracting means for extracting the attribute of the electronic mail from the stored electronic mail; attribute importance determining means for determining the importance of the extracted attribute; and each of the determined electronic mails. And a reading importance determining means for determining a reading importance of the stored e-mail according to the importance of the electronic mail. 23. A computer-readable storage medium, comprising: extracting an attribute of an electronic mail from stored electronic mail; determining the importance of the extracted attribute; A storage medium storing a program for determining the read-out importance of the stored e-mail according to the importance of each e-mail.