A video display hub is mounted in a common household area such as a kitchen or family room. During times that have been designated as being available for communications, devices in first and second households exchange and display blurred video, allowing users in each household to see vague shapes and movements of the other household. Upon noticing activity, a user in the first household may initiate a video conversation, causing the video from the first household to be unblurred and causing unobscured voice to be transmitted to the second household. A user in the second household may respond by allowing the video conversation to be fully enabled, allowing the video from the second household to be unblurred and unobscured voice to be transmitted back to the first household.

A method is presented that allows for coordination between parties wanting to communicate. The method serves to replace the current ‘synchronous’ method of phone session initiation (which allows random people to interrupt one's flow) with a system that allows both parties to indicate when they are ready and willing to communicate with particular parties. Instead of a first party directly calling a second party, both indicate readiness to talk to each other by means of (for instance) status indicators on a smartphone, thereby eliminating the obtrusive nature of the time-limited phone ring. The method also includes an apparatus that determines which is the optimal party to actually place the call such that overall expenses may be minimized.

Methods and apparatuses to provide telephonic connections to members of a social network. One embodiment includes: identifying a first member connected to a second member in a social network; determining whether profile data of the first member of the social network includes a telephonic reference of the first member; presenting a user interface element to the second member over a data communication network in response to a determination that the profile data of the first member includes the telephonic reference of the first member; and responsive to a selection of the user interface element, initiating a first telephonic connection to the first member using the telephonic reference of the first member and a second telephonic connection to the second member to provide a telephonic connection between the first member and the second member.

Systems and methods for fusing, for a subscriber, a plurality of applications and subscriber data across a plurality of subscriber access devices are described. The system includes a fusion server coupled to a voice-over-IP telephony switch and a television EBIF server. The fusion server receives and stores the subscriber data such as a list of contacts. The fusion server receives a communication in a first format from a first subscriber access device such as a set-top box, and translates the communication from the first format to a second format. The first and second formats include at least two of session initiation protocol (SIP), hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), voice-over-IP (VoIP), simple object access protocol over extensible markup language (SOAP/XML), remote procedure call (RPC), and enhanced tv binary exchange format (EBIF). The fusion server transmits the translated communication to a second subscriber access device such as a smart phone or tablet computer.

A connection manager manages connections for associated user devices by determining whether an incoming connection has been answered at a user device, and if so then generating and transmitting silencing commands to associated user devices using first and second wireless communication modes, with one mode being faster. Connections can comprise phone calls, and modes can comprise push and Bluetooth® messaging. The connection manager can instruct device outputs to provide connection alerts, limited to visual alerts when an associated user device is active, listen for associated user device communications, and instruct device outputs to stop providing alerts when a silencing command is received. Further, a connection manager can receive a signal regarding a headset status, route an outside connection from a phone to the headset when the headset is active or to another device when the headset is not active, detect a change in headset status, and reroute the connection accordingly.

Systems and techniques for permitting, establishing, monitoring and controlling VOIP calls based on messages from outside parties, outside party availability information, institution's call restriction information, and/or account holder preferences. In one example, a message from an outside party app on an outside party computing device is receive by an inmate app on an inmate device. The inmate device displays the message at the inmate calling app including a request for the inmate to call the outside party device during a time period. When the inmate initiates a call to the outside party the call is permitted or not permitted based on determining whether the call is within the specified time period.

A server, an apparatus, and a method for providing a call availability information of a driver are disclosed. A call availability information providing server may include a driving route calculating unit configured to receive a starting position and destination information transmitted from a vehicle terminal connected through a wireless communication network and to calculate a driving route corresponding to the received starting position and destination information; a call availability information generating unit configured to calculate a driving mode and a passing time per unit interval within the calculated driving route and to generate call availability information based on the calculated driving mode and passing time per unit interval when it is determined that a vehicle installed with the vehicle terminal is driving; and a call availability information transmitting unit configured to transmit the generated call availability information to the vehicle terminal.

Methods, architectures, and algorithms to improve content transfer performance, smoothness and efficiency among multiple electronic computing devices are provided. In one example, an electronic computing device includes a plurality of sensors or devices, a communication interface, a memory device configured to store computer-executable instructions, and a processor, wherein the processor is configured to determine a proximity of a user relative to the electronic computing device in an environment detected by the plurality of the sensors or devices and determine a transfer of a content based on a proximity metric stored from the memory device.

Methods and apparatus for detection and notification of called party presence via a telecommunication device associated with a called party are provided herein. In some exemplary embodiments, a method for detection and notification of called party presence may include receiving a request to establish a telecommunication session, obtaining presence information derived from presence detection equipment associated with the telecommunication device responsive to the received request, determining presence of the called party based on the obtained presence information, and sending a notification message including an indication of the determined presence of the called party.

A transmission management system for controlling data transmission between a first transmitting terminal and a second transmitting terminal is provided. The transmission management system includes a receiving unit that receives location information about the second transmitting terminal; and a transmitting unit that transmits first presence information about the first transmitting terminal to the second transmitting terminal depending on first location information about the second transmitting terminal received by the receiving unit, and transmits second presence information about the first transmitting terminal to the second transmitting terminal depending on second location information about the second transmitting terminal received by the receiving unit.