Improved virtual collaboration environments allow participants in a primary collaboration session to initiate side conversations with fellow participants based on virtual locations of each participant within a virtual collaboration layout. The virtual collaboration layout defines virtual locations of each participant in the collaboration session. If a virtual distance between two participants a below a threshold, the participants are able to engage in a side conversation. Management information is provided to a collaboration session host. The management information indicates, for example, a volume or frequency of communication occurring on each side conversation, or an elapsed time since the side conversation was initiated. The host is also provided with controls that allow the host to issue a warning to side conversation participants, to mute the side conversation, or to change a participant’s position within the virtual collaboration layout, thus changing the participant’s eligibility to participate in the side conversation.

Methods and systems are presented for providing automated online chat assistance in an online chat session. One or more utterances transmitted from a user device of a user via the online chat session are obtained. The one or more utterances are provided to a first prediction model to predict an intent of a user. If it is determined that the first prediction model is unable to predict the intent of the user based on the one or more utterances, the one or more utterances are provided to a second prediction model. After predicting the intent of the user by the second prediction model, the intent is used by a chat robot to provide a dialogue with the user via the online chat session. The one or more utterances and the predicted intent are used to re-train the first prediction model.

Automated processes, computing systems, computing devices and other aspects of a data processing system provide improved reliability in delivering digital media content over the Internet or a similar wide area network without sacrificing data security. Content is initially placed into a secure format (e.g., secure hypertext transport protocol (HTTPS) via transport control protocol (TCP) or the like). Prior to transmission on the network, the secure data packets are encapsulated within connectionless frames, such as user datagram protocol (UDP) frames. The client device that receives the encapsulated packets extracts the underlying secure content from the connectionless frames for further processing. The encapsulation into connectionless data frames permits client and server devices to establish effective streaming sessions while preserving the security of the underlying data.

Systems and methods are presented to disclose a gamified startup ecosystem wherein the participants comprising various real and role-playing stakeholders of the startup ecosystem are enabled and incentivized to interact with each other in their respective roles in a plurality of ways that draw upon gamification to make the participants' experiences interactive, valuable, interesting, educational, and rewarding for them in their various roles.

A telecommunication and multimedia management apparatus and method that supports voice and other media communications and that enables users to: (i) participate in multiple conversation modes, including live phone calls, conference calls, instant voice messaging or tactical communications; (ii) review the messages of conversations in either a live mode or a time-shifted mode and to seamlessly transition back and forth between the two modes; (iii) participate in multiple conversations either concurrently or simultaneously; (iv) archive the messages of conversations for later review or processing; and (v) persistently store media either created or received on the communication devices of users. The latter feature enables users to generate or review media when either disconnected from the network or network conditions are poor and to optimize the delivery of media over the network based on network conditions and the intention of the users participating in conversations.

A pervasive realtime framework supports the execution of realtime software applications with high-level functions that significantly reduce the effort and time needed to develop realtime software applications in a new operating environment paradigm in which realtime connections between network nodes are pervasive. The pervasive realtime framework handles the complex tasks of connecting to communicants, virtual areas, and other network resources, as well as switching those connections in response to user inputs and thereby enables software application developers to focus on developing high-level realtime software application functionality.

Provided are a method and apparatus for displaying an online document, an electronic device, and a storage medium. The method for displaying an online document includes, in response to receiving an interactive instruction for a first user through the online document, generating an online document notification message in the instant messaging session list of the first user, where the interactive instruction includes that a second user mentions the first user or that the second user mentions the content published by the first user in the online document; in response to receiving an instruction triggering the online document notification message, acquiring a target link address; and jumping to the target link address in an instant messaging window through a document container and displaying the online document in the instant messaging window, where the document container is integrated into an instant messaging framework.

Described is a creative work contribution system. The system includes a server, a creator computing device and a plurality of contributor computing devices. The creator computing device and the plurality of contributor computing devices may be coupled to the server. The server may be programmed to receive and store a creative work request from the creator computing device; automatically process the creative work request and send the creative work request to the plurality of contributor computing devices for display and for entering contributions to the creative work request; receive and store the contributions entered by the plurality of contributor computing devices; and automatically deliver the received contributions entered by the plurality of contributor computing devices for display on the creator computing device. The system allows for crowd sourcing of creative input into specific types of creative works to help a creator overcome mental obstacles.

Embodiments described herein enable a teleconference among host-side user(s) at a host site and remotely located client-side user(s), wherein a host device is located at the host site, and wherein each of the client-side user(s) uses a respective client device to participate in the teleconference. A host site audio-visual feed is received from the host device. A client data feed is received from the client device of each client-side user. Orientation information for the respective client-side user using a client device is also received. Each client device is provided with the host site audio-visual feed or a modified version thereof. The host device is provided with, for each client device, the client data feed and the orientation information of the client-side user that is using the client device. This enables host-side and client-side users to display visual representations of one another with their respective orientations.

Described herein are improved systems and methods for overcoming technical problems associated with limited collaborative learning functionality in educational programming platforms.