Wireless server based text to speech email

摘要

An email system for mobile devices, such as cellular phones and PDAs, is disclosed which allows email messages to be played back on the mobile device as voice messages on demand by way of a media player, thus eliminating the need for a unified messaging system. Email messages are received by the mobile device in a known manner. In accordance with an important aspect of the invention, the email messages are identified by the mobile device as they are received. After the message is identified, the mobile device sends the email message in text format to a server for conversion to speech or voice format. After the message is converted to speech format, the server sends the messages back to the user's mobile device and notifies the user of the email message and then plays the message back to the user through a media player upon demand.

主权项

1. An email system, comprising:
a server communicably connectable to a mobile device over a wireless link, the server being operative:
to receive an email directed to the mobile device, the email having a message body and header information, the message body including text suitable for audio conversion;to forward the email to the mobile device, wherein the mobile device executes a listening application for identifying the email, retrieves the message body and the header information from the email, retrieves a device specific identifier indicative of the mobile device, and sends the message body, the header information, and the device specific identifier to the server;to perform a text-to-speech conversion on the text in the email to generate audio data corresponding to the message body;to load the audio data into an audio file, the audio file having an audio file format recognizable by the mobile device; andto store the audio file in a storage medium for subsequent retrieval by the mobile device.