Author: claimsbot

1. A fan control system for use with a fan cooling system in a vehicle comprising:
a fan drive for driving a fan blade to rotate at a particular speed;
one or more sensors for sensing engine conditions and transmission conditions;
an engine control module coupled to the one or more sensors for receiving engine conditions comprising at least an engine coolant temperature, the engine control module coupled to a communication link for transmitting engine information comprising engine conditions;
a transmission control module coupled to the one or more sensors for receiving transmission conditions comprising at least a vehicle speed, the transmission control module coupled to the communication link for transmitting transmission information comprising transmission conditions;
a power take off control module coupled to the communication link for transmitting power take off status information, wherein the power take off status information comprises whether a power take off unit on the vehicle is engaged or disengaged;
a fan control module coupled to the communication link for receiving engine information, transmission information, and power take off status information to process the engine information, the transmission information, and the power take off status information and to generate one or more fan speed demands from the processed information; wherein the fan control module selects from the one or more fan speed demands a maximum fan speed demand to command the fan drive to rotate the fan blade at a commanded rotational fan speed based on the maximum fan speed demand;
wherein the fan control module generates at least one of the fan speed demands by processing the engine coolant temperature, the power take off status information, and the vehicle speed;
wherein when the vehicle speed of the vehicle is greater than 0 KPH and the power take off unit is engaged, the fan control module raises a set point of the engine coolant temperature to reduce the fan speed demand processed from the engine coolant temperature, the power take off status information, and the vehicle speed; and
wherein the communication link connects the engine control module, transmission control module, and power take off control module to the fan control module.
2. The fan control system of claim 1, further comprising a fan speed sensor connected to the fan drive to measure the rotational speed of the fan blade and to communicate the sensed rotational speed of the fan blade to the fan control module.
3. The fan control system of claim 2, wherein the fan control module processes the sensed rotational speed of the fan blade with the engine information, transmission information, and power take off status information to generate the one or more fan speed demands.
4. The fan control system of claim 3, wherein the engine information received by the fan control module comprises ambient air temperature and engine rpm and wherein the fan control module processes a slip heat protection based on the ambient air temperature, the engine rpm, the sensed rotational speed of the fan blade, and the selected fan speed demand.
5. The fan control system of claim 4, wherein the fan control module commands the fan drive to change rotation of the fan blade based on the processed slip heat protection so that the fan drive will not maintain a rotational fan speed of the fan blade so as to overheat beyond design limits of the fan drive.
6. The fan control system of claim 3, wherein the fan control module calculates differences between commanded rotational fan speed and sensed rotational fan speed and modulates the commanded rotational fan speed to reduce the differences.
7. The fan control system of claim 1, wherein the engine information received by the fan control module includes an intake manifold temperature and wherein the fan control module processes the intake manifold temperature to generate the one or more fan speed demands.
8. The fan control system of claim 1, wherein the engine information received by the fan control module includes a catalyst temperature and wherein the fan control module processes the catalyst temperature to generate the one or more fan speed demands.
9. The fan control system of claim 1, wherein the fan control module further comprises a timer that counts to a specified time after the vehicle speed drops below a vehicle speed threshold value.
10. The fan control system of claim 9, wherein the fan control module raises the set point of the engine coolant temperature when the specified time is reached if the power take off unit is engaged.
11. The fan control system of claim 10, wherein the vehicle speed threshold value comprises any speed value less than or equal to 5 KPH and greater than 0 KPH.
12. The fan control system of claim 1, wherein the set point of the engine coolant temperature comprises a temperature value less than or equal to engine derate temperature.
13. The fan control system of claim 12, wherein the set point of the engine coolant temperature comprises a temperature value approximately 2 degrees Celsius below the engine derate temperature.
14. The fan control system of claim 12, wherein the set point of the engine coolant temperature comprises a temperature value approximately 2 degrees Celsius below engine redline as defined on an instrument cluster.
15. The fan control system of claim 1, further comprising an air conditioning system module for transmitting air conditioning system status information, wherein the air conditioning system status information comprises whether an air conditioning system in the vehicle is turned on or off.
16. The fan control system of claim 15, wherein the fan control module further includes receiving air conditioning status information and an ambient air temperature from the engine information to generate two fan speed demands, wherein the fan control module calculates a first fan speed demand based on a time since the air conditioning system last turned on and generates a second fan speed demand based on the ambient air temperature.
17. The fan control system of claim 1, wherein the communication link is a CAN-bus.
18. The fan control system of claim 1, wherein the fan drive is a viscous fan drive.
19. A method for controlling a speed of a fan blade in a fan cooling system of a vehicle comprising:
sensing vehicle motor conditions including engine conditions and transmission conditions at one or more sensors;
receiving at an engine control module one or more engine conditions, including at least an engine coolant temperature, from the one or more sensors;
transmitting engine information including engine conditions on a communication link from the engine control module to a fan control module;
receiving at a transmission control module one or more transmission conditions, including at least a vehicle speed, from the one or more sensors;
transmitting transmission information including transmission conditions on the communication link from the transmission control module to the fan control module;
transmitting power take off status information from a power take off control module on the communication link from the power take off control module to the fan control module, wherein the power take off status information is whether a power take off unit on the vehicle is engaged or disengaged;
receiving engine information, transmission information, and power take off status information at the fan control module;
processing the engine information, transmission information, and power take off status information at the fan control module;
generating one or more fan speed demands at the fan control module based on the processed engine information, transmission information, and power take off status information, and wherein at least one of the fan speed demands is generated by processing the engine coolant temperature, power take off status information, and vehicle speed;
raising a set point of the engine coolant temperature by the fan control module to reduce the fan speed demand processed from the engine coolant temperature, the power take off status information, and the vehicle speed when the vehicle speed of the vehicle is greater than 0 KPH and the power take off unit is engaged;
selecting at the fan control module a maximum fan speed demand from the one or more fan speed demands; and
commanding from the fan control module a fan drive to rotate a fan blade connected with the fan drive at a commanded fan speed based on the maximum fan speed demand selected by the fan control module.
20. The method of claim 19, further comprising sensing a rotational fan speed by a fan speed sensor connected with the fan blade and transmitting the sensed speed of the fan to the fan control module from the fan speed sensor.
21. The fan control system of claim 20, wherein the fan control module modifies commanded fan speed based on received sensed fan speed from the fan speed sensor.
22. The method of claim 19, further comprising: sensing a gear selected in the transmission system at the one or more sensors, receiving the gear selected in the transmission system at the transmission control module from the one or more sensors, and transmitting the gear selected in the transmission system on the communication link from the transmission control module to the fan control module.
23. The method of claim 22, wherein generating one or more fan speed demands comprises processing the engine coolant temperature, power take off status information, and the selected gear from the transmission information.
24. The method of claim 19, further comprising reducing heat dissipating from the fan drive beyond fan drive design limits by replacing the fan speed command with a lower or higher speed command to the fan drive from the fan control module.
25. The method of claim 19, wherein the raising a set point of the engine coolant temperature step further comprises counting a time down to zero after the vehicle speed drops below a vehicle speed threshold and raising the set point when the time reaches zero.
26. The method of claim 25, wherein the vehicle speed threshold value may be any speed value greater than 0 KPH and less than or equal to 5 KPH.
27. The method of claim 25, further comprising basing the set point of the engine coolant temperature off an engine torque in the engine information when the time has not reached zero or the power take off unit is disengaged.

The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.

1. A method of generating an area of location pattern, the area comprising a plurality of sub-areas, the method comprising:
for each of the sub-areas, determining (a) metadata identifying the sub-area, and (b) the position of the sub-area relative to the area;
transmitting to a receiving device (a) and (b) for each of the sub-areas;
retrieving from memory, associated with the receiving device, image information corresponding to the metadata, thereby generating in memory an image corresponding to the area of the pattern to be generated.
2. A method according to claim 1, further comprising the prior step of dividing the area into the plurality of sub-areas.
3. A method according to claim 1, wherein the step of determining metadata identifying the sub-areas comprises matching a given sub-area to a corresponding sub-area in a store of sub-areas and identifying corresponding metadata from the store.
4. A method according to claim 1, further comprising the step of ordering the metadata identifying the sub-areas, the order of the metadata being indicative of the relative position of the sub-areas in the area.
5. A method according to claim 1, wherein the metadata is arranged serially.
6. A method according to claim 1, wherein the step of transmitting comprises transmitting further information comprising the relative positions of the sub-areas to which the metadata relates.
7. A method according to claim 1, wherein the step of retrieving comprises matching received metadata corresponding to a given sub-area with corresponding metadata stored in a store associated with the receiving device, and retrieving image information associated with the stored corresponding metadata.
8. A method according to claim 1, wherein the receiving device is a printer device.
9. A method according to claim 8, wherein the printer device is adapted to retrieve image information corresponding to a given sub-area in the form of font information.
10. A method according to claim 9, wherein the image information is stored in a form of a font definition file.
11. The method of claim 5 comprising generating the font in the form of a TrueType font or a bitmap font.
12. (canceled)
13. A computer program comprising program code means for performing the method steps of claim 1 when the program is run on a computer andor other processing means associated with suitable apparatus.
14. (canceled)
15. A method of printing position location pattern on demand, upon a medium, comprising the steps of:
sub-dividing a portion of position location pattern into a plurality of components;
determining which of a plurality of characters of a font corresponds to each component;
generating a data string comprising identifiers corresponding to each of said characters;
transmitting said data string to an output device; and
using said data string in the control of the output of the portion of position location pattern upon the medium.

1. A method of detecting morphemes using lattices in an automated task classification system which operates on one or more task objectives of a user, comprising:
recognizing a lattice of phone strings representing morphemes in the user’s input communication, the lattice representing a distribution over the phone strings;
detecting morphemes in the user’s input communication using the recognized lattice; and
making task-type classification decisions based on the detected morphemes in the user’s input communication.
2. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the morphemes include at least one of verbal speech and non-verbal speech.
3. The automated task classification method of claim 2, wherein the non-verbal speech includes the use of at least one of gestures, body movements, head movements, non-responses, text, keyboard entries, keypad entries, mouse clicks, DTMF codes, pointers, stylus, cable set-top box entries, graphical user interface entries and touchscreen entries.
4. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the morphemes are expressed in multimodal form.
5. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the user’s input communication is derived from the verbal and non-verbal speech and the user’s environment.
6. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the morphemes in the user’s input communication are derived from the user’s actions, including the user’s focus of attention.
7. The automated task classification method of claim 1, further comprising entering into a dialog with the user to obtain a feedback response from the user.
8. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the user is prompted to provide a feedback response includes additional information with respect to the user’s initial input communication.
9. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the user is prompted to provide a feedback response that includes confirmation with respect to at least one of the set of task objectives determined in the classification decision.
10. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the input communication is routed based on the classification decision.
11. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the task objective is performed after the user’s input communication is routed.
12. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the method operates in conjunction with one or more communication networks, the one or more communication networks including at least one of a telephone network, the Internet, an intranet, Cable TV network, a local area network (LAN), and a wireless communication network.
13. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the method is used for customer care purposes.
14. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the classification decisions and corresponding user input communications are collected for automated learning purposes.
15. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the relationship between the generated morphemes and the one or more task objectives includes a measure of usefulness of a one of the morphemes to a specified one of the predetermined task objectives.
16. The automated task classification method of claim 15, wherein the usefulness measure is a salience measure.
17. The automated task classification method of claim 16, wherein the salience measure is represented as a conditional probability of the task objective being requested given an appearance of the morpheme in the input communication, the conditional probability being a highest value in a distribution of the conditional probabilities over the set of predetermined task objectives.
18. The automated task classification method of claim 16, wherein each of the plurality of generated morphemes has a salience measure exceeding a predetermined threshold.
19. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the relationship between the generated morphemes and the predetermined set of task objectives includes a measure of commonality within a language of the morphemes.
20. The automated task classification method of claim 19, wherein the commonality measure is a mutual information measure.
21. The automated task classification method of claim 20, wherein each of the plurality of generated morphemes has a mutual information measure exceeding a predetermined threshold.
22. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the input communication from the user represents a request for at least one of the set of predetermined task objectives.
23. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the input communication is responsive to a query of a form \u201cHow may I help you?\u201d.
24. The automated task classification method of claim 2, wherein each of the verbal and non-verbal speech are directed to one of the one or more task objectives and each of the verbal and non-verbal speech is labeled with the one task objective to which it is directed.
25. The automated task classification method of claim 1, wherein the morphemes are generated by clustering selected ones of salient sub-morphemes from training speech which are semantically and syntactically similar, stored in a database which is used to detect morphemes in the recognized lattice.

The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.

1. A method of graphically representing users of a messaging system, comprising:
at a client system having one or more processors and memory:
associating a particular graphical user identifier with a first user;
displaying the particular graphical user identifier to a second user in response to user initiated selections by the second user of information items in the messaging system that are associated with the first user;
in a contact information editing mode, displaying to the second user multiple graphical user identifier candidates distinct from the particular graphical user identifier; and
in response to a user selection by the second user, replacing the particular graphical user identifier, for display at the client system, with a second user-selected one of the multiple graphical user identifier candidates;
after the replacing, displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier to the second user in response to user initiated selections by the second user of information items in the messaging system that are associated with the first user.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the second user-selected graphical user identifier is selected from the set consisting of a photograph, drawing, video stream, or sequence of images.
3. The method of claim 2, further comprising:
in the contact information editing mode, allowing the second user to send a message to the first user, the message suggesting to the first user selection of the second user-selected graphical user identifier as the first user’s graphical user identifier.
4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:
displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier to the second user when the second user moves a cursor into a predefined vicinity of a respective information item associated with the first user; wherein the second user-selected graphical user identifier is selected from the set consisting of a photograph, drawing, video stream, or sequence of images.
5. The method of claim 4, wherein the predefined vicinity is with respect to a textual identifier of the first user, wherein the textual identifier is displayed in a message participants portion of a displayed email message.
6. A method of graphically representing users of a messaging system, comprising:
at a client system having one or more processors and memory:
associating a graphical user identifier with a first user;
associating a display permission, with respect to the graphical user identifier, with a set of second users chosen by the first user in a settings editing mode; and
sending messages from the first user to a plurality of message addressees, wherein a first subset of the message addressees are members of the set of second users and wherein a second subset of the message addressees are not members of the set of second users;

wherein display of the graphical user identifier to a first respective message addressee in the first subset, in response to user initiated selection by the first respective message addressee of any of the messages sent from the first user, is enabled; and
wherein display of the graphical user identifier to a second respective message addressee in the second subset, in response to user initiated selection by the second respective message addressee of any of the messages sent from the first user, is disabled.
7. The method of claim 6, further comprising:
allowing a respective second user to choose a different graphical user identifier for the first user;
replacing the graphical user identifier associated with the first user with the different graphical user identifier chosen by the respective second user; and
enabling display of the different graphical user identifier to the respective second user in response to a user selection by the respective second user of any of the messages sent by the first user to the respective second user.
8. The method of claim 6, further comprising:
displaying the graphical user identifier to a respective second user when the respective second user moves a cursor into a predefined vicinity of a respective information item associated with the first user.
9. The method of claim 8, wherein the predefined vicinity is with respect to a textual identifier of the first user, wherein the textual identifier is displayed in a message participants portion of a displayed email message.
10. A method of graphically representing users of an email system, comprising:
at a client system having one or more processors and memory:
in response to a selection by a second user, replacing in contact information of the second user, a default graphical user identifier of a first user with a second user-selected graphical user identifier; and
after the replacing, displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier to the second user, in response to user initiated selections by the second user of information items in the email system that are associated with the first user, including displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier in response to selection of an email message associated with the first user.
11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:
in a contact information editing mode, allowing the second user to send a message to the first user, the message suggesting to the first user selection of the second user-selected graphical user identifier as the first user’s graphic user identifier.
12. The method of claim 11, further comprising:
at client system associated with a third user:
displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier to the third user, in response to user initiated selections by the third user of information items that are associated with the first user, including displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier in response to selection of an email message associated with the first user;
in the contact information editing mode, displaying to the third user multiple graphical user identifier candidates distinct from the second user-selected graphical user identifier;
in response to a user selection by the third user, replacing the second user-selected graphical user identifier with a user-selected graphical user identifier chosen by the third user; and
after the replacing, displaying to the respective third user the user selected graphical user identifier, in response to user initiated selections by the respective third user of information items in the email system that are associated with the first user.
13. The method of claim 10, further comprising:
displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier to the second user when the second user moves a cursor into a predefined vicinity of a respective information item associated with the first user.
14. The method of claim 13, wherein the predefined vicinity is with respect to a textual identifier of the first user, wherein the textual identifier is displayed in a message participant’s portion of a displayed email message.
15. A computer system, comprising:
a main memory;
a processor; and
at least one program, stored in the main memory and executed by the processor, the at least one program further including:
instructions for responding to a selection by a second user by replacing, in contact information of the second user, a default graphical user identifier of a first user with a second user-selected graphical user identifier;
instructions for displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier to the second user, in response to user initiated selections by the second user of information items that are associated with the first user, including instructions for displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier in response to selection of an email message associated with the first user.
16. The computer system of claim 15, wherein the displaying instructions further comprise:
instructions for displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier to the second user when the second user moves a cursor into a predefined vicinity of a respective information item associated with the first user.
17. The computer system of claim 16, wherein the predefined vicinity is with respect to a textual identifier of the first user, wherein the textual identifier is displayed in a message participants portion of a displayed email message that is associated with the first user.
18. The computer system of claim 15, wherein the instructions further comprise:
instructions, for use in a contact information editing mode, for allowing the second user to send a message to the first user, the message suggesting selection of the second user-selected graphical user identifier to the first user.
19. The computer system of claim 18, further comprising:
instructions for displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier to a third user, in response to user initiated selections by the third user of information items that are associated with the first user, including instructions for displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier in response to selection of an email message associated with the first user;
instructions, for use in the contact information editing mode, for displaying to the third user multiple graphical user identifier candidates distinct from the second user-selected graphical user identifier; and
instructions, for use in the contact information editing mode, for replacing the second user-selected graphical user identifier with a user-selected graphical user identifier chosen by the third user; and
instructions for, after the replacing, displaying the user-selected graphical user identifier to the third user in response to user initiated selections by the third user of information items in the messaging system that are associated with the first user.
20. A computer program product for use in conjunction with a computer system, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium and a computer program mechanism embedded therein, the computer program mechanism comprising:
instructions for replacing in contact information of the second user, in response to a selection by a second user, a default graphical user identifier of a first user with a second user-selected graphical user identifier;
instructions for displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier to the second user, in response to user initiated selections by the second user of information items that are associated with the first user, including instructions for displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier in response to selection of an email message associated with the first user.
21. The computer program product of claim 20, wherein the displaying instructions further comprise:
instructions for displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier to the second user when the second user moves a cursor into a predefined vicinity of a respective information item associated with the first user.
22. The computer program product of claim 21, wherein the predefined vicinity is with respect to a textual identifier of the first user, wherein the textual identifier is displayed in a message participants portion of a displayed email message that is associated with the first user.
23. The computer program product of claim 20, wherein the suggest instructions further comprise:
instructions, for use in a contact information editing mode, for allowing the second user to send a message to the first user, the message suggesting selection of the graphical user identifier to the first user.
24. The computer program product of claim 23, further comprising:
instructions for displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier to a third user, in response to user initiated selections by the third user of information items that are associated with the first user, including instructions for displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier in response to selection of an email message associated with the first user;
instructions, for use in the contact information editing mode, for displaying to the third user multiple graphical user identifier candidates distinct from the second user-selected graphical user identifier; and
instructions, for use in the contact information editing mode, for replacing the second user-selected graphical user identifier with a user-selected graphical user identifier chosen by the third user; and
instructions for, after the replacing, displaying the user-selected graphical user identifier to the third user in response to user initiated selections by the third user of information items in the messaging system that are associated with the first user.
25. A computer system comprising:
means for replacing, in contact information of the second user, in response to a selection by a second user, a default graphical user identifier of a first user with a second user-selected graphical user identifier;
means for displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier to the second user, in response to user initiated selections by the second user of information items that are associated with the first user, including means for displaying the second user-selected graphical user identifier in response to selection of an email message associated with the first user.