Interactive multimedia book

A method of presenting an interactive multimedia book on a computer system comprising the steps of:

• recognizing a voiced word spoken by the user of the book as an active hyperlink;
• responding to a voiced word which is an active hyperlink by first storing a current page number in a last in, first out register before moving to another page of the book which contains an anchor for the hyperlink, the current page being an origin page, and then moving to another page of the book which contains an anchor for the hyperlink;
• recognizing a voiced command spoken by the user of the book to return to the origin page;
• and
• responding to the voiced command to return to the origin page by moving back to the origin page.

A computer system comprising:

• a system unit having a generally rectangular shape;
• a display hinged at one edge of the system unit, said display being rotated away from the system unit when the computer system is in operation and rotated against the system unit when the computer system is not in operation;
• detecting means associated with the display for detecting when a user wants to operate the computer system and when the user wants turn the computer system off;
• and
• an automatic on and off function implemented on the computer system and responsive to said detecting means for turning on said computer system and performing an initial program load of an operating system installed on the computer system when the display is rotated away from the system unit and for initiating a shut down procedure of any open applications and the operating system when the display is rotated against the system unit.

A computer system for presenting an interactive multimedia book to a user comprising:

• a display for displaying text and video clips of the interactive multimedia book, some words of the text being hyperlinks to anchors in text not currently displayed;
• a voice recognition function installed on the computer system;
• a speech synthesis function installed on the computer system;
• a microphone for inputting voiced commands by the user to the voice recognition function;
• at least one speaker for outputting synthesized speech from the speech synthesis function;
• and
• an application program running on a central processing unit of the computer system for responding to a voiced command recognized by the voice recognition function to read text on a displayed page of the interactive multimedia book by causing the speech synthesis function to read the text, the application program identifying words which are active hyperlinks in the text on a displayed page as the text is being read and activating at least one attribute of a word identified as an active hyperlink to indicate to the user of the book that the word is a hyperlink, the application responding to a voiced hyperlink recognized by the voice recognition function by moving to another page of the book which contains an anchor for the hyperlink.

A computer system for presenting an interactive multimedia book to a user comprising:

• a display for displaying text and video clips of the interactive multimedia book, some words of the text being hyperlinks to anchors in text not currently displayed;
• a voice recognition function installed on the computer system;
• a speech synthesis function installed on the computer system;
• a microphone for inputting voiced commands by the user to the voice recognition function;
• at least one speaker for outputting synthesized speech from the speech synthesis function;
• a last in, first out register;
• and
• an application program running on a central processing unit of the computer system for responding to a voiced hyperlink recognized by the voice recognition function by first storing a current page number in the last in, first out register before moving to another page of the book which contains an anchor for the hyperlink, the current page being an origin page, and then moving to another page of the book which contains the anchor for the hyperlink, said application program responding to a voiced command recognized by the voice recognition function to return to the origin page by moving back to the origin page.

A machine readable medium containing computer code for presenting an interactive multimedia book on a computer, the computer code performing the steps of:

• recognizing voiced commands spoken by a user of the book;
• responding to a voiced command to read text on a displayed page of the book by reading text on the displayed page of the book;
• identifying words which are active hyperlinks in the text on a displayed page of the book as the text is being read;
• activating at least one attribute of a word identified as an active hyperlink to indicate to the user of the book that the word is a hyperlink;
• recognizing a voiced word spoken by the user of the book as an active hyperlink;
• and
• responding to a voiced word which is an active hyperlink by moving to another page of the book which contains an anchor for the hyperlink.