Vinod Anupam

I like to figure out how things work. I like to figure out how to do things better (simpler, faster, cheaper.) I like to build things.

Work Experience

Academic Background

Honors

Technical Projects

(most recent first)

Scalable Location-Based Push Messaging

Scalable infrastructure that allows messages to be pushed to users based on their current location.

Service Broker

Lucent's Service Broker is a programmable SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) router that enables the creation of interesting telecommunication services both by creating new applications as well as by infusing new behavior into existing applications. Service Broker is the SCIM (Service Capability Interaction Manager) functional element in an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) network. IMS is a next-generation network architecture for telecommunication networks specified by the standardization bodies 3GPP(for the GSM family) and 3GPP2 (for the CDMA family.) Service Broker coordinates and controls multiple Application Servers first by selectively forwarding incoming SIP request messages to Application Servers, and then by intercepting and modifying or re-routing the SIP requests those servers generate and the responses that they get.

Untethered Phone:

Untethered Phone was an exploration into a "portable" phone service that would allow a user to take her "phone environment" - the calling plan, speed dial settings, phone service features, billing etc. with her as she moves from an office phone to a mobile phone to a home/hotel phone. The network-hosted solution would allow a subscriber to use her phone service from anywhere - e.g. it extends an enterprise user's personalized communication environment from the office phone to any phone (wireless or wireline) anywhere. When an enterprise user is working away from her location or in transit and is using e.g. a home phone, a hotel phone, a payphone, or a mobile phone, this solution would allow her to use 4-digit dialing or her speed-dial settings for outbound calls. She would be able to use advanced features of her desktop phone - multiple call appearances, conference calling, transfer, hold etc. And all her calling activity (from any device) would be reflected in a single call log, and a single bill charged at the enterprise rate. Incoming calls to her work number would be routed to her current phone.

WindowPhone:

WindowPhone was a Web-based softphone in the Lucent Communication Manager portal. The softphone would be downloaded on demand into the Web browser when a user logged into the portal when away from his desk. It could be used to place and receive calls and worked seamlessly with the portal GUI.

AnyDial:

AnyDial is a software solution that enables users to click to dial phone numbers and SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) URIs that appear in any Web page or Microsoft Office document. AnyDial automatically detect phone numbers and SIP URIs in Web and desktop documents by matching a customizable regular expression . Detected phone numbers are automatically converted into clickable links. AnyDial can be configured to either use a network-based click-to-dial server or a local softphone to place calls. AnyDial is a feature in the Lucent Communication Manager portal.

SpeechMail:

SpeechMail offered a speech driven interface to an enterprise emailbox. Users accessed it by calling a phone number. SpeechMail would connect to the user's email server and allow him to browse and search for messages using natural voice commands, and listen to email headers and messages via speech synthesis.

OfficeTunnel:

OfficeTunnel was an application-level VPN solution that allowed mobile employees to securely access their office computer environment (files, email, calendar, directory, intranet Web) from any data-connected device (phone, PDA, laptop, kiosk) outside the enterprise firewall. OfficeTunnel required minimal firewall reconfiguration, and offered enterprises a mechanism to provide secure but regulated remote access to enterprise data.

tREX - Tactical Rate Exchange:

tREX was a Bandwidth Trading Tool that let users (carriers, operators, bandwidth brokers etc.) model their networks, analyze them to generate optimal buy/sell recommendations in the presence of retail demand and a fluid wholesale market, and initiate bandwidth buy/sell transactions on exchanges.

Smart Bookmarks:

Smart Bookmarks was a system for replayable Web interaction. Unlike traditional bookmarks, which essentially consist of a URL that is retrieved when the bookmark is fired, Smart Bookmarks can maintain and play back a sequence of steps (like Web retrievals, form fill-ins and form submissions etc.) before arriving at a destination page. This allows users to even bookmark dynamically generated content.

SurfNChat:

SurfNChat was a shared browsing system that allowed two or more Web users to dynamically link-up their browsers (by visiting the SurfNChat web site) and subsequently browse the Web together while chatting via text. The users could even shop together at any Web site - appearing to be one user to that Web site. Key innovative aspects of the system included browser-independent and server independent shared browsing, a "virtual user" metaphor to support electronic transactions while co-browsing, and an ASP (Application Service Provider) model for provisioning services based on co-browsing. Users did not need not to download and install any software, and Web sites that used SurfNChat needed minimal modification (to provide a launch button). Long before AJAX was born, SurfNChat used JavaScript to drive an in-browser Java applet connected to a remote server to send and retrieve data and update an HTML user interface.

Browser Scripting Security:

We discovered one of the earliest Cross Site Scripting vulnerabilities (the "Bell Labs Privacy Bug") in then-current versions of Web browsers from Microsoft and Netscape. This vulnerability in JavaScript, a popular browser scripting language, allowed a malicious Web-site operator to infect a visitor's browser, permitting the attacker to track all URLs visited, data entered into forms (including passwords), and cookies set by servers. Secure (encrypted) connections and firewalls did not provide the user any extra protection. We developed a general framework for secure browser scripting centered around the notion of a safe interpreter that assures data security and user privacy. The interpreter implements access control, context independence, and trust management to support safe semantics. We also contributed code to the Mozilla project.

NetAssist:

NetAssist was a Web-based call center that allowed businesses to add interactive customer assistance capability to their Web site. NetAssist was absorbed into the CentreVu Internet Solutions suite from Lucent.

DataSpace:

DataSpace was a system for exploratory data analysis via 3D graphical visualization. It enabled users to visually interact with large multi-dimensional data sets to find patterns in the data. The use of 3D graphics provided high information density and rich interaction. Database integration provided the ability to deal with very large data sets.

Shastra:

Shastra was a Distributed and Collaborative Multimedia Scientific Manipulation Environment. At its core was a synchronous conferencing system that supported real-time multi-party interaction using video, audio, text, 2D and 3D graphics models, and application specific shared objects. In Shastra, we developed infrastructure to facilitate the task of building collaborative tools. Shastra's structural layer defined a language-and-platform independent architecture of tools that makes them amenable to collaborative interaction. Its media layer provided mechanisms for easily incorporating multiple media facilities into tools. Its collaboration layer provided infrastructure for building synchronous and asynchronous collaborative multimedia tools.

Shilp:

Shilp was a collaborative Geometric Modeling system and graphical communication environment. It supported distributed and collaborative geometric design and editing in 2D and 3D.

XS:

XS was a hardware-independent 3D graphics library that pre-dated OpenGL and provided access to system-dependent graphics hardware facilities in a uniform, system-independent manner.

Publications

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Patents

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Published Patent Applications

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