Patent ID: 8306823

Claim:
A dialog detecting apparatus capable of connecting to a plurality of terminals and capable of obtaining a speech of a user, comprising: a speech receiving unit that receives the speeches from the plurality of the terminals, each speech accompanying with a terminal ID identifying one of the terminals and an utterance duration of one of the speeches; an operation receiving unit that receives operation information associated with a data ID that identifies a reference data being relevant to the speech and an operation time and date in association with each other, the operation time and date indicating a time and date when the reference data is operated; a proximity determining unit that calculates a correlation value expressing a correlation between speeches received by the plurality of terminals, compares the correlation value with a predetermined first threshold value, and determines that the plurality of terminals which receive a plurality of speeches whose correlation value is calculated are close to each other, when the correlation value is larger than the first threshold value; a dialog detecting unit that determines whether a relationship between utterance durations fits a predetermined rule, the utterance durations being received from the plurality of terminals that are determined to be close to each other in an arbitrarily target period, and detects dialog information containing the target period during which the relationship is determined to fit the rule and the terminal IDs received from the plurality of terminals that are determined to be close to each other; a dialog storage unit that stores the dialog information during the target period containing the operation time and date associated with the received operation information, and the data ID associated with the received operation information in association with each other; and a processing unit for executing at least the dialog detecting unit.