Note: Descriptions are shown in the official language in which they were submitted.
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Patent Application of
Ting-Mao Chang
for
SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DELIVERING NOTIFICATION THROUGH TELEPHONE
NETWORK
Background--Field of Invention
This invention related to deliver a notification from the first computer
system to the second
computer system through telephone network, and, more particularly, relates to
system and
method for delivering notification from a computer server to a phone device.
The monitor system
in a phone can further be used to remind user upon calling to or receiving
call from a pre-selected
call party.
Background--Description of Prior Art
The present invention is related to notifying a phone device one or more
trigger events by
using the phone network. Yahoo! Inc. provides a mobile alert service that
delivers a user
specified trigger event to user's mobile phone by calling user's mobile phone
and delivery a short
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text message. Since user need to received the short text message to tell what
kind of trigger event
occurred, user need to pay for the communication fee charged by the phone
company or the
wireless carrier, even if Yahoo's service is free.
Summary of the Invention
A system and method for delivering information from a notification system
operating at the
host system, for example a computer server, to a destination phone group upon
sensing a
triggering event is provided, wherein the destination phone group includes one
or more phone
identities. A mapping module of the notification system associates a user's
trigger condition to a
source phone group automatically or with help from user, wherein the source
phone group
includes one or more phone identities. Said phone identity usually is a phone
number, a caller ID,
or a phone number with a caller's identity. For each user, the mapping module
will preferably
associate each of user's trigger conditions to a unique source phone group
within user's trigger
conditions. The mapping relation is provided to user or user's phone.
Therefore, user or user's
phone can distinguish the trigger event by the source phone group from which
an incoming phone
call. The association between a trigger condition and a source phone group
might be terminated
or expired according to rule of the notification system or user's preference.
A notification system
enables a user to send a notification from the notification system to the
user's phone upon
detecting that one or more user-defined triggering events have occurred. The
notification system
operates in connection with event generating applications at the host system
to configure and
detect a particular event that defined by said trigger condition, and then to
notify user's phone the
trigger event by calling one or more phone numbers in the related destination
phone group from
one or more phone numbers in the related source phone group through a
telephone network. A
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monitor system on user's phone monitors the phone number or caller ID of the
incoming phone
call and performs a pre-selected job based on the phone number of the incoming
phone call.
An embodiment to deliver new arrived e-mail message to user is that user
requests the
notification system to make a phone call to user's phone device from a phone
in the source phone
group when a new e-mail message or a e-mail from a pre-selected sender arrived
in user's mail
box, and the user schedules a job with the monitor system on user's phone
device to retrieve e-
mail message from an e-mail server upon sensing an incoming call from said
phone number.
The notification system detects one or more trigger events for sending notice
to user by
making a phone call from a phone in the source phone group. For distinguish
the different trigger
events, the notification system assigns each of trigger events of a user a
unique source phone
group. The trigger event may be any events, such as user's e-mail arrival,
user's e-mail arrival
from a particular sender, a new meeting appointment request, severe weather
wacning, new lows
or highs of a stock monitored by user, breaking new on an interested topic.
Therefore, said event
may be any event, internal, external, or network event.
The monitor system on user's phone device also provides functions for
scheduling one or
more system default or user specified jobs, and for execute said jobs in
response to detect the
incoming phone call from one or more pre-selected phone number. The job may be
one or more
tasks, for example displaying the information related the trigger event,
exchanging e-mail with an
e-mail server on another computer, sending a pre-determined message or data to
another
computer through a wireless network, turning on a data network connection,
such as GPRS, and
making a phone call to a pre-determined phone number, login to another
computer system
through a pre-selected authentication process, sending a set of computer
instruction to control
another computer, showing the phone identify plus a pre-selected message or
picture, playing
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back a pre-selected voice/audio message or video message or ring tone, and
executing a pre-
selected computer program, such as calendar, e-mail viewer, web browser, etc.
In an alternative embodiment, the notification system makes the phone call to
user's mobile
device and disconnects the phone call before user answer the phone call for
reducing the fee
charged by the phone company. The condition to disconnect the phone call can
be configured by
user. The notification system might discotinect the phone call after waiting a
number of seconds
or a number of ringing received before user answer the phone call.
In another embodiment, the monitor system monitors the incoming phone call and
prevents
user answer the incoming phone call if the phone call is from the phone
identity that related to
one of scheduled jobs. To prevent user answer the incoming phone call, the
monitor system will
disconnect the phone call if the incomirig phone call is allowed to be
disconnected without
answering the call. Otherwise, the monitor system can change the incoming
phone call
notification, i.e. ring tone or vibration. To change the incoming phone call
notification is either to
turn it off or to change it to another type of notification to distinguish it
from normal phone call.
In yet another embodiment, the notification system on a host system makes the
phone call to
user's mobile device from a phone originator with a pre-selected phone
identity upon receiving an
Internet phone from a particular party to the user. The monitor system on
user's mobile phone
notifies user when received incoming call from said pre-selected phone
identity. If user decides to
answer the phone call, the monitor system might further bridge the
communication to the Internet
phone call. If user misses the phone call, the monitor system might call
another pre-selected
phone number associated with the Internet phone caller and the notification
system will call the
Internet phone caller through Internet phorre system and bridges it to the
previous call party.
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Drawing Figures
A system and method for a phone device to receiving notice from a notification
system and
perform one or more tasks. In the following description, for purpose of
explanation, numerous of
specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of
the present invention.
FIG. 1 shows an embodiment of the present invention that a host system is
computer system and
is linked with a phone dialer system.
FIG. 2 shows an embodiment of the present invention that a user's phone
device.
FIG. 3 shows the relation between trigger condition, source phone group, and
destination phone
group.
FIG. 4 shows the operation flow of the notification system.
FIG.5 shows the operation flow of the monitor system on user's phone.
FIG.6 shows the work flow of the monitor system that works independently from
the notification
system.
Description--FIGs. 1 to 6
FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a notification system 0100 for detecting and
notifying trigger
events in accordance with some embodiments of the present invention. The
computer system
0100 is generally implemented using any conventional general-purpose computer
having
conventional computer components, including at least one processor 0101,
program memory
0102, network interface 0103, and one or more input or output devices 0104.
The input device
may include mouse, keyboard, touch sensitive screen, or voice recognition
module. The output
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device may include monitor, screen, or speaker module. Application program
0105 is generally
executed on top of any conventional operating system 0106. Application program
0105 is
generally programmed in any conventional general-purpose programming language,
such as Java,
C, and C++, any combination of general-purpose programming languages, or any
combination of
a general-purpose programming language and a more specialized programming
language, such as
a scripting language (Perl). In general, any computing device capable of
processing information
may be used in various embodiments of the present invention. Computer system
0100 links to a
database 0107 storing one or more trigger conditions. A telephone dialer 0108
is link to computer
system 0100 and is able to make phone call from multiple phone originations.
The notification system receives signal or message from applications, the
network interface
0103, or input/output devices 0104. The notification receives at least one
user's trigger condition
and returns a phone group to user. One or more phone identities in the phone
group are used to
call said user at the event that matches with the trigger condition.
In the present invention, the phone device to receive notification by
telephone call can be any
telephone phone, for example a mobile phone manufactured by Nokia Inc etc.
FIG. 2 shows the
example of the phone device of an embodiment. The phone device 0200 is
generally implemented
using any conventional phone having conventional phone components, including
at least one
processor 0201, program memory 0202, phone communication interface 0203 for
connecting to
phone network, and one or more input or output devices 0204. Application
program 0205 is
general executed on top of operating system 0206 by the processor 0201. In
another embodiment,
phone device is a smarter phone, for example SmartPhone or PocketPC Phone
developed by
Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, which usually has dual processors, one for
phone
communication stack and one for general PDA application. It might further
include other
communication interface, such as Bluetooth or WiFi.
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In one embodiment, user uses web browser on a desktop computer to login to Web
server on
notification system 0100 through Internet. Notification system determines
user's identity through
the login process. The Web server displays a trigger condition creation Web
page with multiple
trigger condition options for user to choose, for example new e-mail arrival,
stock price at new
highs and lows, or the score of a sport event. User is allowed to specify more
detail conditions,
for example the e-mail sender must be john@yahoo.com. User further specifies a
group of
destination phone number for the notification system to call upon the trigger
event occurred. The
Web site certainly can provide a tool for user to specify user's own trigger
condition instead of
the pre-formatted trigger condition. When user selects OK on the creation
page, system 10 stores
the trigger condition in the database 0107 and associates the trigger
condition with the destination
phone group and further associates with a source phone group. Said each phone
group might
contain one or more phone identities, such as numbers or Caller IDs. Depending
on the phone
system, a Caller ID might contain the phone number part and the name part, and
either part can be
used to identify phone origination in the phone groups. The selection of
source phone group
might be based on the area code of the phone number in the destination phone
group, the source
phone group of user's other trigger condition, or further based on the load
balancing decision,
which is to balance the number of trigger conditions assigned to each source
phone number or the
possibility of occurrence. Upon the trigger event that matches with the
trigger condition,
notification system instructs a phone dialer to make phone call from a phone
number in the source
phone group to a phone number in the destination phone group. The notification
certainly can try
to call more or all phone number in the destination phone group. In this
embodiment, a mapping
module of the notification system automatically assigns the source phone
number to each of
trigger conditions. However, user might be allowed to choose the source phone
from a pool of
phone numbers in other embodiment. In an alternative embodiment, user might
use web browser
on a smart phone to connect to the Web server through wireless data
communication network
instead of using the desktop computer. In yet another embodiment, user might
use a customized
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application program, instead of web browser, on a PocketPC phone to setup the
trigger conditions
through wireless data communication network.
FIG. 3 shows the relation between trigger conditions, source phone numbers,
and destination
phone numbers. User Tom's mobile 5432101 is selected as the destination phone
group 0301 and
Tom registers two trigger conditions 0302 and 0304 with notification system.
Trigger condition
0302 is triggered when Tom received e-mail from johnCyahoo.com, and is
assigned to source
phone group 0303, which includes phone number 8012345 and 8012346. Trigger
condition 0304
is triggered when john123 call tom123, Tom's identity, on Skype Phone, and is
assigned to
source phone group 0305, which includes phone number 7012345 and 7012346. When
Tom
received incoming phone call from 7012345, he know john123 is calling him on
Skype Phone.
Similarly, User Mary registers three trigger conditions, 0312, 0314, and 0316.
The source phone
groups for each trigger condition of a user are preferably to be distinct form
each other. Mary has
mobile phone 3331001 and home phone 5551001; both phones are selected as
destination phone
group 0311 with higher priority for mobile phone. For example in the event
that mot456 call
mary123, Mary's identity, on Skype Phone, one phone number in source group and
3331001 in
destination group are selected by the notification system and deliver to the
phone dialer 0108.
Then, the dialer makes a phone call from selected source phone number to
selected destination
phone number. If the selected destination phone number is busy, another
destination phone
number from the destination group is selected. In another embodiment, the
phone dialer 0108
retrieves the source phone number and destination phone number from database
0107 directly by
given an identifier of the trigger condition that is provided by the
notification system.
After notification system successfully registering a trigger condition, the
notification system
returns the group of source phone number or caller ID back to user through a
Web page or
directly to the customized program on user's phone. If multiple trigger
conditions are registered,
the mapping between trigger conditions and source phone groups is returned to
user. Then, user
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can assign a special ring tone for the incoming call from one or more of the
source phone
numbers on user's phone device. In another embodiment, user might schedule a
job on user's
phone for replaying a pre-recorded audio message upon detecting an incoming
call from one of
said source phone groups, for example said "You got mail from John" when
incoming call from
80112345 or 80112346 in FIG. 3. The user might schedule another job to bring
up e-mail client
and automatically connect to the e-mail server for exchanging e-mails. In yet
another embodiment
said customized program on user's phone automatically associates the received
one or more
source phone numbers with a special ring tone or picture, or automatically
schedules a particular
job upon receiving call from one of said source phone number. The job, for
example, includes
sending out a remind message, sending/receiving e-mail, downloading
information, sending out
control instruction to other devices, such as computers or appliances, etc.
FIG. 4 shows the operation flow of the notification system. In step 040t, the
notification
system starts. In step 0402, go to 0403 if receive trigger condition and user
information for
determining the source phone group. Otherwise, go to 0406. Said user
information can be one or
more user's phone numbers or a user identity for looking up user's phone
number in a contact
database. In step 0403, determine a source phone group. The deternunation
niight be based on the
area code of the destination phone number, the source phone group of said
user's other trigger
condition, or the load on each individual source phone. In step 0404, stores
the trigger condition
in database 0107, and associates the trigger condition with the destination
phone group and the
source phone group. The destination phone group includes said one or more
user's phone
numbers. In step 0405, return the source phone group to user. In another
embodiment, the trigger
condition or its identity might be further returned. In yet another
embodiment, an expiration
condition will be further given to the association between the trigger
condition and it source
phone group by either the notification system or user and agrees by both
parties. The expiration
condition might be a expiration time or the number of reoccurrence of a
trigger event. If said
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association expires, the association will be automatically terniinated or
removed from the
notification system and the user's phone, and the source phone group can be
reuse for other
trigger conditions. In step 0406, receive messages or signals, and check for
trigger condition. If
the received message or signals match with the trigger condition, go to step
0407, instruct the
phone dialer 0108 to call a destination phone number from a source phone
number that associate
with said trigger condition, and then go back to step 0402. If received
message or signals doesn't
match with the trigger condition, go back to step 0402.
FIG. 5 shows the operation flow of user's phone device. In step 0501, the
monitor system
starts on user's phone device. In step 0502, receive a trigger condition from
user. In step 0503,
send the trigger condition to the notification system 0100, which is coupled
to step 0402 in FIG. 4.
In step 0504, receive the source phone group from notification system, which
is coupled with step
0405 in FIG. 4. In step 0505, schedule a job on phone device or associate a
special ring tone or
picture with one or more phone numbers in the received source phone group.
Said job can be a
default function or specified by the user. In step 0506, detect incoming phone
call from said
source phone group. In step 0507, execute the job if an incoming call is from
said source phone
group, which is coupled with step 0407 in FIG. 4, and then go back to step
0502. The step 0502,
0503, 0504, and 0505 can be executed in a separate thread that is well known
in the computer
programming art.
In an embodiment, user would like to receive the phone call from an important
Internet phone
caller. The Inteinet phone, for example Skype manufactured by Skype Limited,
runs on a desktop
computer. However, user is away from the desktop computer. User schedules a
trigger condition
with said notification system 0100 for notifying said user upon said important
Internet phone
caller calls said user through the Internet phone. To register Internet phone
callers, the user sends
the notification system one or more Internet phone caller identities and a
user information for
determining the destination phone group. The user information is either the
user's one or more
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phone numbers or user's identity for determining user's phone. The mapping
module of the
notification system of the present embodiment associates each of said Internet
phone caller
identities to a source phone group. The mapping between Internet phone caller
identity and
source phone group is stored in database 0107 and is returned to the user. The
relation between
the phone number or caller ID in source phone group and the identity of the
Internet phone caller
can be added into the contact list in user's phone by user manually or by a
program automatically.
User can incrementally add new phone caller to notification system. The
notification system
preferably assigns the new phone caller a new source phone group that is
different from the
source phone group for user's existing phone caller. The notification system
detects the event that
one of the registered Internet phone caller calls the user through Internet
phone. There are many
way to signal notification system, for example plug in a program into user's
Internet phone to
send notification system the caller identity when receiving an incoming call
or have the
notification system login the Internet phone system as said user, wherein the
notification system
will know who is calling the user. By knowing the identity of Internet phone
caller and identity of
the user, the notification system then retrieves the related source phone
group and destination
phone group from database 0107 and instructs phone dialer 0108 to call one or
more phones in
the destination phone group from one or more phones in the source phone
number. When user's
phone received call from a phone in the source phone group, user's phone shows
the phone
number, or caller ID, of the incoming call and the present invention will
further shows the
identity of the Internet phone caller. User can either ignore the phone call
or answer the phone
call. If user answers the phone call, the dialer automatically bridges the
Internet phone caller and
the user. If user miss the phone call and later dial back to the source phone
number, the
notification system can derive the identity of latest Internet phone caller
from the user's phone
number or caller ID, and then call the Internet phone caller through the
Internet phone, and bridge
the Internet phone caller and the user. Since said each of user's Internet
phone caller is associated
with a distinct group of source phone number, the user can tell the identity
of the Internet phone
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caller by looking at the incoming call phone number, caller ID, or the
Internet phone caller
identity. In another embodiment, when registering the identity of Internet
phone caller,
notification system can automatically generate a contact list that associates
the phone number in
source phone group to the related Internet phone caller identity. The contact
list can then be sent
to user's phone and appended to the contact list in the phone. In yet another
embodiment, the
notification system further provides user a call back phone number for each
Internet phone caller.
User can call (or call back) an Internet phone caller by calling the related
call back phone number.
The notification system can derived the identity of the Internet phone caller
from the call back
phone number and the incoming call phone number or caller ID, which identifies
the user. The
notification system further calls the Internet phone caller through the
Internet phone system, and
bridges the user and the Internet phone caller. If several user's Internet
phone callers share the
same call back phone number, the user will be bridge to most recent
unsuccessful Internet phone
caller. The present application basically provides a solution to map the first
group of caller
identity to the second group of caller identity. Two groups might pertain to
the same phone
system or to different phone systems, for example one is PSTN system and one
is VOIP system.
This application allows user or user's phone to derive the caller's identity
in the second group
from the identity of the incoming phone in the first group.
In another embodiment, the notification system does not have enough outgoing
phone lines
and some of the Internet phone callers need to share the same source phone
group. The present
embodiment can further assign these shared Internet phone callers to different
time slots. For
example, notify user at the first quarter of a niinute when caller A calls and
notify user at the
second quarter of a minute when caller B calls. This embodiment uses less
phone resource but
might have some delay for waiting for the correct time slot.
Although the monitor system on user's phone is tightly integrated with the
notification
system, the monitor system can also be used independently. User can schedule a
job to be
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executed upon an incoming call from a particular contact, caller, or phone
number, which does
not necessary the phone number selected by the notification system. In one
embodiment, user
schedules a reminder that is associated with a contact, caller, or phone
number. In addition to the
ring tone or a picture that identifies the caller of an incoming call, the
monitor system further
presents the reminder message to user upon receiving a call from said contact,
caller, or phone
number. Since incoming caller's phone number or caller ID already tell user
who the caller is,
said reminder of the present invention is for reminding user extra information
in addition to who
the caller is. In the preferred embodiment, said extra information might be
related to one or more
selected from an event, a time, a place, a thing, or another contact. For
example in Microsoft
Outlook, a contact can be associated with information related to an event in
the calendar, a task in
to-do list, an e-mail in e-mail box, a note, a entry in journal, or another
contact, etc. In another
embodiment, user schedules a job to open a document by a document reader. For
example, user's
boss might call user for a discussion and user would like to tell his boss a
research summary in a
spreadsheet. The user can schedule a job to open the spreadsheet document upon
user's boss call
the user. Alternatively, the monitor system can monitor the outgoing call. The
monitor system can
automatically perform a scheduled job when user is calling a phone number or
person that
associated with said job. For example, user select a contact from the contact
list in his phone and
input a reminder message "Ask pick up time" for associating with the contact.
When user initiate
a call to the contact, the monitor system detects the outgoing call and
retrieves the reminder
message associated with said contact and executes a default job that presents
said reminder
message to the user. The way to present a reminder is well known in the art,
for example
presenting in text, picture, audio, video, etc. If the contact calls the user
first, the monitor system
identify the contact according to the phone number or caller ID of the
incoming call, retrieve the
associated information, and present the information to the user. So, in either
case, the user will be
reminded to ask the other call party the pick up time. FIG.6 shows the work
flow of the monitor
system that works independently from the notification system. The monitor
system starts from
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step 0601. In step 0602, go to 0603 if user would like to schedule a new job,
otherwise, go to step
0606. In step 0603, user selects a contact. A contact usually is related to a
person or a business
and includes a phone number, a name, or a picture that identifies the contact.
In step 0604, user
specifies a job. Said job might include one or more tasks and the related
information. For
scheduling a default reminder job, user might only need to specify the
reminder message. In step
0605, associate the job with the contact. In step 0606, go to step 0608 if
detect an incoming call
from the selected contact, otherwise, go to step 0607. In step 0607, go to
step 0608 if detect an
outgoing call to said contact, otherwise, go to step 0602. During scheduling
the job, user can
specify the expired date/time or the number of recurrence of the job
execution, for example, once,
twice, always, etc. Said expired date/time and the number of recurrence can be
stored in memory.
The job can be automatically removed after expired or satisfied the number of
recurrence or
removed with user's confirmation. This reminder or job triggering method can
be used either in
the traditional phone or the Internet phone. The contact, the job related
information, or their
association can be stored either in the phone or in a remote computer system
and retrieved on
demand. Separating FIG.6 from FIG5 is just for easy of explanation. Merge
FIG.6 flow with
FIG.5 flow is just a practice of computer programming and well know in the
art.
Conclusion, Ramifications, and Scope
The present invention provides a notification system that calls user's phone
from a pre-
selected phone that associates with a trigger conditions upon detects the
trigger event of said
trigger conditions. On user's phone, the present invention further provides a
monitor system that
triggers a pre-selected job upon detecting an incoming call from or outgoing
call to a pre-selected
contact according to phone number or Caller ID.
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Although the description above contains many specific details, these should
not be construed
as limiting the scope of the invention but as merely providing illustrations
of some the possible
embodiments of the invention.
Thus, the scope of the invention should be determined by the appended claims
and their legal
equivalents, rather than by the examples given.
