Patent Application
20110208740
Communication is an increasingly important component of most people's lives and the average person can make contact with hundreds of other people. There is an increasing trend in the number of contacts, and this has created new challenges for managing contacts.
Some social scientists maintain that most communication is emotional and that analytical content is secondary, if present at all. Whether justified or not, caring and emotions are frequently termed “right brain” activities, and hence being good at these activities is sometimes referred to as “r-smartness” which is short for “right brain smartness”.
People often use r-smartness in determining how they communicate with other people. In some cultures this can be very pronounced, and can even affect the vocabulary and grammar of a conversation. For example, in pre-modern Europe, third person and indirect terms were used when conversing with royalty. As another example, in Japan different forms are used depending on whether one is speaking to children, family, co-workers, elders and bosses. Take for instance the Japanese word for thank you. It can take the form of “domo”, “domo arigato”, and “domo arigato gozaimasu” depending on the perceived acting role and status difference in the conversation. Thus, in this context, acting roles can include such things as parent-child, student-teacher, employee-boss, among others. Furthermore, status differences can be based on age, attainment in a skill, spiritual attainment, money, among others. Indeed, this also exists in a less formal form in American English with “thanks”, “thank you”, and “thank you very much” and other variations said in different tones and intonations. However, r-smartness comes into play in a variety of situations, not just when saying thank you.
As telecommunication means have diversified from simple land-line phones to include, among others, personal digital assistants (PDAs), cell phones, email devices such as desktop computers and laptops, and the like, the use of simple phone books and operator assistance can no longer be optimum means for keeping track of contacts. As a result, personally owned contacts lists are playing a larger role in people's lives. Enhancing such personally owned contacts lists can result in smoother communications and enhanced productivity.
Moreover, other forces, such as high-powered marketing and identity theft, have caused people to become more reticent about giving out or publishing contact information. This trend has placed pressure on individuals to organize their own contact lists rather than to rely upon a central source such as a phone book or directory service, so that, once again, the personal contacts list, and r-smartness is becoming more important.
Non-limiting and non-exhaustive embodiments of the subject disclosure are described with reference to the following figures, wherein like reference numerals refer to like parts throughout the various views unless otherwise specified.
In the following detailed description, numerous specific details are set forth to provide a thorough understanding of claimed subject matter. However, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that claimed subject matter can be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, well-known methods, procedures, components and/or circuits have not been described in detail.
Some portions of the following detailed description are presented in terms of algorithms and/or symbolic representations of operations on data bits and/or binary digital signals stored within a computing system, such as within a computer and/or computing system memory. These algorithmic descriptions and/or representations are the techniques used by those of ordinary skill in the data processing arts to convey the substance of their work to others skilled in the art. An algorithm is here, and generally, considered to be a self-consistent sequence of operations and/or similar processing leading to a desired result. The operations and/or processing can involve physical manipulations of physical quantities. Typically, although not necessarily, these quantities can take the form of electrical, magnetic and/or electromagnetic signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined, compared and/or otherwise manipulated. It has proven convenient, at times, principally for reasons of common usage, to refer to these signals as bits, data, values, elements, symbols, characters, terms, numbers, numerals and/or the like. It should be understood, however, that all of these and similar terms are to be associated with appropriate physical quantities and are merely convenient labels. Unless specifically stated otherwise, as apparent from the following discussion, it is appreciated that throughout this specification discussions utilizing terms such as “processing”, “computing”, “calculating”, “determining” and/or the like refer to the actions and/or processes of a computing platform, such as a computer or a similar electronic computing device, that manipulates and/or transforms data represented as physical electronic and/or magnetic quantities and/or other physical quantities within the computing platform's processors, memories, registers, and/or other information storage, transmission, and/or display devices.
In accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter any one of spokes 106 can be associated with one or more “emotience” or “emotient” attributes, emotient characteristics and/or emotient properties 110. In some implementations, an emotient property 110 associated with a spoke 106 can comprise a property value list including, in a non-limiting manner, such characteristics as familiarity, affection, respect and/or respect level, esteem and/or esteem level, status and/or status difference, acting role, among others. In other words, such properties can reflect how a user feels about a personal contact.
Further, an emotient property can have a value; the value in turn can be a property, or even another property value list. Thus, in some implementations of claimed subject matter, an emotient property comprising a familiarity property can have an integer value that describes how well user 102 knows one of contacts 108. For example, an integer value of “0” can represent user 102 having no familiarity with a particular contact 108, while an integer value of “10” can represent user 102 having intimate knowledge of a particular contact 108. In other implementations of claimed subject matter, rather than numerical values, values associated with an emotient property such as a familiarity property can comprise another property value list such as “stranger”, “acquaintance”, “close”, and “intimate” among other possibilities.
In some implementations of claimed subject matter an emotient property 110 can be associated with derived properties where derived properties can comprise properties derived from a base or fundamental property value list comprising a property 110. Accordingly, properties that appear in a base property value list can be considered to be fundamental properties while derived properties can be created from fundamental properties by a rule, set of rules, algorithm, program or the like. In various implementations, derived properties can be created dynamically as needed, can be stored back into a base property value list, and/or can be placed in one or more auxiliary property value lists.
As one example among many, a derived property of affection could be determined from fundamental emotient properties such as familiarity, acting role, etc. In this context, an example rule for creating a derived property of affection can be to assume affection for the acting role of ‘wife’. In general, rules and algorithms for generating derived properties can combine a number of factors, some of which can be externally influenced. An example of an externally influencing factor can comprise a “number_of_contacts” factor. Such a factor can comprise an emotient property taking an integer value that an algorithm increments each time contact is made with a particular person. Thus, for example, an r-smart contacts database in accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter can then derive a value for an affection, or similarly-named, property based on a respect level and a number of contacts provided by the integer value.
As another implementation of derived properties in accordance with claimed subject matter, one or more emotient properties can be determined based on common properties, and/or common property values among a plurality of contacts. In this context the term “ring” can be used to describe the grouping of contacts and the phrase “ring properties” can be used to describe emotient properties associated with a group of contacts. Similar meanings of the term “ring” can be found, for example, in the area of abstract algebra, and in colloquial terms such as “crime ring”. Claimed subject matter is not limited in this regard however, and, thus, a grouping of contacts in accordance with claimed subject matter can be described as a “ring”, a “group”, a “domain”, to name just a few examples. Thus, within this disclosure, use of the term “ring” should not be understood as describing a literal geometric shape, even though such shapes can be employed in network diagrams, etc., that can be used to illustrate example implementations of claimed subject matter.
In comparison to
In some implementations of claimed subject matter, r-smart information associated with a person-centric network can be created, edited, and/or viewed by separate programs, or a combined program in order to create editor/viewer functions. Such a program or collection of programs can be called an “emotience manager” although claimed subject matter is not limited in this regard. Such a program or programs can render r-smart information in graphical form as shown in
In some implementations, a user can select (e.g., click on) a display form to cause one or more actions to occur. For example, a user clicking on a category label can cause an underlying list to collapse or expand. Further, a user clicking on elements of a list can cause details for a contact to be rendered. Rendering of such details can be provided by an editor function where contact information can be modified and or supplemented, and preferences such as a primary label, for example, can be set.
It should now be apparent to those skilled in the art, that rendering or bringing only contextually appropriate information to the forefront can also be applied when different user interfaces are employed, including a GUI. Another possible filtering interface can comprise an interface that allows a user to explicitly select desired rings to be shown. Such an interface can present a dialog box, and allow a user to enter the names of one or more rings into the dialog box. A possible further extension of this implementation can interpret user input as a regular expression, and then present all matching categories.
In accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, a ring method of organizing contacts can provide a user with greater flexibility to segment contact lists into contexts that apply at any particular moment, while leaving out or de-emphasizing those that do not. Thus, for example, a user can filter communications with contacts based upon how the user feels about various contacts at particular times and/or in particular contexts. As an example of this filtering, a user who is at the office can feel that communications with co-workers and/or supervisors are more important and thus can turn off or de-emphasize family and/or friend's rings so that more immediately useful work-related contacts are emphasized in the foreground of an interface's graphical rendering. Whereas, in contrast, a user in the context of a family event, such as wedding or family reunion, can feel that family contacts are more important and therefore make a family ring the immediate and most easily accessible ring.
In accordance with some implementations, r-smart person-centric networks can be hierarchical in format. For example, a “family” ring or group can be further broken down into sub-rings or sub-groups such as “immediate family” (such as wife, son, daughter, etc.), and “extended family” (such as mom, dad, uncle, cousin, etc.). Such hierarchical groupings can extend for multiple levels of sub-rings; for example, “cousins” in an extended family ring might open up or be selectable to reveal a sub-ring providing a list of all cousins. For example,
In general, contact information can be quite extensive and/or arbitrary. In some implementations of claimed subject matter, the nature of contact information can reflect an application and/or a ring. For example, friends and family contacts can have names and addresses with phone numbers and email addresses. In contrast, employment-related contacts can include office addresses and phone extensions. In some implementations of claimed subject matter, a context of a contact can be entered along with other contact information. For example, in accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter a contact manager enhanced to support r-smart person-centric networks can provide an enhanced format for a user to enter contact information.
In other implementations in accordance with claimed subject matter, an application can support a ring manager separate from a contacts list manager. In such implementations, a user can add contacts to one or more rings rather than adding rings to the contacts. Many other variations will be apparent to those skilled in the art.
In yet other implementations in accordance with claimed subject matter, a primary label can be implied or derived from other information potentially in combination with user preferences. Further, some or all of the information on a form can be optional. In addition, there can be a default ring for those who are not placed on any ring.
In some implementations in accordance with claimed subject matter, r-smart person-centric networks such as rings can be internally defined using list structures. Accordingly, the head of a list can comprise a ring name, and subsequent members of the list can comprise references to members of a ring. Sub-lists can represent hierarchical information within such list structures.
For example, a person-centric list structure in accordance with claimed subject matter might take the following form: (ring-top (Important Wife Ann) (Family Mom Dad Sister Wife (cousins Rick Rob Cindy Kevin)) (Management Susan Greg John) (Team Members Greg Dirk Ann) (Friends Randy Mike Doyle)).
Such person-centric list structures in accordance with claimed subject matter can be in various formats such as American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) format, binary format, etc, the particularly format not being limiting. In some implementations, labels such as the primary label “important” can comprise references such as database keys or address pointers, among many other possibilities. Further, instead of a list structure, some implementations in accordance with claimed subject matter can employ data structures or arrays to define r-smart person-centric networks. Many other forms of internal representations will be apparent to those skilled in the arts of computer programming.
Some implementations in accordance with claimed subject matter can define special rings. Such special rings can include, for example, “everybody” and “nobody” rings where an everybody ring can comprise a flat contact list that includes all contacts, and a nobody ring can contain all contacts that do not belong to any other ring. Various implementations can give such special rings names other than “everybody” and “nobody”.
Example Method For Associating Data with R-Smart Criteria
In act 602, a plurality of personal contacts can be provided, while in act 604 those personal contacts can be organized by associating them with at least one emotient property. Further, in act 606, at least some of those contacts received in act 602 can be organized into at least one group (e.g., a ring) comprising contacts having a common property. The at least one group formed in act 606 can, in act 608, be further organized into a plurality of sub-groups. In addition, in act 610, an internal representation of the groups and/or sub-groups can be formed comprising at least one of a list structure, a data structure and/or an array. Also, in act 612, at least one derived property can be determined.
In the context of this disclosure, and the claims that follow, the term “ring” can be used to describe the grouping of personal contacts and the phrase “ring properties” can be used to describe properties associated with a group of contacts. Similar meanings of the term “ring” can be found, for example, in the area of abstract algebra, and in colloquial terms such as “crime ring”. Claimed subject matter is not limited in this regard however, and, thus, a grouping of contacts in accordance with claimed subject matter can be described as a “ring”, a “group”, a “domain”, to name just a few examples. Thus, within this disclosure, use of the term “ring” should not be understood as describing a literal geometric shape, even though such shapes can be employed in network diagrams, etc., that can be used to illustrate example implementations of claimed subject matter.
For many individuals the day can be partitioned into time intervals and/or event categories having related purposes. For example, early hours can be for preparing for the day, morning and afternoon hours can be spent at the office, the noon hour can be for lunch, the early evening can comprise personal time, the dinner hour and late evening hours can be dedicated to family, and the weekends can be devoted to recreation, etc. For purposes of this disclosure, time intervals and/or event categories and/or types of situations can be referred to simply as “scenarios” or “events”. Further, in accordance with claimed subject matter, scenarios can be associated with scenario “properties”. For instance, in the above example, scenario properties can include, “preparation” associated with a morning scenario, “lunch” associated with a noon hour scenario, etc.
Further, while scenarios can be associated with a specific time interval or period, claimed subject matter is not limited in this regard. Thus, scenarios in accordance with claimed subject matter can be defined with respect to any contextual elements that can be associated with a set of behavioral expectations that, in turn, can be associated with specific temporal circumstances. In addition, in the context of this disclosure and/or claimed subject matter, contextual elements of a scenario can set behavioral expectations associated with that scenario and can include, but are not limited to, time of day and/or year, social setting (e.g., work, family, friends, etc.), etc. Hence, for example, a “business meeting” event could occur at any time, although for many individuals there might be an expectation that such a scenario would occur between 8 AM and 5 PM on weekdays. For another example, an “in transit” or “traveling” property can be associated with a “vacation” scenario or event where the property of being “in transit” can be somewhat randomly temporally associated with the “vacation” scenario that, in turn, can represent a “one off” or asynchronous event.
Yet, further, in accordance with claimed subject matter, scenario or event names themselves can comprise properties. For example, a morning scenario can be associated with a name property comprising “morning”, a noon hour scenario can be associated with a name property comprising “noon hour”, etc. In some embodiments of claimed subject matter, scenarios can be described by a list format.
Those skilled in the art can recognize that textual representations of lists having embedded spaces, such as in scenario names of
Furthermore, in accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, properties themselves can be associated with sub-properties. In such implementations, when represented using a list method, a property and its associated sub-properties can appear as a sub-list.
In the example implementation of
Implementations employing list representations, such as shown in the example implementations of
To further illustrate, another example general scenario or event can be a “business meeting”. Similar to other scenarios described herein, individuals can have certain expectations or behavioral norms associated with events such as business meetings. For example, a user can expect that a phone does not ring, but rather vibrates during a business meeting. Further, a user can expect that if a call is from the user's “boss” then the phone should ring during a business meeting scenario whereas, if a call is from an “important” contact and/or someone the user holds in high esteem, then the phone should vibrate only, or, if the call is from anyone else then the phone should remain silent. In accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, algorithms executing on a phone or other communications device can be supplied, modified, etc. such that, for communications originating from certain contacts, the device can divert a call over to voice mail rather than vibrate when a distant relative calls during a business meeting for example, or undertake various other actions in different scenarios or events depending upon who is attempting to contact the user and/or how the user has categorized the contact.
In accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, user contacts can also be associated with properties. Various implementations exist for binding properties to contacts and capturing property information in accordance with claimed subject matter. One such implementation comprises a list representation, such as introduced above in
In accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, a property that can be associated with one or more contacts can be the role those contacts play in the users life. For example, role properties can include “father”, “mother”, “wife”, “boss”, “accountant”, “school principal”, etc.
Similar to the manner in which scenarios and contacts can be associated with properties, relationship rings can also be associated with properties. In this disclosure and the claims that follow a relationship ring, or simply a “ring”, can comprise a group of personal contacts where that group shares a common property such as a degree of familiarity and/or affection, a respect, status, and/or esteem level, and/or an acting role. In other words, such properties can reflect how a user feels about a personal contact.
In some implementations of claimed subject matter employing list representations, a list head can comprise a reference to a ring, while the list itself provides properties associated with that particular ring. As in the case of scenarios and contacts, many implementations for properties associated with a relationship ring can be apparent to those skilled in the art. For example, in some implementations, a property of a ring can comprise a list of references to contacts belonging to the ring. For another example, a relationship ring can be associated with a “notification level” property comprising an integer sub-property. If, for example, a notification level property is set low for a particular ring, then a notification (e.g., ringing sound) regarding communications (e.g., calls, emails, etc.) received from that ring can be provided to a user at a lower volume, depending on the user's particular scenario.
In accordance with claimed subject matter, properties associated with scenarios, contacts and/or relationship rings are not limited to a particular format. Thus, in some implementations, properties can, for example, comprise data in an American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) format, while in other implementations, properties can, for example, comprise data in a binary format. Moreover, in accordance with claimed subject matter, property lists can have many analogous structures, including data structures, Extensible Markup Language (XML), indexed arrays, among many others. Moreover, claimed subject matter is not limited to the term “property”, and thus, in some implementations, different nomenclature can be used so that properties can be called attributes, indexes, references, additional information, or be referred to by a myriad of different terms.
In accordance with claimed subject matter some properties can be assigned to different agents. For example, ring membership can be associated with a relationship ring as a property of that ring. In some implementations, ring membership can be explicitly listed as a property of a ring, while in other implementations ring membership can be implied. For example, ring membership property can be implied when ring relationships are listed for contacts. Similarly, many other properties will also take implied or explicit forms, or can be attached to various agents. Further, in some implementations in accordance with claimed subject matter, properties belonging to a ring can be inherited by sub-rings and/or by contacts belonging to a ring or sub-rings.
In some implementations of claimed subject matter, communication related status can include properties related to a state or state(s) of a terminal unit or communication device. For example, in some implementations, a communication related status for a cell phone can comprise “busy”. In this context, the property busy can exist when someone is talking on the phone. In other implementations, a more sophisticated form of such a property can convey a number of people engaged in communication on a terminal unit, for example, “engaged_number”. Thus, in some implementations, a property can be properties. For instance, using the example of an engaged_number property, a particular value for this property might be “engaged 3” signifying that a user can be on a conference call with two other individuals at a particular moment. In general, communication related status properties can be implied by terminal device hardware, a context that a control program executing on a terminal device is in, or listed explicitly somewhere in a communications system or even in a computer registry, among a myriad of other possibilities.
In some implementations of claimed subject matter, a communication action can comprise an action that a terminal device undertakes when handling communication. Again, such a communication action can comprise a property associated with a terminal device and/or a communications system. For example, if a laptop computer emits a sound (e.g., chimes) when new mail arrives, the act of emitting a sound can comprise a communication action. Thus, for one example, a terminal device (e.g., laptop), can employ a communication action “do_sound(N)” where the function “do_sound” includes an argument “N” determining the volume at which the terminal device emits a sound. As another example, when a call reaches a cell phone, the phone can ring with a special ring tone, or vibrate. Such functions can, in some implementations of claimed subject matter, comprise communications action properties such as, for example, “do_ring(ring_tone)”, or “vibrates”, etc. For example, a communications action comprising a do_ring function can accept an integer argument that specifies which ring tone to use.
Other communication actions can control initiating communication, handling interrupts, and a host of other things. These are just a few examples and because actual interfaces used on devices vary widely across manufacturers, across models, and even across software releases and applications employed, among other variables, claimed subject matter is not limited to the few examples presented herein. Moreover, a communication action may not appear explicitly in source code, for example, but can be implied, mixed in with other actions, placed in hardware, be a mixture of these, or have other variations, claimed subject matter not being limited in this regard either.
In some implementations of claimed subject matter, implication rules can employ operators to act on properties in order to invoke communication related actions. Operators can comprise any function that operates on properties that a particular device can implement either directly or indirectly. For example, a common operator can comprise a conjunction.
In
The third property of rule 920, property 926, identifies that the communication event comprises an incoming call. It should be understood that in some implementations, for example when a terminal device comprises a multimedia device, a communications event could comprise an incoming call, a text message, or an email, among other possibilities. The arrow in rules 900 and 920 signifies the implication operator whereas the items on the left side of the implication operator (e.g., properties 922, 924, 926 in rule 920) are used to trigger the implication. Thus, in the context of rule 920, the right side of an implication rule indicates what to do when the left side is satisfied. Hence, rule 920 provides that a conjunction of being in a meeting and having a friend call triggers action 928 (not shown) thereby sending the call directly to voice mail.
In some implementations of claimed subject matter, implication rules, such as rule 920, can be created in advance, and made active by a user. In various implementations, such rules can be active all of the time, or turned on and off, depending, for example, on a given scenario and/or on user preferences. Further, some implementations can support a variety of operators. For example, some implementations can affect some or all of, among others: +−*></== AND OR XOR ON OFF DURING PROCEEDING AFTER, etc. Claimed subject matter is not limited to specific operators and the preceding list is not intended to be an exhaustive listing of all possible operators.
While examples of communications actions have been provided above, there are many possible communication actions in accordance with implementations of claimed subject matter. For further example, another type of communication action in accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter can comprise an automatic response. Further, when employing implication rules in accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter responses can be provided based on rings, roles, and/or scenarios. For example, in some implementations, unknown callers can be told to send email to an administrative address.
Further, in accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, scenarios or events can be employed to classify appointments on a calendar. For example, meetings with contacts from particular relationship rings can imply that a scheduled meeting comprises a business meeting. Such expectations can be captured in, for example, calendar appointment implication rules. In this context, an implication rule can generate a property that can in turn be used in other rules. Thus, in accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, once calendar implication rules have been generated, appointments placed on a calendar can automatically invoke certain rules and/or create scenario properties.
In some communications systems, in accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, one or more implication rules can be provided by default by manufacturers and/or designers of such systems. In some implementations, some and/or all of these rules can be modifiable by the user. In various implementations, implication rules can be modified by an application programmer, a user, a system administrator, or any combination of these or other means.
In accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, additional implication rules can be chosen by a user from a menu system. In other implementations, a user can invoke a rule management application permitting the user to add new rules, delete old rules, and perform various rule maintenance functions. Such a rule management application can include a rule editor permitting a user to create implication rules by concatenating selected properties, operations, and implied actions from selections on various menus. In accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, a user can be allowed to directly enter and/or formulate rules using a grammar or format, such as shown in the examples in this application or via a different grammar or format. Further, in accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, implication rules can take the form of programs or algorithms accepting as input various properties to be affected, and calling actions as other routines in the system. Further, in some implementations, implication rules can be programmed in field programmable devices, or embedded directly in hardware.
Example Method Related to Associating Data with R-Smart Criteria
In act 1002, a first message from a personal contact can be received at a terminal device of a user, while in act 1004 that message can be associated with at least one event having at least one property. Further, in act 1006, a second message can be sent to an address comprising an indicator associated with a group of personal contacts that includes the personal contact that sent the message received in act 1002. In act 1008 the first message can be associated with one or more groups of personal contacts, while in act 1010, an indicator of the first message along with other indicators of messages associated with other personal contacts can be displayed. Further, in act 1012, a definition of the one or more groups of personal contacts can be provided to a terminal device of another user. In addition, in act 1014, an implication rule can be used to undertake an action associated with the event.
A data storage system can store items and can permit a user to sort, search and/or archive those items based upon particular criteria. In accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter a user can sort, filter and/or archive items using r-smart criteria. In this disclosure, and the claims that follow, the phrase “r-smart criteria” can refer to emotient attributes associated with items where the phrase “emotient attributes” can refer to properties of familiarity, affection, respect, esteem, status, and/or acting role of entities, such as personal contacts, defined with respect to the user. In other words, emotient attributes can reflect how a user feels about an entity associated with a stored item or can feel about the item itself. For example, a user of a data storage system such as a computer hard-drive can hold photographs of the user's grandmother stored on the hard-drive in higher esteem than photographs of the user's cat that are also stored on the hard-drive. In such circumstances a user of a system in accordance with claimed subject matter can associate a different emotient attribute with pictures of the user's grandmother than with pictures of the user's cat.
In this disclosure, and the claims that follow, the term “contextual filtering” describes, at least in part, using r-smart criteria to manage stored data. In this context the terms “sorting” and “filtering” can be used interchangeably. In accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter such “contextual filtering” need not be applied only to the sorting of items, it can also be applied to searching among items. Further, in this disclosure, and the claims that follow, the terms “manage” or “management” when employed in the context of contextual filtering describe, at least in part, searching, filtering, and/or archiving stored items.
Those skilled in the art will recognize that techniques for sorting, searching and/or archiving stored items are well established and that there are many well-known schemes for implementing data management and/or for providing a user with an interface for managing data and, hence, specific data management schemes and/or interfaces will not be described in detail herein. For example, common techniques for facilitating sorting, searching and/or archiving items include indexing meta data (e.g., file name, last access date, etc.) associated with the items and/or indexing item content. In addition, some schemes permit users to customize meta data by adding and/or altering keywords and/or tags that can also be indexed to facilitate sorting, searching and/or archiving items.
While claimed subject matter is not limited by the type of data associated with emotient attributes, in some implementations, stored message content and/or message-related data, can be sorted, searched and/or archived as a function of r-smart attributes associated with those items. For example, an email client can provide r-smart attributes associated with emails directly in the email headers and those attributes can be used to sort, search and/or archive emails. Further, in accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, a user can sort, search and/or archive items based on one or more “relationship ring” attributes of a message sender where those attributes can be conveyed in a header associated with the message.
As used throughout this disclosure and in the claims that follow, the phrase “relationship ring” can be used to describe a grouping of items sharing one or more emotient attributes in common. Claimed subject matter is not limited in this regard however, and, thus, a grouping of items in accordance with claimed subject matter can be described as a “ring”, a “group”, a “domain”, to name just a few examples. Thus, within this disclosure, use of the term “ring” should not be understood as describing a literal geometric shape, even though such shapes can be employed in network diagrams, etc., that can be used to illustrate example implementations of claimed subject matter.
In some implementations of claimed subject matter, items can be sorted, searched and/or archived in response to r-smart criteria using separate programs, or a combined program. Such a program or collection of programs can provide sorting, searching and/or archiving functions or utilities to a user and can be called an “emotience manager” although claimed subject matter is not limited in this regard. For example, an emotience manager can present a search function to a user permitting the user to enter and/or select r-smart criteria to be used for searching stored items. Similarly, such an emotience manager can present a sort function to a user permitting the user to enter and/or select r-smart criteria to be used for sorting or filtering stored items. Further, an emotience manager can present an archive function to a user permitting the user to enter and/or select r-smart criteria to be used for organizing the storage of items. In some implementations, an emotience data manager in accordance with claimed subject matter can enable users to attach properties such as emotient attributes to data items, enable users to set up inheritance and default rules (for communicated data for example), and to later search and retrieve items.
An emotience manager in accordance with claimed subject matter can include at least a portion of a graphical user interface (GUI) capable of being displayed on a display device. The particular form used can be a user preference, or even a function, for example, of a display device employed by a user. Further, an emotience manager can, in accordance with claimed subject matter, be accessed (e.g., for reading and/or editing) by software applications that are compatible with r-smart networks.
As mentioned above a user can utilize an emotience manager In accordance with claimed subject matter to sort or filter items. One possible filtering interface can comprise an interface that allows a user to explicitly sort or filter only items associated with particular emotient attributes. Such an interface can present a dialog box, and allow a user to enter criteria related to one or more attributes into the dialog box. The emotience manager can then filter items in response to the entered criteria. For example, in the context of relationship rings, a user can select both “family” and “business” rings and filter items associated with those rings for only those items associated with contacts that have the emotient attributes of being both friends and business associates of the user. A possible further extension of this implementation can interpret user input as a regular expression, and then present all matching categories. Clearly, those skilled in the art of data management will recognize that there are many ways to facilitate management of stored information and the above example is merely one way of doing so.
In some implementations of claimed subject matter, a user can selectively enable the display of items associated with particular emotient attributes. Thus, using again the example context of relationship rings, if a user is involved in a family event, he or she can configure an application to display only those stored items associated with members of a “family” ring of contacts. Likewise, for another example, when at the office, a user can configure an application to display only those stored items associated with members of that user's “office” ring of contacts.
In accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter message display and/or search context can be undertaken according to emotient attributes such as relationship ring membership or ring name, etc. For instance,
Further, in addition to contextual filtering employing user interfaces similar to the examples shown in
Some implementations in accordance with claimed subject matter can include special rings such as, for example, “everybody” and/or “nobody” rings where an everybody ring can comprise a flat contact list that includes all contacts, and a nobody ring can contain all contacts that do not belong to any other ring. Various implementations can give such special rings names other than “everybody” and “nobody”. In such implementations, contextual filtering can give rise to special item listings. For example, limiting item display to an everybody ring can result in display of all items, while limiting item display to a nobody ring can result in display of items received from contacts who are either not in a contacts list, or who are in a contacts list, but have not been assigned to any relationship rings.
In accordance with claimed subject matter, emotient attributes can be associated with items when those items are stored so that the items, as stored, are arranged with respect to their emotient attributes. In other words, items sharing emotient attributes in common can be stored in association with each other. In other implementations of claimed subject matter, previously stored items can be subsequently associated with emotient attributes. As those skilled in the art can recognize, associating storing items with each other can mean that the items are stored in physical association with each other (e.g., in adjacent regions of memory for example) and/or it can mean that items are stored in logical association with each other, or, in other words, that within storage system the items can be associated with each other by associated each item with, for example, a common index.
Implementations of claimed subject matter are not limited to management of items associated with communications, but can include sorting, searching and/or archiving of stored items of any type and/or origin, such as, for example, digital images, application files, etc. However, within the context of communications-related items, and in accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, the identification associated with the sender of an item (e.g., a caller's identification) can be searched against a user's contact information to determine a relationship ring and/or a role to be associated with the item. A message sender can have volunteered, or have been prompted to supply, disambiguating information should the sender have more than one role and/or belong to more than one relationship ring. Thus, for example, an emergency contact that is also a friend could distinguish between an emergency message and a friendly message. Similarly, a wife who is also a business partner, can categorize messages into one or both roles. In such circumstances, sorting, searching and/or archiving items in response to r-smart criteria related to one role or another role can, in accordance with claimed subject matter, involve sorting, searching and/or archiving items associated with the same stored message or messages.
Further, roles associated with contacts can be hierarchical. Thus, for example, a spouse who is also a business partner can further distinguish messages associated with the business partner role based on marketing or sales, for example.
In addition, in some implementations of claimed subject matter, a recipient of an item can re-categorize the emotient attribute or attributes, such as an acting role or roles, associated with the item. Moreover, in some implementations, a user can highlight or otherwise flag one or more portions of a message and can limit categorization to those portions. Highlighted portions can then be display by themselves or as highlighted sections when items are filtered by emotient attributes.
While r-smart criteria can be utilized, as described in various examples above, to filter or search items, in addition, r-smart criteria can also be used to archive items in accordance with claimed subject matter. Thus, in accordance with claimed subject matter, a user can employ r-smart criteria to organize or otherwise specify certain stored items as belonging to a specific collection of items. For example, a user can wish to organize all stored items relating to a particular r-smart criteria such as all items received from contacts that are both held in particular esteem by the user and that share a common acting role (e.g., messages from co-workers that are also friends of the user). The user can then search stored items using a search string that includes the r-smart criteria of “co-worker” and “friend”, retrieve the results of the search and then store the retrieved items together as an archived collection.
Emotient attributes associated with stored items can, in some implementations in accordance with claimed subject matter, be used to provide an enhanced communications list. In some implementations, for example, an address, such as an email address, can be associated with an emotient attribute such as the name of a relationship ring, and, thus, by using that address a communication can be sent to every contact that belongs to the associated ring. Thus, for example, a user who has defined a “family” ring can send email to the members of that ring with a single mail header. For instance,
While relationship rings in accordance with claimed subject matter can be defined locally to a particular user and/or application, in some implementations in accordance with claimed subject matter, a user of a relationship ring system can want to share his or her ring definitions with other users.
Thus, in some implementations of claimed subject matter features can allow ring definitions to be sent to and integrated on a remote system. In some implementations, ring definitions can be automatically sent to and integrated on a remote system. In some implementations ring definitions can comprise a ring name and associated properties and can comprise ASCII text although claimed subject matter is not limited to any particular ring definition format. In some implementations, a ring definition can be sent as an attachment to a message.
Yet further, in some implementations of claimed subject matter, a message sender can remain anonymous and/or the sender's identity can comprise the sender's ring membership. For example, a sender can belong to a ring such as a committee ring, and the sender can wish to send a document resulting from a group effort. In this context the sender can be identified by the committee ring name. Another example can be where the sender is speaking in an official capacity for an organization defined as a ring. In yet another example the members of a ring can have a limited trust relationship and, hence, senders that belong to that ring can wish to remain anonymous when they send messages to other ring members. Of course, the preceding examples are just a few of many possible scenarios consistent with claimed subject matter.
Further, in accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, an item, such as an email message, sent from a contact belonging to a particular ring does not have to be addressed to that ring, or, for that matter, to any other ring.
In accordance with some implementations, ring networks can be hierarchical in format. For example, a “family” ring or group can be further broken down into sub-rings or sub-groups such as “immediate family” (such as wife, son, daughter, etc.), and “extended family” (such as mom, dad, uncle, cousin, etc.). Such hierarchical groupings can extend for multiple levels of sub-rings; for example, “cousins” in an extended family ring might open up or be selectable to reveal a sub-ring providing a list of all cousins. Clearly, many such hierarchical ring scenarios are possible.
In such implementations, contact lists can be organized hierarchically amongst relationship rings and/or their sub-rings. Because one or more contacts can belong to multiple rings, it can be possible to associate items categorized by emotient attributes such as relationship rings with multiple conceptual indices. For example, in some implementations of claimed subject matter, the concept and/or term associated with a “role” as described herein can also comprise the name of a relationship ring. For instance, a contact in a “family” ring can play the role of “brother”. Clearly, a user can have multiple brothers. Thus, in some implementations of claimed subject matter, the term “brother” can comprise a description of a contact's role as a user's brother and/or comprise a name of a distinct relationship ring that contains all of the user's brothers. Hence, in accordance with claimed subject matter, r-smart criteria used to filter, search or archive stored items can simultaneously comprise acting roles and relationship ring names.
Furthermore, it is not necessary that a ring be a top-level ring or a sub-ring of another ring. Hence, in accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, relationship rings can comprise orthogonal rings that are independent of all other rings. In the context of orthogonal rings, when a sender, or a receiver, categorizes a item, or parts of an item, a plurality of relationship rings can be assigned to the item, so that the item can, correspondingly, be displayed in a plurality of contexts. Thus, for example, an item comprising a message from a user's brother can be displayed as associated with both the user's “family” ring, as well as in the user's “brother” ring.
Another Example Method Related to Associating Data with R-Smart Criteria
With regard to
With regard to
System 2100 includes a central processing unit (CPU) or processor 2110 such as a processor capable of providing and/or facilitating communications and/or data management functions, memory 2120 coupled to CPU 2110, and a display device 2130 coupled to CPU 2110 and/or memory 2120. It will be recognized by those skilled in the art that a graphics processing unit (GPU), not shown in
In accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, CPU 2110 can include logic adapted to facilitate, build, generate, and/or operate on internal representations such as list structures, data structures, and/or arrays used to define r-smart person-centric networks, to organize stored items associated with emotient attributes, to associate emotient attributes with items, and/or to alter emotient attributes associated with items. Further, in accordance with some implementations of claimed subject matter, memory 2120 can act in conjunction with CPU 2110 to store or hold at least portions of such internal representations.
In this context, memory 2120 and/or CPU 2110 can act to provide the functionality of a data store for storing items associated with emotient attributes. Hence, memory 2120 can store items that are to be sorted, searched, and/or archived in response to r-smart criteria such as emotient attributes.
Those skilled in the art will recognize that memory 2120 and/or CPU 2110 can be further coupled to a memory controller, not shown in
Display device 2130 can comprise any type of display device such as a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) display, a polymer-based display, an electroluminescent display, a Plasma Display Panel (PDP), or a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) display, to name a few of the more prominent examples. Although example system 2100 is shown with a particular configuration of components, other implementations are possible using any of a wide range of configurations. Further, those skilled in the art will recognize that system 2100 can include many additional components such as communications busses, etc. that, being not particularly germane to claimed subject matter, have not been illustrated in
While particular implementations have just been described, claimed subject matter is not limited in scope to one or more particular implementations. For example, some implementations can be in hardware, such as employed to operate on a device or combination of devices, for example, whereas other implementations can be in software. Further, some implementations can be employed in firmware, or as any combination of hardware, software, and/or firmware, for example. Likewise, although claimed subject matter is not limited in scope in this respect, some implementations can comprise one or more articles, such as a storage medium or storage media. This storage media, such as, one or more CD-ROMs, computer disks, flash memory, or the like, for example, can have instructions stored thereon, that, when executed by a system, such as a computer system, computing platform, or other system, for example, can result in execution of an implementation of a method in accordance with claimed subject matter, such as one of the implementations previously described, for example. As one potential example, a computing platform can include one or more processing units or processors, one or more input/output devices, such as a display, a keyboard and/or a mouse, and/or one or more memories, such as static random access memory, dynamic random access memory, flash memory, and/or a hard drive.
Reference in the specification to “an implementation,” “one implementation,” “some implementations,” or “other implementations” can mean that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with one or more implementations can be included in at least some implementations, but not necessarily in all implementations. The various appearances of “an implementation,” “one implementation,” or “some implementations” in the preceding description are not necessarily all referring to the same implementations. Also, as used herein, the article “a” includes one or more items. Moreover, when terms or phrases such as “coupled” or “responsive” or “in response to” or “in communication with” are used herein or in the claims that follow, these terms should be interpreted broadly. For example, the phrase “coupled to” can refer to being communicatively, electrically and/or operatively coupled as appropriate for the context in which the phrase is used.
The above description of illustrated embodiments of the subject disclosure, including what is described in the Abstract, is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the disclosed embodiments to the precise forms disclosed. While specific embodiments and examples are described herein for illustrative purposes, various modifications are possible that are considered within the scope of such embodiments and examples, as those skilled in the relevant art can recognize.
In this regard, while the disclosed subject matter has been described in connection with various embodiments and corresponding Figures, where applicable, it is to be understood that other similar embodiments can be used or modifications and additions can be made to the described embodiments for performing the same, similar, alternative, or substitute function of the disclosed subject matter without deviating therefrom. Therefore, the disclosed subject matter should not be limited to any single embodiment described herein, but rather should be construed in breadth and scope in accordance with the appended claims below.
This application claims priority to the following: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/936,682, filed on Nov. 7, 2007, entitled “R-SMART PERSON-CENTRIC NETWORKING”; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/936,693, filed on Nov. 7, 2007, entitled “MANAGING COMMUNICATIONS ON AN R-SMART NETWORK”; and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/936,704, filed on Nov. 7, 2007, entitled “MANAGING DATA USING R-SMART CRITERIA”. The entireties of the aforementioned applications are incorporated by reference herein.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 11936682 | Nov 2007 | US |
| Child | 13100823 | US | |
| Parent | 11936693 | Nov 2007 | US |
| Child | 11936682 | US | |
| Parent | 11936704 | Nov 2007 | US |
| Child | 11936693 | US |
