Patent Application
20060288075
1. Field of the invention
The present invention relates to an address book management system and a method for the same and, more particularly, to an address book management system and a method for the same in electronic mail.
2. Description of Related Art
Along with the development of the Internet, transmission of network information is substantially replacing transmission of conventional written documents. Among the transmission techniques of network information, E-mail is the most popular, and is widely used by various companies, families and individuals. The reason why E-mail is much appreciated is that it can provide convenient, quick and borderless communication. The contents can include multimedia information and can be transmitted to a large number of receivers. These advantages make E-mail an indispensable transmission medium in the information era.
For address books used in existent electronic mailboxes such as Outlook Express of the Microsoft Inc., relevant data of a mailing list such as name, E-mail address, telephone number, mobile phone number, address, web page and so on are recorded in text form. Although a text-form record can sufficiently depict the relevant data of a person in the mailing list, it cannot show his appearance. When the mailing lists of the address book becomes bigger and bigger, it is especially hard for the user to associate a face with a name when reviewing a mailing list with only the text messages recorded in this mailing list.
Japan Pat. No. JP10171827 discloses a technique capable of automatically updating an address book, in which a user needs not to manually update data of the address book. The contents of mailing lists stored in the address book, however, are still mainly text messages. There is no audio/video data combined therein. Because audio/video data provide more lively and relevant information of a mailing list than text data, if a person of the mailing list can be associated with audio/video data, it will be very helpful to the user for the management of the address book.
An object of the present invention is to provide an electronic mailbox address book management system and the method for the same, in which audio/video data are combined in the mailing lists recorded in the address book. A user can thus more conveniently discriminate persons in the mailing lists through the audio/video data.
To achieve the above object, the present invention provide an electronic mailbox address book management system, which comprises a mailing list database for storing a plurality of mailing lists, a multimedia recording module for making files in multimedia formats, and an editing module for editing the mailing lists stored in the mailing list database. The editing module edits the mailing lists with text messages. The multimedia recording module makes files in multimedia formats into the mailing lists.
To achieve the above object, the present invention also provides an electronic mailbox address book management method, which comprises the steps of: selectively inputting a sender, determining whether the sender is in a mailing list database for storing a plurality of mailing lists; and using an editing module to open a corresponding mailing list in the mailing list database for editing if the sender is in the mailing list database, or using the editing module to add a mailing list in the mailing list database and then editing the added mailing list if the sender is not in the mailing list database. The editing module edits the mailing lists with text messages. The multimedia recording module makes files in multimedia formats into the mailing lists.
The present invention provides an electronic mailbox address book management system and the method for the same to record audio/video data in the mailing lists so as to truly show persons represented by the mailing lists. A user can more easily manage the address book in the electronic mailbox.
The various objects and advantages of the present invention will be more readily understood from the following detailed description when read in conjunction with the appended drawing, in which:
As shown in
As shown in
In this embodiment, the editing module 17 can be used to edit the text content of the mailing lists with text messages, and the multimedia recording module 19 can be used to make files in multimedia formats into the mailing lists. In this embodiment, the files in multimedia formats are attached to the mailing lists to be directly selected for playback in the mailing lists. If the mailing list to be edited is input by selecting a sender in an E-mail by the input module 11, the retrieval module 13 will compare the sender and the mailing lists stored in the mailing list database 15. If a corresponding mailing list matching the sender is found, the retrieval module 13 will send this mailing list to the editing module 17 for editing. If the retrieval module 13 finds no mailing list matching the sender, the editing module 17 will add a new mailing list for editing. After the editing module 17 finishes editing the mailing list, the mailing list is stored into the mailing list database 16.
In this embodiment, the multimedia recording module 19 comprises a video making module 191 and an audio making module 193. The video making module 191 makes video files through a video capture device (e.g., a video camcorder). The audio making module 193 makes audio files through an audio capture device (e.g., a microphone). The multimedia recording module 19 can make audio/video files having both video and audio data according to the requirement of the editing module 17. The multimedia recording module 19 can also be used to make audio-only or video-only files. In this embodiment, the multimedia recording module 19 is used to record related audio/video data of a subject represented by the mailing list.
In Step S307, a new mailing list is built according to the selected sender data input by the input module 11 (Step S307). Next, text messages are input into this new mailing list (Step S309). The input text messages are in the text data area 21 shown in
In Step S315, an old mailing list in the mailing list database 15 corresponding to the sender is retrieved for editing (Step S315). Next, text messages are input into this old mailing list (Step S317). The input text messages are in the text data area 21 shown in
To sum up, the present invention provides an electronic mailbox address book management system and a method for the same, in which related data can be recorded in audio/video format in a mailing list (e.g., the appearance of the subject represented by the mailing list). The user can thus be prompted by the audio/video data to remember the subject represented by the mailing list. Moreover, related information of the subject represented by the mailing list can also be noted with audio/video data.
Although the present invention has been described with reference to the preferred embodiment thereof, it will be understood that the invention is not limited to the details thereof. Various substitutions and modifications have been suggested in the foregoing description, and other will occur to those of ordinary skill in the art. Therefore, all such substitutions and modifications are intended to be embraced within the scope of the invention as defined in the appended claims.
