Patent Application
20050102257
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to controlling and managing personal information, and in particular, to managing personal information in an individual user's personal information space.
2. Description of the Related Art
People increasingly manage their personal information through electronic means, such as personal digital assistants, on-line contact and calendar applications and even wireless phones. Hence, a migration of contact, document, financial, and other personal information has been made away from paper calendars, address books and records toward electronic systems. Both the type and the quantity of personal information in electronic form are growing.
Personal Information Managers (PIMs) generally comprise software applications running on a processing device such as a computer and personal digital assistants (PDAs). PDA's are small, electronic devices of varying types, which store reminder, contact, task, notes, and text information as well as other types of files. In the desire to increase the manageability of personal information, PIMS and PDA's have merged with cellular telephones, PIMs have migrated into online contact managers and pocket personal computers have become more and more powerful.
Generally, software PIMs include products such as Microsoft Outlook, Interactive Commerce Corporation's ACT!, and other similar programs are designed to run on a computer. PDA devices include devices such as those using the Palm® or Microsoft Windows Pocket PC operating systems, as well as other, more basic contact and calendar devices. Each PDA generally includes calendar, contact, personal tasks, notes, documents, and other information, while more sophisticated devices allow a user to fax, send e-mails, and communicate from within the application over a physical or wireless network. Even advanced cellular phones carry enough memory and processing power to store contact information, surf the web, and provide text messaging. Along with the growth in the sophistication of these devices, the need to transfer information between them has grown significantly as well.
Online personal information managers make access to data from any networked terminal possible. Many Internet web portals also now provide file storage, contact and calendar services. For example, major service portals such as Yahoo!, Excite, Lycos, MSN and others provide on-line calendar and contact manager services via a web browser to registered users. This allows a user to log in to their own calendar and address book from any Internet-capable web browsing application since the user's individual data is stored on a host server maintained by the web portal provider. Each of these services includes a data store as well.
All such personal information operated on and stored by a user can be considered within that user's “personal information space.” In this context, a “personal information space” is a data store of information customized by, and on behalf of the user which contains both public data the user puts into their personal space, private events in the space, and other data objects such as text files or data files which belong to the user and are manipulated by the user. The personal information space is defined by the content which is specific to and controlled by an individual user, generally entered by or under the control of the individual user, and which includes “public” events and data, those generally known to others, and “private” events and data which are not intended to be shared with others. It should be recognized that each of the aforementioned criteria is not exclusive or required, but defines characteristics of the term “personal information space” as that term is used herein. In this context, such information includes electronic files such as databases, text files, word processing files, and other application specific files, as well as contact information in personal information managers, PDAs and cellular phones.
Once a personal information space is defined, the challenge becomes managing information in the space particularly between different devices. For example, if an individual keeps a calendar of information on a personal computer in his or her office using a particular personal information manager application, the individual would generally like to have the same information available in a cellular phone, hand-held organizer, and perhaps a home personal computer. The individual may additionally need some characterization of the information, such as what information is more relevant or important to have in a particular location, and which people the user interacts with regularly, and how the user interacts with them.
Mechanisms exist for moving data between a number of devices and keeping a user's personal information on those devices current between all the devices.
Co-pending application Ser. Nos. 09/490,550, 09/491,675 and 09/491,694 disclose a novel method and system for synchronization of personal information including that which is conventionally found in desktop applications, personal digital assistants, palm computers, and website calendar services, as well as any content in the personal information space including file systems, contact information and/or calendaring information. Such systems can keep information on different systems in sync, but no qualitative method for evaluating the importance of the information to a user is provided.
Hence, a system whereby a user can automate the process of determining the importance of personal information on one or more of the user's devices based on characteristics of the user's interactions with such information would be useful.
The invention, in one aspect, comprises a system for organizing information in a personal information space. The personal information space includes at least one data source holding at least a portion of the personal information space. The system includes an agent for the data source which provides interaction information regarding data in the data source; and a interaction evaluation engine including one or more weighting characteristics for each interaction, and providing an output reflecting a weighting of one or more characteristics of the interaction.
In a further aspect, the invention is a method for managing a user's personal contact information from a variety of contact data sources, each data source comprising a device or application storing contact information used by the user. In this embodiment, the method may comprise the steps of determining when an interaction between a contact on one of the contact data sources occurs; analyzing one or more characteristics of the interaction event to determine a at least one trait about the interaction; and generating a result based on said step of analyzing.
In yet another aspect, the invention comprises one or more processor readable storage devices having processor readable code embodied on said processor readable storage devices, said processor readable code for programming one or more processors to perform a method. In such aspect, the method may comprise the steps of: determining when an interaction between a contact on one of the contact data sources occurs; analyzing one or more characteristics of the interaction event to determine a at least one trait about the interaction; and generating a result based on said step of analyzing.
In a still further aspect, the invention comprises a contact management method. In this aspect, the method may comprise the steps of determining interactions between a user and the user's contacts via at least one communication means; analyzing one or more characteristics of the interaction to determine at least one trait about the interaction; rating contacts based on the trait; and updating the user's contact information based on said ranking.
In another aspect, the invention is a system for managing a user's personal information. The system may include means for monitoring data interaction by a device or application on a per-user basis; means for evaluating the interaction based on one or more characteristics of the interaction; and means for weighing elements of the data based on said step of evaluating.
The present invention can be accomplished using hardware, software, or a combination of both hardware and software. The software used for the present invention is stored on one or more processor readable storage media including hard disk drives, CD-ROMs, DVDs, optical disks, floppy disks, tape drives, RAM, ROM or other suitable storage devices. In alternative embodiments, some or all of the software can be replaced by dedicated hardware including custom integrated circuits, gate arrays, FPGAs, PLDs, and special purpose computers. These and other objects and advantages of the present invention will appear more clearly from the following description in which the preferred embodiment of the invention has been set forth in conjunction with the drawings.
The invention will be described with respect to the particular embodiments thereof. Other objects, features, and advantages of the invention will become apparent with reference to the specification and drawings in which:
The system and method of the present invention provide a means for a user to automatically sort and prioritize information belonging in the user's personal information space. In general, the term “smart-filtering” is used to describe the system and method which aid the user in managing personal information. However, such term should not be construed as limiting the invention to a “filter.” The invention includes mechanisms to characterize information without limiting, rejecting or altering data under consideration. In a basic embodiment, the system analyzes a user's interaction with the user's contact records, and updates devices containing those records to hold only those records used the most, or chosen by the user to be held. In more complex embodiments, the system can analyze a user's interaction with any type of data in the personal information space, and make judgments about the data based on the user's interaction with the data. The system then allows the user to manipulate the data based on this analysis in any number of ways.
Each of the applications contains a data store which includes information relative to the particular application. For example, MS Outlook will have associated with it a data store, such as a Microsoft Exchange database or a personal settings file associated with a particular user which stores information in that user's personal information space, such as e-mail, contact, journal, task, and other information. Mobile phone 90 will have, for example, a built-in memory for storing a number of telephone numbers and other contact information.
In accordance with the present invention, the smart filtering engine extracts information from each of the data stores associated with the applications 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90, and assesses the data to determine its importance to the user based on one or more characteristics of the data, and returns an output to the user. One simple example is to rank contact information based on the frequency of use of the information by the user. The engine may comprise code operable on a processing device for implementing this method. In accordance with the method, engine 100 may communicate with database 120 to store certain elements of the information from the applications in order to utilize this information in the analysis of the importance of the data. to process it in accordance with the present invention.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the database 120 need not be a physically separate database, but represents a logical database. For example, in one embodiment, the engine may associate data characteristics with individual data records in each application's own data store, by using custom fields or additional records in the application's data store. All equivalent methods of associating data needed to perform the methods of the present invention with user personal information are contemplated as being within the scope of the present invention.
a shows a first, simple embodiment of a method of the present invention. In one context, the method of the present invention may be optimally utilized to extract contact information from, for example, a mobile phone, based on the frequency of usage that a user uses that contact information, and populate the phone or other devices with the more frequently used contacts. In the more general embodiment, described with respect to
In the embodiment of
At step 220, the user interacts with a contact by making a call using an entry from the phone book. Most cellular phones track recent call information and identify if such information is for a user in the phone's address book. At step 230, the use of the contact is noted, and at step 240, all contacts under analysis are ranked according to their frequency of use. A simplistic organization might be ranking the contacts in the order of the frequency that they are contacted by the user. In a cellular phone embodiment, this may involve simply analyzing the number of times a user telephones a particular contact in his address book and using the frequency analysis to rank the contact relative to other contacts. In this manner, if the user has, for example 700 contacts, the system will analyze and rank the contacts, and the user may then use that information as needed. For example, the user could instruct the system to update the user's phone with the most frequently called 100 contacts. The frequency of use and ranking may be stored in the smart filtering database at step 280 whether or not the user chooses to update the user's phone. If the user chooses to update the phone at step 250, the contact list in the device is updated at step 260. The storage step 280 may be performed whether or not the device is updated.
The method then waits for the next use of the phone (or “data interaction”) at step 270.
Each use of the phone with the contact information therein comprises an interaction with the data. It should be understood that uses of the phone can include not only making a call using the number from the phone's internal phone book, but also adding, deleting and modifying entries in the phone book, receiving a call, or using the contact information to send an email or text message from the phone. Hence, in the context of this invention, an interaction with data in a user's personal information space is any use of the personal information space data by the user to any degree.
b shows a more generalized embodiment of the system of the present invention. In
At step 225, a user interacts with the data in some form. Examples of such interaction might include using a contact for telephone or email or messenger communications, using a messenger application to contact a “buddy” (thereby interacting with the buddy data entry), modifying a data file, such as a word processing file or spreadsheet file, accessing a database file, or any number of tasks and interactions that a user makes with data in the user's personal information space.
At step 235, data from an application is analyzed based on one or more rating factors. One such factor may be frequency, as described with respect to
The implementation with respect to a cell phone and contacts is described with respect to
At step 240, an update step for the user's personal information store may be implemented. This update step may include updating any number of device databases, or a separate database, such as the smart filtering database (described below), with the characteristic analysis of the user's personal information analyzed in step 235. For example, if a user wishes to populate the user's telephone with 100 of the most frequently used contact, the user can allow his phone to be updated at step 245. Other examples include updating a frequently used file list, or updating other lists maintained by applications which track the use of information in the personal information space by the user.
If the device is not to be updated, at step 285, the information may be stored in smart filtering database 120 for future use in analysis step 235. If the device is to be updated, at step 255 or prior thereto, the user may elect or have elected to mark certain records or data to manually determine what happens during the update step 255. For example, the user may wish to designate certain records as never to be included in the phone, or always to be included in the phone. If the update step is for a phone, at step 255, the present invention must check the contact record associated with the data from the application to ensure that the user has not manually selected one of a number of options with respect to the data. If the user has indicated that one or more records should “never” or “always” be contained in the data store, then at step 255, the records are updated according to the user preference first and the characterization by the system second. If any record can be updated, then at step 255, the contact list in the device is updated with all records available. At step 265, the system then waits for the next analysis point, which may be each individual interaction with the user data from an application, or an analysis based on a timed interaction whereby the system waits a specific amount of time to reexamine the user's contact or application data usage before reanalyzing the data.
Each of the respective applications 420, 422, 424, 426, has associated therewith a data store agent. For example, application 420 has a data store agent 430; instant messenger application 422 has a data store agent 432, contact manager application 424 has a data store agent 434, and other application 426 has a data store agent 436. Each of the data store agents 430, 432, 434, 436 communicates with an agent interface 440. The agent interface 440 is in communication with engine 400. Also shown in a data store agent 438 in communication with a phone 460, which may be a wire line, wireless or cellular telephone. Communication between the phone 460 and processing device 450 may be by a direct cable connection, a wire line network connection, a wireless network connection, or other means, such as short messaging service (SMS).
Each of the agents, engine and database may be operable from code provided on the mass storage device instructs the processor device to perform tasks associated with the agent, engine and database, with components of each provided in memory 304, mass storage 306 and/or portable storage 308.
Also shown is a user interface 402 allowing the user to instruct the system regarding device limits and individual aspects of data under consideration. Although the user interface is shown as compiled to the database 402, independent code communicating with database 410 and engine 402 may be provided to implement the user interface 402. User interface 402 may take any number of forms, including a separate application, an application operable in a web browser, an application operable from within data applications 420, 422, 424, 426, or an application or interface operable from phone 460.
In general, each agent 430, 432, 434, 436, and 438 is designed to communicate with the associated application (or device) and extract data from the personal information store for analysis by the system of the present invention. In one embodiment, each agent extracts information on each interaction with the data; in other embodiments, the agents extract interaction information on a timed basis. A number of well known mechanisms exist for communicating with such applications, including use of associated application programming interfaces or API's. Information about the interaction, including the nature of the interaction and the data interacted with, is provided to agent interface 440. The agent interface 440 may be as simple as a port that the agents communicate through or may be a communication interface receiving agent specific communications. The interface 440 may also control when each of the agents queries the data store associated with each application to determine whether data interactions have taken place. It can provide bi-directional communications with devices and applications in the system. The interface presents a common communication mechanism for the engine, while each agent is generally specific to the application with which it must interact. Database 410 includes records associated with the interaction data. The nature of the records is shown in
Agent interface 560 serves a similar function to agent interface 440 in
Optionally, a first user interface 565 may be provided via the network and is served by server 580 via any of a number of known technologies, including TCP/IP, active server pages, and the like. This interface may be viewed by device 480 using a browser 490 on device 480. As an alternative to or in conjunction with interface 560, a local smart filtering interface 515 may be provided on processing device 450. The local interface may be similar to interface 402 except that it interacts with the engine on server 580 and agents 430, 432, 434, 436.
In the implementation shown in
It should be further recognized that agent 510 may be provided on device 480 (as shown in
In this embodiment, when changes to the data based on the user date interactions with applications 420, 422, 424, and 426 are to be made, smart filtering engine 500 communicates with a synchronization engine 710 which provides changes either directly to the data store agents 430, 432, 436, or 434, or to the application data stores 420, 422, 426, 424, directly. It should be understood that other elements of the synchronization system such as that described in application Ser. Nos. 09/490,550, 09/491,675 and 09/491,694 may be provided in addition to the data store agents and application data stores in order to more efficiently synchronize data based on the technology used in the synchronization system. Data from multiple users is stored in filtering engine database 510 in a manner similar to described below.
As noted above, the number of different hardware configurations may be utilized to implement the method of the present invention. In general, the method involves data analysis of user interactions with the user's personal information space data, which in one case may be contact information, in order to provide the user a more relevant representation of the data that the user is interacting with based on some characteristic of how the user interacts with the data. In the implementations of the invention shown in
As shown therein, each content record 810 includes a filter type 820 and content data 830. The filter type is a three-state variable (“never”, “always” “smart”) which may be selected by the user or by automated means to enumerate whether the content data should never be present in a device, always be present in a device, or updated according to the characterization by the smart filtering engine of the present invention. If a user wishes to ensure that a particular piece of content is never included as part of the rated information or part of the device, the user can set a this variable by means of the user interface so that the system will never include this data in any update of the device (step 255). If, for example, the user wishes to always include the content in the user's personal information space, the always flag will be set. In an alternative embodiment, the filter type 820 may provide an indicator as to whether the record is subjected to evaluation. For example, returning to
By way of an additional example, suppose the user has a number of phone book entries that the user wishes to always include in the user's phone. The user may set the always flag for each of these entries to ensure that the smart filtering system of the present invention does not remove them for lack of use. Likewise, the user may select certain entries to never be included in the user's phone address book. Alternatively, the user can let the smart filtering engine operate on the piece of data in conjunction with the rules set forth for the particular type of data in use.
Content record 800 also includes content data 802. Types of content data which may be included in the content data field include a phone call record, a meeting record, a web conference record, file access, a file multiplication, a task entry, an instant message, contact data such as an e-mail address, telephone number or address, an instant messaging address, a journal entry, or any other type of data accessed by a user in a personal information space.
As shown in
SmartFiltering engine 950 includes three methods: addObjectInteration, getFilteredObjects and rankObjects. The addObjectInteraction method uses the Agent ID, local user ID (LUIID) and Interaction Type to add the object to the list of objects to be filtered. The getFilteredObjects method returns an ObjectList 960 of all objects added by addObjectInteraction. Finally, rankObjects takes the ObjectList and provides a Result based on the filtering rules provided by the rule engine 975. ObjectSmartFilter 975 includes a LoadRules method and a GetObjectRanking method. The LoadRules method allows for adding of specific filter rules (LoadRules) from a filter element. The getFilteredObjects method retrieves ranked object characteristics to be evaluated from the filter element.
Other methods in addition to rating methods may be returned. For example, methods which allow elements of personal information to be associated with other elements in other applications may be returned. For example, suppose a user installs and begins use of an instant messaging application. Members of the user's communication list in the instant messenger application will likely have corresponding entries in the user's contact application. Upon entry and use of an instant messing contact, the object interaction call may call a method which attempts to match the instant messaging information to the contact information. Once matched, this association between the contact and the instant message can allow more sophisticated forms of rating, such as determining preferred methods for contacting a member of a user's contact datastore, or determining most frequently contacted individuals across multiple platforms of communication. This information may further be used to populate similar data fields across different applications. For example, one may use the new instant messaging application information to add information to the contact data store, and vice-versa. In this context, for example, each contact may be assigned a general unique identification number which is associated with a local user identification number by the aforementioned method.
Yet another alternative of the present invention involves performing the rating and filtering in various time sequenced contexts. In one context, analysis is performed on all information in a data store without storing the information in a separate database. This method is therefore performed in real time. Another embodiment involves storing one or more ratings and analyzing results of interactions at regular intervals. Yet another embodiment involves performing a real-time analysis concurrently with a storage analysis, and allowing the user to select between the different temporal representations of the user's interaction with the data in their personal information space.
The foregoing detailed description of the invention has been presented for purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise form disclosed. Many modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teaching. Additionally, while the above description provided an example using the protocols and addressing currently used on the Internet, the present invention can be used with other protocols and addressing schemes. The described embodiments were chosen in order to best explain the principles of the invention and its practical application to thereby enable others skilled in the art to best utilize the invention in various embodiments and with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated. It is intended that the scope of the invention be defined by the claims appended hereto.
