Method, system and apparatus for managing contact data

• US 10,296,509 B2
• Filed: 08/25/2016
• Issued: 05/21/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 10/28/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Dalia N. Asterbadi
• Original Assignee: Dalia N. Asterbadi
• Inventors: Asterbadi, Dalia N.
• Primary Examiner(s): Spieler, William
• Application Number:
  US15/247,263
• Publication Number:
  US 20160364453A1
• Time in Patent Office: 999 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/243 Natural language query formulation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24573 using data annotations, e.g. user-defined metadata
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

According to embodiments described in the specification, a method, system and apparatus for managing contact data are provided. The method comprises storing a plurality of contact attributes distilled from at least one data source in a memory, the contact attributes defining a plurality of contacts; receiving input data at a communications interface; identifying at least one search attribute from the received input data; selecting at least one of the plurality of contacts based on matches between the plurality of contact attributes and the at least one search attribute; and transmitting notification data based on the selected contact.

Claims

1. A method of managing contact data, the method comprising:

receiving, at a computing device, a set of keywords independently of any contact data via a network interface;

registering at least one data source accessible via a network at the computing device;

receiving, at the computing device, contact data from the at least one data source;

parsing, filtering and indexing received contact data via a matching module at the computing device to obtain a plurality of contact attributes from the contact data, the contact attributes including a plurality of names and a plurality of additional attributes associated with the names, wherein the parsing, filtering and indexing includes;

performing lexical and/or syntactic analysis on the received contact data to obtain the plurality of contact attributes;

filtering at least some of the received contact data to discard contact data that does not relate to the set of keywords and/or merge duplicate contact data; and

indexing the received contact data to identify portions of the received contact data of particular relevance by one or more of detecting matches between the contact data and the set of keywords and/or term frequency analysis;

after distilling the contact attributes, receiving, at the computing device, input data from a client device obtained by monitoring at least one activity on the client device, wherein the input data is pre-processed by the client device;

identifying at least one common attribute from the received input data by determining that the at least one common attribute matches one of the keywords in the set of keywords;

selecting at least one of the plurality of contact attributes that matches the at least one common attribute;

determining, at the computing device by a contact mapping module, location information associated with the selected contact attribute,

transmitting notification data to the client device based on the selected contact attribute, said notification data including location information;

displaying a notification based on the notification data on a user interface on a display of the client device, wherein said notification includes displaying the location information in the user interface.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the contact data comprises a plurality of profiles.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein at least two of the plurality of profiles correspond to a particular entity.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the entity is one of a person, a company, and a subject.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the notification data comprises a notification that the at least two profiles correspond to the particular entity.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving additional contact data from the at least one data source after the distilling.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising distilling the contact attributes after receiving the additional contact data.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein at least some of the keywords are generated by a user.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein at least some of the keywords are generated by one or more of the computing device, the client device, and the at least one data source.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising synthesizing additional keywords based on at least one of the set of keywords, the contact data, and the contact attributes.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the contact attributes further include at least one of a demographic and a geographic location.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein distilling the contact attributes further comprises assigning weighting factors to one or more of the contact attributes.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising modifying one or more of the weighting factors based on one or more of the contact attributes.

14. The method of claim 1, further comprising modifying the set of keywords based on one or more of the contact data and the input data.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the keywords, contact data, and input data is provided by a user.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein the distilling comprises distilling the plurality of contact attributes in accordance with a preference.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the preference is a user preference.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein the preference is a preference of a group of users.

19. The method of claim 1, wherein the method is initiated by one of receiving the contact data, receiving the set of keywords, and receiving the input data.

20. The method of claim 1, wherein at least some of the contact attributes include semantic attributes or contextual attributes.

21. The method of claim 1, wherein a first contact attribute from the plurality of contact attributes is associated with a second contact attribute from the plurality of contact attributes.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein the first contact attribute is assigned a first weighting factor and the second contact attribute is assigned a second weighting factor.

23. The method of claim 1, wherein distilling the plurality of contact attributes further comprises at least one of lexical and syntactic analysis.

24. The method of claim 1, further comprising identifying portions of contact data as being of particular interest.

25. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon processor-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the method of claim 1.

26. An apparatus comprising:

a processor configured to perform the method of claim 1.