FACILITATING COMMUNICATIONS BETWEEN COMPUTER USERS ACROSS A NETWORK

• US 20080016453A1
• Filed: 07/13/2007
• Published: 01/17/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 11/25/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: AOL LLC (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Quillen, Scott, Rosenblatt, Ira
• Granted Patent: US 7,698,649 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/763
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/535 Tracking the activity of the user network monitoring arrangements H04L43/00; recording of computer activity G06F11/34
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/75 Indicating network or usage conditions on the user display
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]

Abstract

An icon or file is provided to facilitate communications across a network. The icon or file represents a contact or set of contacts and is separate from the communications program'"'"'s user interface. At least one action is executed in response to an operation performed on the icon or a command issued to the file. The actions may generally include, for example, retrieving profile information about the contact, setting an alert to indicate that the contact'"'"'s network/login status has changed (e.g., login, logout, or idle), or performing communications with the contact. The action may be the same action that would be executed in response to an operation performed on a representation of the contact or set of contacts in a user interface of a communications program.

Claims

1. The method of creating an icon, the method comprising:

selecting a representation of a contact or set of contacts of a user in an interface of a communications program;

performing an operation on the selected representation;

creating an icon in response to performed operation on the selected representation, wherein the icon represents the contact or set of contacts of the user and is located outside of the interface of the communications program; and

configuring the icon to allow the user to initiate and perform actions available from the interface of the communications program that are associated with the contact of set of contacts without using the interface of the communications program and regardless of whether the communications program is running when an operation is performed on the icon.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein performing the operation on the selected representation further comprises dragging and dropping the selected representation outside of the interface of the communications program.