IMAGE BASED ELECTRONIC MAIL SYSTEM

• US 20080162649A1
• Filed: 01/03/2007
• Published: 07/03/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 01/03/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Social Concepts Incorporated (Aristocrat Leisure Limited)
• Original Assignee: Social Concepts Incorporated (Aristocrat Leisure Limited)
• Inventors: Hedlund, Michael R., Lee, Joseph William, Grendler, Peter August
• Granted Patent: US 8,413,059 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/52 for supporting social networking services

Abstract

An image based email system associates images with different electronic mail (email) senders. The email system receives email messages from different email senders and then looks through either website member profiles or user contacts for associated images. Any located image is displayed in a list of recent senders. This allows the email user to associate recently received email messages with particular sender images or photographs. The images can also be used in a list of favorite or most frequent email senders. Other features of the email system extract information from received email messages to better identify the email senders. These and other features of the email system provide more intuitive and easier to perform email operations.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

associating images with different electronic mail (email) senders;

receiving emails from the different email senders;

identifying the images associated with the received emails; and

displaying the identified images to provide visual association of received emails with the displayed images.

2. The method according to claim 1 wherein at least some of the images are pictures of people sending the email.

3. The method according to claim 1 including displaying the images in an order corresponding with the receipt of the associated emails.

4. The method according to claim 3 including:

displaying the images in a sender bar in an email inbox user interface;

receiving a new email from a new sender;

displaying a new image associated with the new sender at the beginning of the sender bar; and

moving all of the other images currently in the sender bar over one location either in back of or below the new image associated with the new sender.

5. The method according to claim 1 including:

identifying emails from senders with no associated images; and

displaying advertisement images for the identified senders.

6. The method according to claim 1 including:

detecting selection of one of the displayed images associated with one of the senders; and

displaying in a message list all of the email messages received from the associated one of the senders in response to the detected selection.

7. The method according to claim 1 including:

detecting movement of a cursor over an identified one of the displayed images; and

displaying a tooltip providing email options for the email sender associated with the identified image.

8. The method according to claim 7 including:

tracking the number of unread email messages for the email sender associated with the identified displayed image; and

displaying the number of tracked unread messages in the tooltip icon.

9. The method according to claim 7 including displaying an option in the tooltip to add the sender associated with the identified displayed image to a favorites list of constantly displayed images and adding the sender information to a contacts list.

10. The method according to claim 7 including:

displaying a new mail option in the tooltip for sending an email message to the sender associated with the identified displayed image; and

presenting a new email compose page that includes the senders email address when the new mail option is selected.

11. The method according to claim 1 including displaying a favorites list that persistently displays the images for a selected subset of senders.

12. The method according to claim 11 including:

monitoring a number of email messages received for the different senders;

identifying any of the different senders that sends a threshold number of email messages within some predetermined time period; and

automatically adding the identified senders in the favorites list.

13. The method according to claim 1 including:

displaying a new email composition page for sending a new email message;

assigning points to a user for sending the new email message;

displaying virtual gift icons in the email composition page;

associating points with the virtual gift icons;

identifying when one of the virtual gift icons is attached to the new email message; and

subtracting the points associated with the virtual gift from the user when the new email message is sent.

14. The method according to claim 1 including:

identifying sender contact or image information in the received emails;

adding any sender contact information to a sender contact list; and

displaying any image information identified in the received emails in a recent sender bar to provide visual image notifications of the received emails.

15. The method according to claim 14 wherein the image information are different pictures of the same email sender.

16. An electronic mail system, comprising:

a processor configured to associate unique identifying images with the different senders of electronic mail (email), the processor further configured to then receive email from different senders and then display the images associated with the senders of the received email.

17. The electronic mail system according to claim 16 including memory that stores pictures of at least some of the different senders of the email and the processor then displaying the stored pictures associated with received email senders.

18. The electronic mail system according to claim 16 wherein the processor displays a set of images showing each of the different senders from a most recent group of received emails.

19. The electronic mail system according to claim 16 wherein the processor displays a random place holder or advertisement when the sender of a received email does not have a stored image.

20. The electronic mail system according to claim 16 wherein the processor detects selection of one of the images, identifies the sender associated with the selected image, and then displays all of the received emails for the identified sender.

21. The electronic mail system according to claim 16 wherein the processor receives an email message and then checks an email sender address in the email message with email addresses listed in member profiles for an Internet website, the processor then identifying any member profiles from the Internet website corresponding with the email sender address and displaying any image in the identified member profiles on an email inbox user interface.

22. The electronic mail system according to claim 21 wherein the processor is configured to identify members of the Internet website sending emails to other members of the Internet website and then assign points to the members sending the emails.

23. The electronic mail system according to claim 16 wherein the processor persistently displays images for a set of preferenced email senders and automatically opens an email composition page when one of the images from the set of preferenced email senders is selected.

24. A computing device storing instructions in an electronic storage medium that when executed comprise:

operating a social interaction website that assigns points to members conducting social interactions with other website members;

presenting an email interface for creating and sending email messages; and

assigning points to website members that send email messages to other website members.

25. The computing device according to claim 24 including:

displaying virtual gift icons in an email composition page;

associating points with the virtual gift icons;

identifying when one of the virtual gift icons is attached to a new email message; and

subtracting the points associated with the virtual gift from the member sending the email message.

26. The computing device according to claim 24 including:

identifying member image information in received emails;

displaying the identified member image in an email inbox page of the email interface.

27. The computing device according to claim 24 including:

extracting sender contact information for the received emails; and

adding the sender contact information to a member contact information in a contact.

28. A method, comprising:

receiving an email message;

identifying a sender of the received email message;

moving the email message to an inbox when the identified sender is identified in a contacts list of the email recipient;

moving the email message to a provisional email box when the identified sender is not identified in the contacts list of the email recipient;

sending a challenge message back to the identified email sender that includes a Universal Resource Locator (URL) link to a challenge response server; and

moving the receive email message from the provisional email box to the inbox when the sender clicks on the URL link initiating a response back to the challenge response server.

29. The method according to claim 28 including:

receiving the email message;

checking the received email message with the contacts list of the email recipient;

discarding the received email message when a corresponding contact in the contacts list is blacklisted; and

moving the email message to the inbox when the corresponding contact in the contacts list is whitelisted.

30. A method, comprising:

receiving an email message;

searching through a website member directory or a user contacts list for a photo associated with a sender of the email message; and

displaying any identified photo from the website member directory or the user contacts list on an email inbox page to provide visual identification of the received email message sender.

31. The method according to claim 30 including displaying a placeholder image on the email inbox page when no image is identified in the website member directory or in the user contacts list.

32. The method according to claim 30 including:

first searching through the website member directory for a photo associated with a sender of the email message;

displaying any identified photo from the website member directory on an email inbox page to provide visual identification of the received email message sender;

searching through a user contacts list for a photo associated with the email sender when no photo is identified in the website member directory; and

displaying any identified photo from the user contacts list on the email inbox page to provide visual identification of the received email message sender.

33. The method according to claim 30 including:

searching through the email message for a photo; and

displaying any identified photo in the email message on the email inbox page to provide the visual identification of the received email message sender.

34. The method according to claim 31 including displaying advertisements as the placeholder image.

35. The method according to claim 30 including:

searching for contact information in the received email message;

comparing any contact information identified in the email message with the user contacts list; and

adding any new identified contact information contained in the email message to the user contacts list.