Managing Message Categories in a Network

• US 20100228812A1
• Filed: 03/06/2009
• Published: 09/09/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/06/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Chiaramail Corporation
• Original Assignee: Chiaramail Corporation
• Inventors: Uomini, Robert
• Granted Patent: US 9,177,264 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/212 using filtering or selective blocking

Abstract

A method is presented for creating and assigning categories to electronic messages and detecting the categories for a given message when the message becomes available to the recipient.

Claims

1. A method of dynamically grouping messages in a network, the method comprising the steps of:

assigning one or more category designations to the message, the category designations being designations not limited to an enumerated list of category designations;

posting the message to a messaging server.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the category designations are embedded in the message body or header or both.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more category designations are distributed between one or more category group designations.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein assigning a category designation further comprises assigning at least one subcategory designation, where appropriate, to the message.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of assigning a category designation further comprises the steps of:

selecting a source of the category designation, the source selected from at least a predetermined list of category designations and a freeform category entry source;

when the predetermined list of category designations is the source selected, selecting a category designation from the predetermined list; and

when the source is the freeform category entry source, accepting an input representation of the category designation unconstrained by an enumerated list of categories.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the category designations are stored in one or more files accessible by a category server.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of:

receiving messages from a messaging server using a reading client; and

filtering messages based on a set of category filters.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising assigning additional category designations to the message.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the network is a bulletin board-based network.

10. Method of claim 1, wherein the network is an interactive chat network.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the network is a Web-based social networking site.

12. The method of claim 3, wherein the at least one category group designation is selected from a predetermined list of valid group designations and is inserted into the message body prior to the step of posting the message.

13. The method of claim 3, wherein all users access a common category group.

14. The method of claim 3, wherein a category group of a first user is independent from a category group of a second user, where independence is present when category groups are not constrained to be identical.

15. The method of claim 6, further comprising a step of sending, using the posting client, a configuration file to the category server, the configuration file comprising at least categories assignable to messages posted by the posting client.

16. The method of claim 7, wherein the reading client renders the messages in a way to indicate the number of matches with the reading client filters and the message.

17. The method of claim 7, further comprising copying a message to one or more folders which are part of a folder hierarchy corresponding to a category assigned to the message.

18. The method of claim 8, wherein at least one of the additional category designations describes a geographic location of the poster.

19. The method of claim 8, wherein at least one of the additional category designations describes an attribute of the poster, wherein the attribute is independent of the content of the message.

20. The method of claim 12, further comprising a step of compiling the predetermined list of category designations from category designations found in prior messages.

21. The method of claim 15, wherein the category server performs filtering, based on categories provided by the reading client and the contents of the configuration file.

22. The method of claim 15, wherein the configuration file contains an access list.

23. The method of claim 15, further comprising determining, using the category server, from the access list which reading clients are to be permitted to filter messages from a given posting client.