Self Populating Address Book

• US 20100306185A1
• Filed: 06/02/2010
• Published: 12/02/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 06/02/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Verizon Patent and Licensing Incorporated (Verizon Communications Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Xobni Incorporated
• Inventors: Smith, Adam, Bonforte, Jeffrey
• Granted Patent: US 8,661,002 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/709
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2379 Updates performed during online database operations; commit processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/275 Synchronous replication
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/338 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9536 Search customisation based on social or collaborative filtering
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0269 based on user profile or attribute
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles

Abstract

System, methods and computer program products for creating and maintaining an address book are described. The address book may collect or update its existing contact information from sent or received communications. Contact information associated with the existing contacts also may be collected (or updated based on information received) from outside sources (e.g., external to an application hosting or accessing the address book). The address book may intelligently combine profile data from various sources to enrich the existing records associated with the contacts.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

receiving contact information associated with a contact from a first source;

establishing a new contact profile containing the contact information in an address book;

locating information related to the contact from a second source; and

updating the new contact profile in the address book automatically based on the located information.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

identifying one or more contacts or contact groups in the address book, each contact group including a plurality of contacts; and

sharing the updated contact profile with the one or more identified contacts or contact groups.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein locating information related to the contact from a second source includes crawling through one or more web pages associated with the contact.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein crawling through one or more web pages includes crawling through one or more web pages of a social networking web site that includes the contact as a member.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining whether the contact information of the new contact profile is similar to contact information of an existing contact profile in the address book; and

if it is determined that the contact information of the new contact profile is similar to contact information of the existing contact profile, then combining the contact information of the new contact profile and the contact information of the existing contact profile.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein combining the contact information of the new contact profile and the contact information of the existing contact profile includes:

creating a combined contact profile for the contact, the combined contact profile containing the combined contact information; and

deleting the new contact profile and the existing contact profile from the address book.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the first source is different from the second source.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the first source and the second source is a publicly available source accessible through a public network.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving contact information includes receiving personal or private data selected from a group comprising communications with other contacts, email body text, email meta data, email header information, email attachments, web search engines, people search engines, social networks, email clients, instant messages, personal web pages, telephone directories, scanned business card data, text messages, picture sharing websites, video sharing websites, profile pages, telephone communications, or customer relationship management systems.

10. A method, comprising:

identifying one or more contacts in an address book of a user, each contact having an associated contact profile;

analyzing each contact profile including identifying one or more entries in each contact profile, each entry containing information related to the contact;

assigning one or more weights to the one or more entries based on one or more criteria; and

ranking the one or more contact profiles based on the one or more assigned weights.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

generating a list of proposed contacts for the user, the list displaying each contact profile according to the ranking.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein identifying one or more entries in each contact profile includes identifying one or more communications in at least one entry of each contact profile.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein assigning one or more weights to the one or more entries based on one or more criteria includes:

assigning one or more weights based on a recency of the one or more communications.

14. The method of claim 12, wherein assigning one or more weights to the one or more entries based on one or more criteria includes:

assigning one or more weights based on a frequency of the one or more communications.

15. The method of claim 12, wherein assigning one or more weights to the one or more entries based on one or more criteria includes:

assigning one or more weights based on one or more keywords contained in the one or more communications.

16. A method, comprising:

receiving a request from a user of an address book to communicate with one or more recipients, the request containing one or more criteria for identifying one or more contacts in the address book as the recipients;

searching the address book for one or more contacts whose contact profile contains information that satisfies at least one criteria;

prioritizing the searched contacts based on the one or more criteria satisfied; and

presenting a proposed list of recipients to the user based on the prioritized contacts.