VARIABLE NOTIFICATION ALERTS

• US 20140368333A1
• Filed: 09/02/2014
• Published: 12/18/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 09/19/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Inventors: Touloumtzis, Michael P.
• Granted Patent: US 9,368,021 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 340/505
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/109 Time management, e.g. calendars, reminders, meetings or time accounting
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 1/08 using electric transmission ; transformation of alarm signals to electrical signals from a different medium, e.g. transmission of an electric alarm signal upon detection of an audible alarm signal
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 23/00 Alarms responsive to unspecified undesired or abnormal conditions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/1895 for short real-time information, e.g. alarms, notifications, alerts, updates
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/10 Multimedia information
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/18 Commands or executable codes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/224 providing notification on incoming messages, e.g. pushed notifications of received messages
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/54 Presence management, e.g. monitoring or registration for receipt of user log-on information, or the connection status of the users
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/55 Push-based network services
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72454 according to context-related or environment-related conditions
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/2072 Schedules, e.g. personal calendars

Abstract

Approaches in accordance with various embodiments attempt to provide a user with less disruptive event notifications by being aware of a user'"'"'s context. Before a notification is sent to multiple computing devices associated with the notifying account, contextual information for each device is determined. The contextual information can be determined by querying each device for information. The information can include how close each device is relative to other devices associated with the same user, if at least one of the devices is moving, whether the user'"'"'s attention is focused on a particular device, whether the user is engaging multiple devices simultaneously, and the like. Once contextual information associated with each device is determined, an appropriate type of alert associated with the notification is determined for each device. Accordingly, upon determining the appropriate alert for the most probable context of each device, the notification is sent to each computing device with the determined appropriate type of alert.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of providing a notification to a user, comprising:

under the control of one or more computer systems configured with executable instructions,

receiving a notification to be provided to a plurality of computing devices associated with a user;

querying each of the plurality of computing devices for status information associated with the respective computing device;

determining, based at least in part on one or more responses to the querying, a first computing device of the plurality of computing devices with which the user is interacting;

sending an active notification alert to the first computing device, the active notification alert including text and at least one of an audio alert or a visual alert;

sending a passive notification alert to one or more of the plurality of computing devices other than the first computing device.