Providing a portion of an electronic mail message at a reduced resolution

• US 7,596,285 B2
• Filed: 02/26/2004
• Issued: 09/29/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 02/26/2004
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Smith, Newton J., Paolini, Michael A., Brown, Michael W.
• Primary Examiner(s): Strege; John B
• Application Number:
  US10/787,981
• Publication Number:
  US 20050193068A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,042 Days
• Field of Search: 382/299, 382/298, 382/300, 709/206, 709/246
• US Class Current: 382/299
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/066 Format adaptation, e.g. format conversion or compression
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/08 Annexed information, e.g. attachments
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/226 Delivery according to priorities

Abstract

A method and an apparatus for providing a portion of an electronic mail message having a reduced resolution are presented. The method includes determining whether it is desirable to provide less than all of an electronic mail message, selecting a portion of the electronic mail message, and reducing a resolution of the selected portion of the electronic mail message. The method also includes providing the portion of the electronic mail message with reduced resolution.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

determining from transfer criteria whether to provide less than all of an electronic mail message;

selecting a portion of the electronic mail message;

reducing a resolution of the selected portion of the electronic mail message, wherein reducing the resolution of the selected portion of the electronic mail message comprises a part of downcasting a portion of at least one file associated with the electronic mail message;

generating a downloadable, reduced copy of the electronic mail message from the reduced resolution, selected portion; and

downloading the reduced copy to a user;

wherein downcasting the at least one file comprises downcasting at least one of an audio file, video file, a multimedia file, an image file, and a graphics file;

wherein selecting the portion of the electronic mail message comprises selecting the portion based upon determining from transfer criteria whether to provide less than all of the electronic mail message;

wherein reducing the resolution comprises reducing the resolution based on transfer criteria;

wherein generating comprises providing to the user information relating to the at least one file associated with the electronic mail message, wherein information relating to the file comprises a filename, a file type, an actual file size, estimated download time, and at least one of a file creation date, a file modified date, version information, color format, color resolution, estimated transfer speed, and a download priority;

further comprising;

identifying a type of the at least one file based on at least one of a file name extension, a file-type-specific plug-in, a transcoder, and an identifier inserted into the file, wherein the inserted identifier comprises indicator characters, control characters and character strings, and wherein identifying a file type based on the inserted identifier comprises parsing the file to determine the identifier;

downloading the reduced copy to a plurality of users;

setting at least one flag indicative of at least one user email handling preference;

downloading the electronic mail message subsequent to downloading the reduced copy, wherein downloading comprises trickle downloading.