Device, program and method for assisting in preparing email

• US 7,788,327 B2
• Filed: 05/26/2005
• Issued: 08/31/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 11/28/2002
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Panasonic Corporation (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Panasonic Corporation (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Naito, Eiichi, Ozawa, Jun
• Primary Examiner(s): Vaughn, Jr.; William C
• Assistant Examiner(s): PEREZ, CARLOS R
• Application Number:
  US11/137,984
• Publication Number:
  US 20050210115A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,923 Days
• Field of Search: 709204-207, 715/200, 715/256, 715/261
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/44 Statistical methods, e.g. probability models
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/56 Natural language generation

Abstract

An email preparation assisting device automatically produces human-relations information about human relations with a recipient to whom an email is to be sent. In order to realize this, term extraction member extracts terms from emails stored in a sent/received email storing section. Term usage frequency calculation member calculates the usage frequency of each extracted term, and adds it to the usage frequency of the term stored in a term usage frequency storing section. Human-relations information producing member weights human-relations basic information associated in advance with each term in a term association list for each communication partner with the usage frequency of the term for the communication partner stored in the term usage frequency storing section to produce human-relations information based on the result of the weighting operation. The produced human-relations information is stored in a human-relations information storing section separately for each communication partner.

Claims

1. An email preparation assisting device for assisting a sender of an email prepare a new email message to a recipient, comprising:

a non transient computer readable medium having embedded therein;

a term extraction member for extracting a term from email messages of a communications session between the recipient and the sender, the email messages including email messages sent to the recipient and email messages received from the recipient;

a term usage frequency calculation member for calculating a usage frequency of each term in the email messages of the communication session that was extracted by the term extraction member; and

a human-relations information producing member that determines a human relationship between the sender and the recipient using a term association list and the usage frequencies of the extracted terms, in which each term in the term association list is associated with human-relations basic information defined by at least one of measures of a senior-junior degree, a friendliness degree, and a business degree;

wherein when a new communications session is performed with the recipient, the term usage frequency calculation member calculates a usage frequency, in an email message of the new communications session, of each term extracted by the term extraction member from the email message, and adds the calculation result to the usage frequency of the term thus far; and

the human-relations information producing member

(a) uses the term association list to perform;

i) a first weighting operation where the human-relations basic information associated with the term extracted by the term extraction member from the email messages sent to the recipient is weighted with the calculated usage frequency of the term, and

ii) a second weighting operation where human-relations basic information associated with the term extracted by the term extraction member from the email messages received from the recipient is weighted with the calculated usage frequency of the term, and

(b) produces human-relations information of the senior-junior degree obtained from a difference between the results of the first and second weighting operations.

3. The email preparation assisting device of one of claims 1 and 2, comprising:

human-relations information extraction member for extracting human-relations information for a recipient to whom the email is to be sent, from the human-relations information produced by the human-relations information producing member and stored separately for each communication recipient; and

assisting member for assisting in preparing the email to the recipient based on the human-relations information extracted by the human-relations information extraction member.

4. The email preparation assisting device of claim 3, wherein the assisting member refers to an additional information association list in which a conventional phrase, decoration information and other additional information to be added to the email are each associated with a condition about at least one of the measures to suggest additional information that is associated with the condition satisfied by the human-relations information extracted by the human-relations information extraction member.

5. The email preparation assisting device of claim 3, wherein the assisting member refers to a term association list in which each term is associated with human-relations basic information defined by at least one of the measures to calculate a distance between the human-relations basic information associated with each term included in a prepared email and the human-relations information extracted by the human-relations information extraction member so as to determine appropriateness of the term included in the prepared email based on a magnitude relationship between the distance and a predetermined threshold value.

6. The email preparation assisting device of claim 3, wherein the assisting member refers to a character conversion dictionary association list in which each character conversion dictionary is associated with a condition about at least one of the measures to select a character conversion dictionary associated with the condition satisfied by the human-relations information extracted by the human-relations information extraction member.

9. The email preparation assisting device of claim 1, wherein human-relations information producing member analyzes a plurality of emails from the sender to the recipient and a plurality of return emails from the recipient to the sender to determine the senior-junior degree, the friendliness degree, and the business degree between the sender and the recipient and further assigns a numerical value to each of the senior-junior degree, the friendliness degree, and the business degree in response to the determined results.

10. The email preparation assisting device of claim 1, wherein the term extraction member extracts each appearance, of at least one term in the term association list, from historical emails from the first person to the second person and historical emails from the second person to the first person;

wherein the term usage frequency calculation member determines the usage frequency for the at least one term in the historical emails based on the extraction result from the term extraction member for the at least one term;

wherein the human-relations information producing member determines the human relationship between the first person and the second person based on the at least one term and the usage frequency for the at least one term in the historical emails.

2. An email preparation assisting device for assisting a sender of an email prepare a new email message to a recipient, comprising:

a non transient computer readable medium having embedded therein;

term extraction member for extracting a term from email messages of a communications session with between the recipient and the sender, the email messages including email messages sent to the recipient and email messages received from the recipient;

a term usage frequency calculation member for calculating a usage frequency, of each term in the email messages of the communication session that was extracted by the term extraction member;

a human-relations information producing member that determines a human relationship between the sender and the recipient using a term association list and the usage frequencies of the extracted terms, in which each term in the term association list is associated with human-relations basic information defined by at least one of measures of a senior-junior degree, a friendliness degree, and a business degree;

a term usage frequency storing section for storing, separately for each communication recipient, the usage frequency of each term calculated by the term usage frequency calculation member while associating the usage frequency with the term; and

a human-relations information storing section for storing, separately for each communication recipient, the human-relations information produced by the human-relations information producing member;

wherein the human-relations information producing member

(a) uses the term association list to perform;

i) a first weighting operation where the human-relations basic information associated with the term extracted by the term extraction member from the email messages sent to the recipient is weighted with the calculated usage frequency of the term and

ii) a second weighting operation where human-relations basic information associated with the term extracted by the term extraction member from the email messages received from the recipient is weighted with the calculated usage frequency of the term calculated by the term usage frequency calculation member, and

(b) produces the human-relations information of the senior-junior degree obtained from a difference between the results of the first and second weighting operations.

7. A non-transient computer readable medium having embedded therein computer executable instructions for an email preparation assisting computer program for controlling a computer to assist a sender of an email prepare a new email message to a recipient, the computer program comprising:

a term extraction means for extracting a term from email messages of a communications session between the recipient and the sender, the email messages including email messages sent to the recipient and email messages received from the recipient;

with a recipient to whom the email is to be sent;

a term usage frequency calculation means for calculating a usage frequency of each term in the email messages of the communication session that was extracted by the term extraction means; and

a human-relations information producing means that determines a human relationship between the sender and the recipient using a term association list and the term frequencies of the extracted terms, in which each term in the term association list is associated with human-relations basic information defined by at least one of measures of a senior-junior degree, a friendliness degree, and a business degree;

wherein when a new communications session is performed with the recipient, the term usage frequency calculation means calculates a usage frequency, in an email message of the new communications session, of each term extracted by the term extraction means from the email message, and adds the calculation result to the usage frequency of the term thus far, and

the human-relations information producing means

(a) uses the term association list to perform;

i) a first weighting operation where the human-relations basic information associated with the term extracted by the term extraction means from the email messages sent to the recipient is weighted with the usage frequency calculated by the term usage frequency calculation means and

ii) a second weighting operation where the human-relations basic information associated with the term extracted by the term extraction means from the email messages received from the recipient is weighted with the usage frequency calculated by the term usage frequency calculation means, and

(b) produces human-relations information of the senior-junior degree obtained from a difference between the results of the first and second weighting operations.

8. A non-transient computer readable medium having embedded therein computer executable instructions for an email preparation assisting computer program for controlling a computer to assist a sender of an email prepare a new email message to a recipient, the computer program comprising:

a term extraction means for extracting a term from email messages of a communications session between the recipient and the sender, the email messages including email messages sent to the recipient and email messages received from the recipient;

with a recipient to whom the email is to be sent;

a term usage frequency calculation means for calculating a usage frequency of each term in the email messages of the communication session that was extracted by the term extraction means;

a human-relations information producing means that determines a human relationship between the sender and the recipient using a term association list and the term frequencies of the extracted terms, in which each term in the term association list is associated with human-relations basic information defined by at least one of measures of a senior-junior degree, a friendliness degree, and a business degree, to determine a human relationship between the sender and the recipient;

a term usage frequency storing means for storing, separately for each communication recipient, the usage frequency of each term calculated by the term usage frequency calculation means while associating the usage frequency with the term; and

a human-relations information storing means for storing, separately for each communication recipient, the human-relations information produced by the human-relations information producing means;

wherein the human-relations information producing means

(a) uses the term association list to perform;

ii) a first weighting operation where the human-relations basic information associated with the term extracted by the term extraction means from the email messages sent to the recipient is weighted with the usage frequency calculated by the term usage frequency calculation means and

ii) a second weighting operation where the human-relations basic information associated with the term extracted by the term extraction means from the email messages received from the recipient is weighted with the usage frequency calculated by the term usage frequency calculation means, and

(b) produces the human-relations information of the senior-junior degree obtained from a difference between the results of the first and second weighting operations.