Managing availability status in a communications network

• US 7,970,391 B2
• Filed: 03/25/2010
• Issued: 06/28/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 12/22/2006
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Qualcomm, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: Jager, Ivo Ruben Willem, O'Shaughnessy, Kevin Michael
• Primary Examiner(s): TRINH, TAN H
• Application Number:
  US12/731,989
• Publication Number:
  US 20100177812A1
• Time in Patent Office: 460 Days
• Field of Search: 455/518, 455/519, 455/550.1, 455/424, 455/90.2, 455/414.1, 455516-521, 370/352, 370/353, 370/354, 370/384, 709/204, 709/206, 709/224, 709/203, 709/321, 709/223, 719/321
• US Class Current: 455/414.4
• 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

Abstract

A system and a method are disclosed for a presence engine and a method of operating a presence engine for encoding or decoding availability status into a signal representative of an audio signal. The presence engine is configured to manage availability status of a user. The presence engine comprises an input configured to receive a signal representative of an audio signal and an output configured to send a signal representative of an audio signal. The presence engine also comprises a processor configured to encode availability status of a user into a signal representative of an audio signal and/or configured to decode availability status of a user from a signal representative of an audio signal.

Claims

1. A method for managing availability status of users of a communications network, the method comprising:

obtaining, by a computing device, an availability status of a user in a native format specific to a communications application;

translating, by the computing device, the obtained availability status of the user from the native format specific to the communications application to a generic format independent of the communications application; and

storing, to a memory in the computing device, the translated availability status of the user in the generic format.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

obtaining, by the computing device, an identifier of the user in a native identifier format specific to the communications application; and

translating, by the computing device, the obtained identifier of the user from the native identifier format specific to the communications application to a generic identifier format independent of the communications application.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the identifier of the user in the native identifier format comprises one of a user name, an email address, and a phone number.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the communications application comprises one of a messaging application, a push-to-talk application, and a gaming application.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the computing device comprises a central server that facilitates communication between mobile devices on the communication network.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the computing device comprises one of a mobile device, a cell phone, a smart phone, a personal digital assistant, and a personal computer.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein translating the availability status comprises performing a lookup of the availability status in an availability concordance database, wherein the generic format of the availability status in the availability concordance database corresponds to two or more native formats for two or more different applications.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

obtaining, by a computing device, an availability status of a contact in the generic format;

for each communications application that utilizes the availability status of the contact, translating, by the computing device, the availability status of the contact in the generic format to the native formats specific to each of the communications applications that utilize the availability status of the contact.

9. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, the instructions when executed further cause the processor to perform steps of:

obtaining, by a computing device, an availability status of a contact in the generic format;

for each communications application that utilizes the availability status of the contact, translating, by the computing device, the availability status of the contact in the generic format to the native formats specific to each of the communications applications that utilize the availability status of the contact.

10. A computer-readable storage medium storing computer-executable instructions for managing availability status of users of a communications network, the instructions when executed by the processor cause the processor to perform steps of:

obtaining an availability status of a user in a native format specific to a communications application;

translating the obtained availability status of the user from the native format specific to the communications application to a generic format independent of the communications application; and

storing the translated availability status of the user in the generic format.

11. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, the instructions when executed further cause the processor to perform steps of:

obtaining an identifier of the user in a native identifier format specific to the communications application; and

translating the obtained identifier of the user from the native identifier format specific to the communications application to a generic identifier format independent of the communications application.

12. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 11, wherein the identifier of the user in the native identifier format comprises one of a user name, an email address, and a phone number.

13. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the communications application comprises one of a messaging application, a push-to-talk application, and a gaming application.

14. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the computing device comprises a central server that facilitates communication between mobile devices on the communication network.

15. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein the computing device comprises one of a mobile device, a cell phone, a smart phone, a personal digital assistant, and a personal computer.

16. The computer-readable storage medium of claim 10, wherein translating the availability status comprises performing a lookup of the availability status in an availability concordance database, wherein the generic format of the availability status in the availability concordance database corresponds to two or more native formats for two or more different applications.

17. A system for managing availability status comprising:

a processor for executing a communications application on a mobile device;

a presence engine configured to obtain an availability status of a user in a native format specific to the communications application and translate the availability status of the user from the native format specific to the communications application to a generic format independent of the communications application; and

an availability concordance database for storing a correlation between the availability status in the native format and the availability status in the generic format.

18. The system of claim 17, further comprising:

a contacts database configured to store a correlation between an identifier of the user in a native identifier format specific to the communications application and a generic identifier format independent of the communications application,

wherein the presence engine is further configured to obtain the identifier of the user and translate the obtained identifier of the user from the native identifier format specific to the communications application to the generic identifier format independent of the communications application using the contacts database.

19. The system of claim 17, wherein the presence engine executes on a central server that facilitates communications between devices on the communications network.

20. The system of claim 17, wherein the presence engine executes on a communications client device that operates on the communications network.