Method and system for updating business cards

• US 8,499,046 B2
• Filed: 05/06/2009
• Issued: 07/30/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 10/07/2008
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Joe Zheng
• Original Assignee: Joe Zheng
• Inventors: Zheng, Joe
• Primary Examiner(s): Daftuar, Saket K
• Application Number:
  US12/436,138
• Publication Number:
  US 20130022284A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,546 Days
• Field of Search: 707/10, 707/104, 707/200, 709/222, 709/229, 709/205, 709/206, 709/207, 709/217, 709/218, 709/219, 709/223, 709/245, 709/246, 705/14, 705/26, 705/27, 382/101, 382/112, 382181-183, 382/188, 382/220, 382/221, 382/229, 382/305, 382/306, 382309-313, 382317-319, 382/321
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/212 using filtering or selective blocking

Abstract

Techniques for capturing images of business cards, uploading the images to a designated computing device for processing and recognition are disclosed. A mechanism is provided to update extracted data from the images when there are any changes. Depending on implementation, there are a number of ways to capture images of business cards (e.g., via a phone camera, a PC camera, or a scanning device). A transmission means is provided to transport the images to the designated computing device for centralized management of integrated contact information for individual users. As a result, a user may access his/her updatable integrated contact information database anywhere anytime from a chosen device.

Claims

1. A method for managing contact information, the method comprising:

receiving in a server an image of a business card from a device associated with a user that has received the business card from a giver of the business card, wherein the device being a mobile device with a camera is not configured to perform locally optical character recognition (OCR), the mobile device is remotely located with respect to the server and used by the user to take a snapshot of the business card, the image of the business card is automatically transported by way of data transmission from the mobile device to the server over a network when the mobile device detects a wireless link over the network;

processing the image of the business card for optical character recognition using an OCR engine being executed in the server and extracting data from the image of the business card;

verifying at least contact information from extracted data generated from the OCR engine applied to the image of the business card to ensure that the contact information is accurate to communicate by the server with the giver of the business card before entering the extracted data from the image of the business card as a record into an account of the user established with the server, wherein the contact information includes an email address, the user synchronizes a chosen device with the account on the server to update a local address book in the chosen device, the local address book has the record, a change to the record in the local address book in the chosen device is to be reflected in the record of the account on the server; and

notifying the giver of the business card by the server using the contact information in the business card that the business card has been entered electronically into the account of the user, wherein the giver is invited to establish an account to be linked electronically to the account of the user when the giver has not had the account with the server, or an account of the giver is set to be linked electronically to the account of the user when the account of the giver is already established with the server so that the giver is able to manage the record to keep the user updated of any change to the record, wherein said notifying the giver of the business card by the server using the contact information in the business card comprises sending an email to the giver using the email address extracted from the image of the business card.

2. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the data transmission includes email by which the image of the business card is emailed to the server, a dedicated phone number by which the image of the business card is sent to the server similar to sending a short message, or an HTTP link by which the image of the business card is transported to the server.

3. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the wireless link to the server is detected by the mobile device to upload the image of the business card whenever the mobile device is able to do so by using the wireless link.

4. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the mobile device is an imaging device coupled to a host computing device, the imaging device is operated to produce the image of the business card and transport the image of the business card to the host computing device executing a module configured to reformat the image of the business card to a predefined format and forward the reformatted image of the business card to the server by way of data transmission.

5. The method as recited in claim 4, wherein the at least contact information from the extracted data being verified is an email address, wherein said notifying the giver of the business card by the server using the contact information in the business card comprises sending an email to the slyer of the business card using the email address.

6. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein said receiving in a server an image of a business card from a device comprises receiving the image of the business card from the mobile device, used by the user to take a snapshot of the business card, and wherein the mobile device is configured to store the image of the business card and upload the image of the business card together with images of other business cards captured by the user to the server by way of data transmission when the wireless link to the server becomes available.

7. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein said verifying at least contact information comprises:

verifying the extracted data with a human intervention in view of the image of the business card to make corrections in the extracted data to ensure the extracted data is as accurate as possible before the extracted data is entered into the account of the user and used to contact the giver by the email address in the extracted data.

8. The method as recited in claim 1, further comprising:

updating the account of the user with an update from the giver of the business card who has made a change to the record via an account established for the giver, and

updating the account for the giver with an update from the user who has made a change to his/her own record, wherein the user and the giver stay in touch with each other even if one of the user and the giver changes job, phone number or other contact information.

17. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the database is further populated by a crawling module to discover valid domain names to ensure some of basic information from the images of business cards are always correct.

9. A method for managing contact information, the method comprising:

receiving in a server over a network an image of a business card from a mobile device associated with a user, wherein the business card is given to the user by a giver, the user takes a snapshot of the business card using a camera of the mobile device to generate the image of the business card, the server and the mobile device are located remotely with respect to each other, the image of the business card is automatically transported by way of data transmission from the mobile device to the server when the mobile device detects a wireless link over the network;

extracting in the server an identifying parameter associated with the image of the business card to determine if this image of the business card is sent from a registered user;

when the identifying parameter is already registered with the server, processing the image of the business card for optical character recognition (OCR) using an OCR engine being executed in the server;

extracting data from the image of the business card;

correcting any errors in an email address in the extracted data before the extracted data is entered as a record into an account of the user so that later the user uses a chosen device to access the account to update a local address book in the chosen device, wherein the local address book has the record including contact information of the giver from the extracted data;

notifying the giver by the server using the email address that the business card has been entered electronically into the account of the user, wherein the giver is invited to establish an account to be linked to the account of the user when the giver has not had the account with the server, or an account of the giver is set to be linked to the account of the user when the account of giver is already established with the server so that the giver is able to manage the record to keep the user updated of any change to the record, wherein said notifying the giver of the business card by the server using the contact information in the business card comprises sending an email to the giver using the email address extracted from the image of the business card;

when the identifying parameter is not registered with the server, sending a message back to where the message came from using the identifying parameter, wherein the message invites the user to sign up a service being offered on the server.

10. The method as recited in claim 9, wherein the record includes one or more of first and second names, company name, title and the contact information including data about a postal address, an email address and one or more phone numbers.

11. The method as recited in claim 10, wherein the device is equipped with or coupled to an imaging capability that generates the image of the business card, the mobile device is configured to transport the image of the business card to the server by way of data transmission over the network.

12. A system for managing contact information, the system comprising:

a first mobile device with a camera used by a first user to take an image of a business card received from a second user,

the first mobile device transporting the image of the business card over a wireless link to a server configured to manage an account for the first user,

wherein the first mobile device and the server are remotely located with respect to each other,

the server further processes the image of the business card for optical character recognition (OCR) to extract texts including an email address from the image of the business card after a parameter accompanying the image of the business card is verified with the account of the first user,

a result from the OCR is entered into the account of the first user, and meanwhile the server is configured to send a notification by an email address in the extracted texts to a second device associated with the second user to indicate that the business card has been electronically entered into the account of the first user in the server, the email address is verified with a database that is gradually populated by verified domain names obtained from images of business cards captured over time by all users registered with the server.

13. The system as recited in claim 12, wherein, when the second user has already registered with the server, a link between the account of the first user and an account of the second user is established so that a change to the account of the first user or the second user is automatically reflected in the account of the second or first user.

14. The system as recited in claim 12, wherein, if the second user has not registered with the server, the notification sent by the server using the contact information of the second user includes an invitation to invite the second user to register with the server.

15. The system as recited in claim 12, further comprising:

a second device, used by the first user, having a local address book, the second device being caused to synchronize with the account of the first user on the server, wherein the local address book of the second device includes the record derived from the image of the business card.

16. The system as recited in claim 15, wherein one or both of the first device and second device are one of a mobile device, a personal computer with a PC camera and a computing device coupled to a scanning device.