Image based electronic mail system
First Claim
1. A method, comprising:
- storing in a database on a network a plurality of profiles each corresponding to a respective member of a social networking website, wherein each profile specifies at least contact information for its respective social networking website member and an image selected by its respective social networking website member;
after said storing, receiving, at a network device, an electronic message originating from a user terminal remote from the network device;
processing the received electronic message to enable at least a portion of the electronic message to be displayed on a user terminal associated with a destination of the electronic message;
comparing sender information of the received electronic message to the database to identify a corresponding one of the profiles; and
responsive to identifying the corresponding one of the profiles, causing the image of the corresponding one of the profiles to be displayed by the user terminal associated with the destination concurrently with the displayed electronic message portion.
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Accused Products
Abstract
An image based email system associates images with different electronic mail (email) senders. The email system receives email messages from different email senders and then looks through either website member profiles or user contacts for associated images. Any located image is displayed in a list of recent senders. This allows the email user to associate recently received email messages with particular sender images or photographs. The images can also be used in a list of favorite or most frequent email senders. Other features of the email system extract information from received email messages to better identify the email senders. These and other features of the email system provide more intuitive and easier to perform email operations.
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Citations
37 Claims
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1. A method, comprising:
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storing in a database on a network a plurality of profiles each corresponding to a respective member of a social networking website, wherein each profile specifies at least contact information for its respective social networking website member and an image selected by its respective social networking website member; after said storing, receiving, at a network device, an electronic message originating from a user terminal remote from the network device; processing the received electronic message to enable at least a portion of the electronic message to be displayed on a user terminal associated with a destination of the electronic message; comparing sender information of the received electronic message to the database to identify a corresponding one of the profiles; and responsive to identifying the corresponding one of the profiles, causing the image of the corresponding one of the profiles to be displayed by the user terminal associated with the destination concurrently with the displayed electronic message portion. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19)
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20. An system, comprising:
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a processor configured to; store in a database on a network a plurality of profiles each corresponding to a respective member of a social networking website, wherein each profile specifies at least contact information for its respective social networking website member and an image selected by its respective social networking website member; after said storing, receive, at a network device, an electronic message originating from a user terminal remote from the network device; process the received electronic message to enable at least a portion of the electronic message to be displayed on a user terminal associated with the destination; compare a sender information of the received electronic message to the database to identify a corresponding one of the profiles; and responsive to identifying the corresponding one of the profiles, cause the image of the corresponding one of the profiles to be displayed by the user terminal associated with the destination concurrently with the displayed electronic message portion. - View Dependent Claims (21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37)
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Specification