Method of and system for displaying mobile messages in unsupported formats

• US 9,626,341 B1
• Filed: 11/21/2006
• Issued: 04/18/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 11/22/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Syniverse Communications LLC
• Original Assignee: Syniverse Communications, Inc. (Syniverse Corp.)
• Inventors: Guan, Xiaomei, Xu, Huiyue
• Primary Examiner(s): Ries, Laurie
• Application Number:
  US11/603,367
• Time in Patent Office: 3,801 Days
• Field of Search: 709206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/109 Font handling; Temporal or kinetic typography
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/129 Handling non-Latin characters, e.g. kana-to-kanji conversion
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/137 Hierarchical processing, e.g. outlines
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/066 Format adaptation, e.g. format conversion or compression
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/14 Short messaging services, e.g. short message services [SMS] or unstructured supplementary service data [USSD]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/18 Information format or content conversion, e.g. adaptation by the network of the transmitted or received information for the purpose of wireless delivery to users or terminals

Abstract

The present invention is directed to methods of and systems for converting data that is in a format unsupported by a recipient device into images that are supported and can thus be accurately rendered by the recipient device. Thus, recipient devices, such as mobile phones and text messengers, all of which are able to display images, are all able to render characters in languages not supported by the recipient device. A method of the present invention converts data for display on a receiving device configured to accurately render data in one or more supported formats. The method includes determining whether a first format of the data is a supported format, and automatically converting the data into a second format supported by the second device if the first format is not a supported format. Preferably, the first format is defined by a character set and the second format is a binary image format.

Claims

1. A method of converting data in a first format in a message transmitted from a sending device for display on a receiving device configured to accurately render data in one or more supported formats comprising:

determining the first format of the data in the message transmitted from the sending device, wherein the first format is defined by a character set, the message being a Short Message Service (SMS) or a Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) message;

determining whether the receiving device supports the first format by comparing a first domain associated with a mobile phone number of the sending device with a second domain associated with a mobile phone number of the receiving device; and

responsive to determining that the receiving device does not support the first format based on comparison of the first domain and the second domain, converting the data into a second format supported by the receiving device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the second format is a binary image format.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the character set is one of an English font, a Chinese font, a Korean font, a Japanese font, a Spanish font, a Cyrillic font, and a Baltics font.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the second format is one of Device-Independent Bitmap format, Graphics Interchange Format, Portable Document Format, Joint Photographic Experts Group format, Portable Networks Graphics format, and Tagged Image File Format.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising wirelessly transmitting the message in the first format from the sending device.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the receiving device is any one of a cell phone, a text messenger, a pager, and a personal digital assistant.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the data is converted from the first format to the second format before the message is received on the receiving device.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

storing the message in a supported format of the receiving device on a storage node for retrieval by the receiving device;

generating a notification alert containing access information for accessing the message on the storage node; and

transmitting the notification alert to the receiving device.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the access information comprises a user name and a one-time passcode.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the message in a supported format stored on the storage node is a Multimedia Message Service Message and the notification alert is a Short Message Service message.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein determining the first format of the data comprises analyzing the data to determine one of an area code, a domain name, and a country code, each associated with the sending device.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the determining whether the first format of the data is the supported format of the receiving device comprises analyzing the data to determine one of an area code, a domain name, and a country code, each associated with the receiving device.

13. The method of claim 1 wherein the supported format is a data format which can be accurately rendered for display on the receiving device.

14. The method of claim 1 wherein a user of the sending device is subscribed to a service implementing the method.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein converting the data into a second format is further based on a type of the character set.

16. A method of processing a multi-part user-composed message having text data including a first part and a second part for transmission from a sending device to a receiving device comprising:

separately determining a first format of the text data in the first part and the second part, wherein the first and the second parts are able to be determined as having different first formats, the first format being defined by a character set, the message being a Short Message Service (SMS) or a Multimedia Messaging Service (MIMS) message;

determining whether the receiving device supports the first format of the first part and the second part of the message by comparing a first domain associated with a mobile phone number of the sending device with a second domain associated with a mobile phone number of the receiving device;

responsive to determining that the receiving device does not support the first format of the first part of the text data, converting the first part into a second format supported for display on the receiving device; and

combining the converted first part with the second part of the text data to form a converted message for display on the receiving device.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein the multi-part message comprises text, multimedia, binary, and any combination of these.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein the multi-part message is an email message.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein the email message is a Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension message.

20. The method of claim 18, wherein the email message is a Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language message.

21. The method of claim 16, wherein the identifier of the sending device and the identifier of the receiving device are international area codes.

22. The method of claim 16, wherein the identifier of the sending device and the identifier of the receiving device are domains.

23. The method of claim 16, wherein the converting the data is based only on an international area code associated with the sending device, an international area code associated with the receiving device, the character set, and a font of the second format.

24. A message hub for forwarding Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) messages from a sending device to a recipient device, the message hub comprising a non-transitory computer-readable medium programmed with instructions for converting portions of a message from a first format defined by a character set that cannot be accurately rendered on a recipient device to a second format defined by an image that can be accurately rendered on the recipient device, wherein determination of whether the recipient device supports the first format is based on comparison of a first domain associated with a mobile phone number of a sending device and a second domain associated with a mobile phone number of a recipient device.

25. The message hub of claim 24, further comprising a text-to-image converter.

26. The message hub of claim 25, wherein the text-to-image converter is configured to generate an image in Device-Independent Bitmap format, Graphics Interchange Format, Portable Document Format, Joint Photographic Experts Group format, Portable Networks Graphics format, or Tagged Image File Format.

27. The message hub of claim 25, wherein the text-to-image converter comprises a comparator for determining whether to convert the portions of the message based on a comparison between an identifier of the sending device and an identifier of the recipient device.

28. The message hub of claim 27, wherein the text-to-image converter further comprises one or more character databases, wherein each character database maps characters that cannot be accurately rendered on the recipient device to corresponding images in one or more fonts.

29. The message hub of claim 24, further comprising one or more of an SMTP/MM4 Gateway, a Short Message Service Gateway, and a Multimedia Message Service Gateway, all for receiving messages.

30. The message hub of claim 29, further comprising a storage unit coupled to the conversion unit and configured to store messages in a format supported by the recipient device.

31. The message hub of claim 29, further comprising a conversion unit and a notification and access module coupled to the conversion unit and configured to generate and transmit a notification alert for accessing one or more stored messages.

32. The message hub of claim 31, wherein the conversion unit and notification and access module are together configured to receive a Short Message Service message containing data in the first format, generate a Multimedia Message Service message containing the data in the second format, store the Multimedia Message Service message on the storage unit, and generate the notification alert as a Short Message Service message.

33. The message hub of claim 31, wherein the notification alert comprises information for accessing a stored message.

34. The message hub of claim 33, wherein the information comprises a user name and a one-time password.

35. The message hub of claim 24, wherein the recipient device is any one of a text messenger, a cell phone, a pager, and a personal digital assistant.

36. The message hub of claim 24, wherein the converting comprises mapping characters in the first format and a font of the characters into the image.