Technique for effective organization and communication of information

Abstract

In a communication arrangement in accordance with the invention, a server is employed to collect and organize information for mobile device users according to the user profiles, e.g., personal profile, business profile, vacation profile, etc., which reflect different user personae. By using this arrangement, the user advantageously maintains only the necessary information in the mobile device and downloads any additional information from the server on an as needed basis. In addition, the server is capable of serving mobile devices which may be incompatible to one another, thereby facilitating an exchange of information between such devices. Moreover, with the server, incoming messages for the user are organized and stored according to the source of the messages and the user criteria established in the user profiles. Further, information in a mobile device may be organized using electronic information cards, referred to as “E-cards,” which facilitate, among others, transfer of information from the mobile device to the server, or other mobile devices to conduct various commercial and data transactions.

Description

[0001] This application claims the benefits under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 221,628 filed on Jul. 28, 2000; U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 224,448 filed on Aug. 10, 2000; and U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 226,825 filed on Aug. 22, 2000.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] The invention relates to a communication system and method, and more particularly to a system and method for providing communication services to a user through a server. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003] Mobile devices such as personal communication systems (PCS) and personal digital assistants (PDA) have been developed to provide access to the Internet and other network-type services. These devices incorporate wireless communications and modem facilities, enabling a user to send and receive electronic mail (e-mail), or to upload and download data through the Internet. Similarly, wireless telephones have been adapted to receive and display textual messages. [0004] However, users o...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0006] In accordance with the invention, a centralized communication facility, e.g., a server connected to one or more communication networks, is employed to collect and organize information for a user of a mobile device. For each user, the server collects and organizes the information based on user profiles that reflect different user personae. By collecting and organizing information according to the user profiles in the server, the operation of the mobile device is simplified. In addition, the amount of non-volatile memory required in the mobile device may be reduced, as most of the information is stored in the server, instead. The mobile device obtains the necessary information from the server on an as needed basis.

[0007] In addition, the server provides different protocol driver programs for various mobile devices for communications with the server. This being so, the various incompatible mobile devices may share the same information by efficiently downloading it from the server, thereby obviating the need of data re-entry or re-visits of information sources as in prior art. Specifically, during an initial handshake with the server, the mobile device identifies itself to the server, which then downloads the appropriate protocol driver program to the mobile device for its communications with the server.

[0011] In accordance with still yet another aspect of the invention, electronic information cards, referred to as “E-cards,” may be used to organize data in the mobile device and to exchange selected data between the server and the mobile device. E-cards may contain information from selected user profiles. For example, a personal E-card may contain information items related to financial records, such as credit card numbers, bank accounts and balances from the user personal profile. A business E-card may contain information items from the user business profile which are related to business. With the E-card arrangement, selective user information can be distributed among different recipients in an efficient manner.

Problems solved by technology

As wireless communication bandwidth and data transfer rates increase, the increase in the volume of data available to a mobile device quickly overwhelms the capacity of the mobile device.

At the same time, this flood of data also overwhelms a user as the user tries to effectively utilize the data collected by the mobile device.

Without proper organization and presentation of the collected data, useful and important data often goes unnoticed.

However, due to the incompatibility of the traditional mobile devices, the data replication may only be accomplished by data re-entry or re-visiting of information sources.

Disadvantageously, the data re-entry is oftentimes labor intensive, and the re-visits are time consuming.

Moreover, the user may not be able to recall the previous information sources from which the data was collected, and even if the user is able to re-visit each of those information sources, the data there may have been revised because of the time lag, thus frustrating the data replication effort.

Images