Contact Reconciliation via Wireless Backup Synchronization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional mobile telephony services lack effective address book synchronization and management features, such as reciprocal-add and forced-removal services, which are essential for ensuring accurate and secure contact information sharing and removal across mobile devices.
Innovation Solution
A wireless-backup service and contact reconciliation system that allows users to opt-in for address book synchronization, enabling reciprocal-add and forced-removal services, where the network manages contact information updates and notifications across devices, ensuring that contact information is accurately added or removed based on user preferences and network events.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If conventional mobile telephony services are used, then basic communication functionality is provided, but address book synchronization and management features are lacking
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a network server as an intermediary to mediate between multiple mobile devices. This server stores and manages contact information centrally, receiving synchronization requests from devices and distributing updated contact data back to relevant devices. This intermediary approach enables address book synchronization across multiple devices without requiring direct device-to-device communication, thereby solving the inconsistency problem while maintaining basic telephony functionality.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements a copying mechanism where contact information is replicated from a central network storage to multiple user devices. When contact data is updated on one device, the network server creates updated copies and distributes them to other authorized devices. This copying approach ensures all devices maintain consistent contact information while allowing the original device to retain full editing capabilities.
2Ease of operation
If users manually manage contact information across multiple devices, then user control is maintained, but time and effort are consumed for synchronization
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by pre-configuring synchronization rules and permissions between devices before contact exchanges occur. Users set up which devices should share contact information and under what conditions in advance. This preliminary configuration eliminates the need for manual synchronization operations during actual contact management, as the system automatically handles updates according to pre-established rules, significantly reducing time and effort.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables self-service synchronization where mobile devices automatically detect and resolve contact information updates without user intervention. When a contact is added or modified on one device, the device autonomously communicates with the network server and other authorized devices to propagate changes. This self-service mechanism maintains user control while eliminating manual synchronization time, as devices handle their own contact management autonomously based on predefined synchronization policies.
3Reliability
If contact information is shared across multiple devices without network mediation, then device autonomy is maintained, but contact information accuracy and security are compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The network server acts as a trusted intermediary that validates and verifies contact information before distributing it to devices. It maintains the single source of truth for contact data, checking for conflicts and ensuring data integrity. This intermediary layer provides reliability and accuracy by preventing inconsistent or conflicting contact information from being stored on devices, while the complexity is centralized on the server rather than distributed across devices.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses controlled copying where the network server creates and distributes verified copies of contact information to authorized devices. Each copy is authenticated and tracked, ensuring that devices receive accurate, validated data without needing to implement complex verification mechanisms themselves. This copying approach maintains reliability while keeping device complexity low, as devices simply store and display verified copies rather than independently validating data.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, devices, and products utilize wireless-backup technologies to provide contact-reconciliation services with respect to sets of contacts stored on mobile devices. One embodiment of the inventions includes receiving an indication of an update event associated with a first set of contacts on a first mobile device, updating a remotely-stored copy of the first set of contacts, determining that a remotely-stored copy of a second set of contacts does not include a portion of contact information corresponding to the first mobile device, and updating the remotely-stored copy of the second set of contacts. In an embodiment, the remotely-stored copy of the second set of contacts is synchronized with the second set of contacts, thereby updating the second set of contacts.