Contact Management App with Time-Based Search and Sync
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional contact management systems rely heavily on searching by name or email address, making it tedious to retrieve contact information, especially when dealing with large numbers of contacts gathered quickly, and they lack efficient synchronization and backup features across multiple devices and applications.
Innovation Solution
An application software that enhances contact management by storing and managing ancillary information such as date, time, and location of contact creation or update, allowing for advanced search capabilities and synchronization across multiple devices and applications, including backup and recovery features.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If contact information is stored and organized by name in traditional address books, then ease of retrieval is improved when the contact name is known, but retrieval becomes tedious and inefficient when dealing with large numbers of contacts or when the contact name is not remembered
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a temporal dimension to contact management by automatically recording and indexing the date and time when contacts are added or updated. This allows users to search for contacts based on time-based criteria (e.g., contacts added today, this week, or within a specific date range) rather than relying solely on alphabetical name-based search, thereby dramatically reducing retrieval time for large contact lists.
Solution Approach 2:
The system automatically captures and stores ancillary information (date, time, location) without requiring manual user input. The contact management system performs self-service by autonomously recording metadata about each contact entry, enabling enhanced search capabilities without increasing the user's workload.
2Reliability
If contact information is synchronized across multiple devices and applications, then data availability and backup capabilities are improved, but system complexity and synchronization overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the synchronization logic into a separate, standalone component that operates independently from the core contact management functionality. This modular approach allows the synchronization engine to handle data replication across devices and applications without complicating the user interface or core contact operations, thereby improving reliability while managing system complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The synchronization system is designed to work universally across multiple devices and applications simultaneously. By creating a platform-agnostic synchronization layer that can interface with various contact management systems, the patent enables broad data availability without requiring device-specific implementations, thus improving reliability while avoiding the complexity of multiple specialized synchronization protocols.
3Adaptability or versatility
If ancillary information such as date, time, and location is automatically recorded for each contact, then search capabilities are enhanced, but data storage requirements and processing overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements partial recording of ancillary information by selectively capturing only the most essential metadata (date and time) for all contacts, while optionally recording additional information (location, device ID) only when relevant or when storage capacity permits. This approach enhances search capabilities through time-based filtering while avoiding the excessive storage requirements of recording complete contextual information for every contact.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary organization of ancillary information by structuring date, time, and location data in a standardized format during the initial contact entry process. This preliminary structuring enables efficient indexing and querying without requiring complex processing later, thereby enhancing search versatility while minimizing the processing overhead associated with handling unstructured metadata.
Data Source
AI summary
The present invention provides a contact management, creation, and filtering application on a mobile or computing devices by providing a contact list or address book with enhanced searching capabilities, whether the original address book or contact list is created by the application software of the present invention, with other application software while the application software of the present invention is running in the background, or the address book or contact list is being modified or sync either using the application software.