Apple's contact service intelligently determines when to send a text instead of a call
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday granted Apple a patent for a dynamic communications system that automatically selects the best method of contacting another person, be it through voice, text or email, based on a given situation.
Source: USPTO
Apple's U.S. Patent No. 8,433,805 for a "Method and system for facilitating contacting people using electronic devices," describes a technique in which an inititing user can be automatically informed of the most appropriate way to contact another person. In the various embodiments that follow, a "contactee" can also manually select which method of communication is best for a given time, for example via email when in a business meeting.
The patent aims to solve the problem of missed connections due to circumstances where another mode of communication would have been preferable. As an example, a "contactor" wants to communicate with another user, but the contactee may not answer a phone call because they are driving. In this situation, a text message or email would have been preferable. Apple's patent looks to automatically, and dynamically, notify a contactor of which communications method is most appropriate.
According to one embodiment, a contacting service is used as the backbone of the system. Leveraging information from a network of monitoring devices, the contacting service can provide preferable contact methods to a contactor. To protect a user's privacy, the reason for method of contact may not be disclosed.
Diagram of contacting service and deployed monitor devices.
Examples of monitoring devices include GPS, personal computers, microphones, web cameras and the like. Using the data provided by these devices, the contacting service can automatically determine a user's location and likely situation.
A contactee can configure the contacting service, which may be Internet-based, to set certain rules and parameters attached to the monitored device data. Customization options include time, location, activity, and others. For example, if a contacting service uses GPS data and determines a contactee is riding a high-speed train, the system will choose a mobile phone as a preferred method of communication.
Alternatively, parameters can be set through a graphical user interface, which assigns rules to specific situations and relays the data back to the contacting service.
Illustration of contacting service GUI.
Priorities can also be assigned. Groups can be placed in a number of tiers, each of which carries special contact rules. A user's boss and spouse may be in Tier 1, while friends are in Tier 2, and co-workers in Tier 3.
With the variety of predetermined parameters selected, the contacting service is then ready to receive queries from a contactor. In one embodiment, the contactor selects a contact from an address list on a mobile device. The device queries the contacting service, the service determines a contactee's location or likely activity, checks the preset parameters and sends back a message to the contactor regarding which method is best suited for the situation. Contactor may then choose the preferred method, or wait to contact at a different time. The system can alternatively use the selected method automatically.
Enabling rules through UI.
Users can also modify the parameter set through the GUI, making the system continuously customizable and allowing for error correction.
Modifying parameters.
In some iterations, the service can even suggest the contactor simply walk over to the contactee if both users are in close proximity.
Apple's contacting service patent was first filed for in 2008 and credits Thomas Ethan Lowry as its inventor.
Source: USPTO
Apple's U.S. Patent No. 8,433,805 for a "Method and system for facilitating contacting people using electronic devices," describes a technique in which an inititing user can be automatically informed of the most appropriate way to contact another person. In the various embodiments that follow, a "contactee" can also manually select which method of communication is best for a given time, for example via email when in a business meeting.
The patent aims to solve the problem of missed connections due to circumstances where another mode of communication would have been preferable. As an example, a "contactor" wants to communicate with another user, but the contactee may not answer a phone call because they are driving. In this situation, a text message or email would have been preferable. Apple's patent looks to automatically, and dynamically, notify a contactor of which communications method is most appropriate.
According to one embodiment, a contacting service is used as the backbone of the system. Leveraging information from a network of monitoring devices, the contacting service can provide preferable contact methods to a contactor. To protect a user's privacy, the reason for method of contact may not be disclosed.
Diagram of contacting service and deployed monitor devices.
Examples of monitoring devices include GPS, personal computers, microphones, web cameras and the like. Using the data provided by these devices, the contacting service can automatically determine a user's location and likely situation.
A contactee can configure the contacting service, which may be Internet-based, to set certain rules and parameters attached to the monitored device data. Customization options include time, location, activity, and others. For example, if a contacting service uses GPS data and determines a contactee is riding a high-speed train, the system will choose a mobile phone as a preferred method of communication.
Alternatively, parameters can be set through a graphical user interface, which assigns rules to specific situations and relays the data back to the contacting service.
Illustration of contacting service GUI.
Priorities can also be assigned. Groups can be placed in a number of tiers, each of which carries special contact rules. A user's boss and spouse may be in Tier 1, while friends are in Tier 2, and co-workers in Tier 3.
With the variety of predetermined parameters selected, the contacting service is then ready to receive queries from a contactor. In one embodiment, the contactor selects a contact from an address list on a mobile device. The device queries the contacting service, the service determines a contactee's location or likely activity, checks the preset parameters and sends back a message to the contactor regarding which method is best suited for the situation. Contactor may then choose the preferred method, or wait to contact at a different time. The system can alternatively use the selected method automatically.
Enabling rules through UI.
Users can also modify the parameter set through the GUI, making the system continuously customizable and allowing for error correction.
Modifying parameters.
In some iterations, the service can even suggest the contactor simply walk over to the contactee if both users are in close proximity.
Apple's contacting service patent was first filed for in 2008 and credits Thomas Ethan Lowry as its inventor.
Comments
I'm not a fan of companies getting patents for software. Pretty soon, small time hobby programmers will need to get permission to do certain software actions because it's patented. I can understand why large companies like Apple need to do this (hello Samsung) but I don't have to like it. This actual patent and idea would be very useful for both consumer and enterprise users. I wonder if they've been incorporating this into iOS 7 or if we'll have to wait for iOS 8.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GadgetCanada
I'm not a fan of companies getting patents for software. Pretty soon, small time hobby programmers will need to get permission to do certain software actions because it's patented. I can understand why large companies like Apple need to do this (hello Samsung) but I don't have to like it.
What's the solution you have then? Share intellectual properties with other companies and share profits?
Quote:
Originally Posted by GadgetCanada
I'm not a fan of companies getting patents for software. Pretty soon, small time hobby programmers will need to get permission to do certain software actions because it's patented. I can understand why large companies like Apple need to do this (hello Samsung) but I don't have to like it. This actual patent and idea would be very useful for both consumer and enterprise users. I wonder if they've been incorporating this into iOS 7 or if we'll have to wait for iOS 8.
No one can patent concept ,but any one can patent ,methods of concept working because they don,t want to be get trolled..
Quote:
Originally Posted by GadgetCanada
I'm not a fan of companies getting patents for software. Pretty soon, small time hobby programmers will need to get permission to do certain software actions because it's patented. I can understand why large companies like Apple need to do this (hello Samsung) but I don't have to like it. This actual patent and idea would be very useful for both consumer and enterprise users. I wonder if they've been incorporating this into iOS 7 or if we'll have to wait for iOS 8.
I'm not a fan of the theft of intellectual property--by anyone, including "small time hobby programmers." Steve Jobs once said, "Stealing corrodes the character." Apple's SDKs are freely available to hobbyists, and this invention will most likely be incorporated into them at some point. This "permission" of which you speak is also available via Apple's developer program and via its app approval process for those who wish to transition from hobbyist to professional.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
In some iterations, the service can even suggest the contactor simply walk over to the contactee if both users are in close proximity.
Excellent
American people are like hostage of stupid USPTO - whole World is laughing about ridiculous patents library of United States.
Such patents are not eligible outside of US borders - many countries just prohibited such patents right in the text of their laws - you can't register patent about user interface, can't register programming code, can't register logical scheme - this is prohibited for anyone - and this is why Apple lose to Samsung in German court when it try to use this absurd american patents as the base of their case in Europe. And after this Apple and other american companies just avoiding to step inside european or any other international courts - they will lose, their patents are toilet paper - most World are not recognizing this papers as any documents.
Yes, in many countries of the World you can make smartphone with same user interface like on iphone, only with your personal icons (the maximum which Apple can rely on outside US borders is only copyright of the picture of their standard icons, nothing more) - user interfaces is free from patenting, of course without exporting it in the country with such stupid patenting laws like USA.
Even Silicon Valley in USA made a union association to start protecting from the patent trolls and from this awful american patenting system. This system threatens innovation/start-ups and Silicon Valley already.
We have the great example of Brazil which decide to not recognize any rights to the drugs or their chemical formulas, so because of tis Brazil can made their own drugs very cheaply which save lives of many people from very dangerous deseases. Very great example of High Court decision in India which declined rights of drugs corporation against "generics" (cheap drugs of same formula).
I'm glad that "other World" of the planet is really thinking differently...
Originally Posted by fsad32
[post]
You want to come back to reality, please?
If Apple does try to sue somebody based on this patent, all they'll need to do is point to our lab's work, pay their lawyers ~$1m, and the problem will go away. Assuming they have the money to pay for lawyers. See? The system works.
https://cvhci.anthropomatik.kit.edu/~stiefel/papers/ICMI05_danninger.pdf
It has citations going back earlier.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gopiballava
Here's a paper from 2005:
https://cvhci.anthropomatik.kit.edu/~stiefel/papers/ICMI05_danninger.pdf
It has citations going back earlier.
Nice find. It certainly seems to describe the Apple patent mentioned here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacBook Pro
Why do people seem to forget that patents are protecting a methodology not a concept in general. A patent protects the specific implementation of a technology not the general concept of a technology.
Yes, that's the way it's supposed to be, but we keep seeing software patents that sound more like general concepts put into fancy words, with no truly specific implementation claimed.
GENERAL IDEAS INSTEAD OF IMPLEMENTATIONS
E.g. Apple's patent on "universal search", which is really just a general idea as I laid out in this post. There's no detailed implementation in the claims, only a general outline of concepts familiar to programmers.
Another good example is Apple's patent on locking finger scrolling to vertical or horizontal. Judge Posner questioned its specificity, asking what angle they chose as the best angle, and what would happen if someone else used a different angle. His point was that some of these patents are so vague, so general, that ANY implementation of THE BASIC IDEA would infringe.
COMMON SENSE GESTURES
Even worse in my mind, are patents on gestures. Good grief. Apple trying to patent the idea of rotating a knob onscreen? Seriously? Just because no one else tried to patent it? We were doing that back in the 1980s on industrial touch controllers. Or using more than one finger to do something on a multi-finger touchscreen? What the heck are multi-touch screens for, if not using more than one finger?? Patenting gesture combinations is like patenting single music chords.
IMITATING DAILY ACTIONS
Another bad software patent category only seems to mimic, in software, an action or object from real life. Slide to unlock is an example. We've all grown up with slide locks on doors. Doing virtually the same thing in software is not innovation, it's an imitation of a common physical object and/or action. In fact, that's the whole point of the software version: to remind the user of something easy to do.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gopiballava
I haven't read the patent in question...
If Apple does try to sue somebody based on this patent, all they'll need to do is point to our lab's work, pay their lawyers ~$1m, and the problem will go away. Assuming they have the money to pay for lawyers. See? The system works.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacBook Pro
Why do people seem to forget that patents are protecting a methodology not a concept in general. A patent protects the specific implementation of a technology not the general concept of a technology….
@gopiballava
First suggestion, making broad claims like this is not too smart when the first thing in your post says you have not read the patent. Second, MacBook Pro explained the limits of a patent pretty well. Do your homework, then maybe your comment will have credibility.
The suggestion that the system works, even sarcastically, is absurd. For that to be the case you have to assume application of laws uniformly. If you look at East Texas court (I claim TX as home and not proud of this) that is not the case there. Look at what Judge Koh and Judge Posner have done.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gopiballava
Here's a paper from 2005:
https://cvhci.anthropomatik.kit.edu/~stiefel/papers/ICMI05_danninger.pdf...
Interesting paper. Talk about 1984! Maybe the prior art here is Orwell's book LOL.
Pretty spooky pictures. Check out face recognition zombie!
I've now read the patent. We didn't pop up a UI to the user for new locations in the system we built because it was a proof of concept. But other than that it describes what we built. The calendar-based system was user-tested with ~100 users at Stanford University.
My instinct on the details of the patent was correct: the article here described the only interesting stuff. The "implementation" described in the patent claims is straightforward and is something anybody skilled in the field could do based on the outline of the goals.
To make it into a product would require a lot of work. Trying to get the human factors side right, trying to set up easy to comprehend preferences, that sort of thing.
The lab I worked at not only built a high level system like this, we also developed face recognition algorithms, acoustic scene analysis algorithms, distributed processing architecure to actually do the analysis of high bandwidth data, python extensions into speech processing algorithms so you could prototype algorithms quickly, etc. etc.
The device front end UI and the back end decision making (collecting information about what people were doing and where they were) were the components that I was writing. I didn't personally do any of the image processing algorithms.
We discussed but didn't publish further work on learning from your prior history how available you were likely to be. That would let us do something like figure out "this guy seems busy right now but he's *always* busy, so we should let this phone call go through because if we don't he will never get a phone call, ever". We also looked at how to model priority in a richer, more expressive way than the traditional single axis. My idea was to include both instantaneous priority as well as time-based priority. For example, is cleaning the toilet high priority or low priority? You may always have something more important to do, but you have to clean it. So, you could model it as "very high priority to do some time this week but low priority at instant points". This way of modeling it would fit with the schedule learning system: we would try to fit this into your schedule when you weren't doing anything important, but if we learned that you spent the whole week in medium priority stuff we would essentially elevate the priority of the task since it *must be done*, and would find the best medium-priority task to interrupt.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
You want to come back to reality, please?
Congratulations my dear forum creature with typical behavior (you're making replies to users using only one tactics of personal humiliating of all commenters, this is very typically on any forum) welcome to Black list on my profile (you will be the only one there).
Originally Posted by fsad32
Congratulations my dear forum creature with typical behavior (you're making replies to users using only one tactics of personal humiliating of all commenters, this is very typically on any forum) welcome to Black list on my profile (you will be the only one there).
Will you also stop posting crap?