DE20001691U1 - Device for carrying out a message transfer - Google Patents

Description

Device for carrying out a message transfer

The invention relates to an apparatus for performing a message transfer and particularly relates to a message transfer from a writer to a reader using a web browser or WAP mobile phone.

Currently, several techniques have been developed that allow a user to write and send a message to a remote user.

These techniques differ not only in their working methods and underlying infrastructure, but also in the procedures and requirements that users must perform. For example, there are communication techniques that require the receiving party to have a message receiving unit switched on at the time the message is sent by the sending unit. Other techniques have been developed that include a message box for storing messages in the event that the receiving unit is not switched on. Some specific examples of conventional communication techniques will now be described in more detail.

The Internet is a worldwide collection of interconnected networks, all of which use the TCP/IP protocol and share a common address space. Internet users communicate primarily via electronic mail (email), HTTP, Telnet, and implementations of the File Transfer Protocol (FTP).

In addition, a technology has been developed that allows users of mobile devices, such as mobile phones, to access the Internet quickly and efficiently. This protocol, known as WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), has been optimized not only for the narrowband radio channels in cordless and mobile systems, but also for the limited display capabilities and functionality of existing mobile phones. WAP combines telephone services with Internet navigation and provides easy-to-use, interactive Internet access from a mobile phone. Mobile use of the Internet is also possible using electronic organizers or web companions.

Email is a service available on the Internet and other networks that allows users to send messages and binary data to any other user using their computer. These messages are composed in an email application and sent to one or more recipients. The user who wants to send an email message must enter the recipient's email address, e.g. john@business.com. Once sent, the email message is stored in a mailbox that the recipient can log into to download the cached message.

Some email systems also allow groups of people to be defined for easy reference, so that the user of such email systems can send a separate email to each member of a specific group without having to enter their names individually. Nevertheless, such groups must be explicitly defined, so that the user of such systems must decide to whom the individual message should be delivered. Moreover, even if an individual recipient is not interested in receiving a message from that writer, the message will in fact be placed in the mailbox of each recipient.

Another way to send a message to a group of people is through mailing lists. Mailing lists (or mailing lists) are usually automated systems that allow people to send email to an address, and their message is copied and sent to everyone else on the mailing list. This allows people with many different types of email access to participate in discussions with each other. Mailing lists are therefore useful for allowing people who have email access to participate in discussions. However, mailing lists are not suitable for transmitting personal information, because the person who writes a message has no control over who will receive the message.

The same applies to Usenet, which is a worldwide bulletin board system of discussion groups. Usenet is completely decentralized and has over 10,000 discussion forums, so-called newsgroups. Submissions to a bulletin board can be made by anyone using a

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Newsreaders, a software application that allows one to read previous postings to the newsgroup and make new postings. All messages are relayed through hundreds and thousands of machines. Since each bulletin board (or newsgroup) is dedicated to a specific topic, the person who writes a message must select a topic and has no control over the individual users who read the message. In addition, although Usenet is a worldwide system, a posted message only passes through a portion of the machines, so it may happen that a message cannot be read by some users even though it has been posted.

There is accordingly a need in the art for a communication method which allows the user to write and send a message without specifying the intended readers and which nevertheless protects the user from losing control of his message. Such communication systems would be highly desirable, for example, in the case where the user is on a business trip around the world and frequently changes his current location and temporary telephone number. Since there are the user's family, acquaintances, colleagues and business partners who want to be able to contact the user at any time, the prior art requires the user to send a message to each family member, acquaintance, colleague and business partner whenever the current location or temporary telephone number changes. This is extremely inconvenient for the user as well as for the partners since the user has to write a large number of messages very often and on the other hand at least some of the acquaintances, colleagues and business partners do not need any updated information at all times. This applies not only to business people but also when the user is on vacation.

In such cases, the user could in principle install an automated email system that responds to incoming email messages by sending a pre-prepared reply message to the senders of each incoming message. A disadvantage of this approach is that some systems take a fairly long time to respond to incoming messages, but also that the transport of email messages through the Internet is often delayed, so that in some

cases the request will not be processed by the remote user for several hours. This is particularly disadvantageous if the remote user requires an immediate response or is working on a computer that is not his own, for example in an Internet cafe. Furthermore, the remote user must have access to email. Another possible disadvantage will then be that the user requesting the message can be easily identified by the user who installed the automated response system. This may not be in the best interests of the remote user. Furthermore, protecting the message by means of a password so that only selected remote users can read the message is also not possible with such an email system.

Other possible methods include fax back (fax polling) techniques. These systems allow the retrieval of previously prepared fax pages that have been made available on a fax machine or fax server. Such techniques would entail that each remote user would have to have access to a fax machine. In addition, this technique would incur considerable telephone costs for remote users, particularly if the fax machine or fax server is located in another country. Also, fax transmissions are usually quite susceptible to glitches and interruptions. Furthermore, the user who intends to install such a fax server would have to write down his message and scan the document to send the message to the fax server every time the user wants to update the information made available, which makes this technique inconvenient for the user.

In summary, the state of the art does not allow a user who is on a business trip or on vacation to easily inform his family, acquaintances, colleagues and business partners about permanently updated information in a convenient, confidential and delay-free manner.

The invention is therefore based on the object of specifying a device for carrying out a message transfer which enables a writer to write a message without having to explicitly specify the recipients, whereby

while at the same time ensuring that the message is only delivered to those users who want to receive the message from exactly this writer.

This object is achieved according to the invention by the subject matter of claim 1.

Preferred embodiments of the invention are specified in the subclaims.

The invention advantageously allows a message to be made available to a number of recipients without the message having to be sent to each recipient each time the message is updated.

In addition, the invention has the advantage that remote recipients are enabled to quickly retrieve the cached message, while the message can be updated at any time by the author of the message.

A further advantage of the invention is that a communication device of the type described above is provided which uses the Internet and thus functions worldwide using standard software.
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In particular, the use of the WAP protocol has the advantage that the cached messages can be accessed and updated using a mobile phone.

Furthermore, the device according to the invention can advantageously be used together with an easy-to-use identification technique that includes the e-mail address of the writer.

It is also advantageous to address many different groups of readers separately, e.g. family and business partners, without one group reading the messages of the other group.

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Further features and advantages will become apparent from the following and more detailed description of the various embodiments of the invention, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings, in which:

Fig. 1 represents the Internet;

Fig. 2 illustrates a computer executing a web browser program used by a user to communicate over the Internet with another computer executing a web server program to obtain data;
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Fig. 3 illustrates an example of a web page according to the invention presented to a remote user for logging into the system as a reader or writer;

Figure 4 illustrates an example of a web page according to the present invention presented to a writer of a message;

Figure 5 illustrates an example of a web page according to the present invention shown to a reader of a message;

Figure 6 illustrates an example of a web page according to the present invention presented to a remote user to enable the user to perform a search for other users;

Fig. 7 is an example of a web page according to the present invention showing the search results resulting from executing a query submitted using the web page of Fig. 6;

Fig. 8 is a flow chart illustrating the process of writing a message; and

Fig. 9 is a flowchart illustrating the process of reading a message.

The illustrated embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the figures.

The preferred embodiments of the present invention are described herein generally in the context of the Internet as a typical HTTP environment. However, the methods and systems of the present invention are equally applicable to an intranet or other HTTP-based network. An intranet is a private network that uses Internet standards for internal communication, such as a mini-Internet. Intranets are always based on the TCP/IP protocol and often provide connections to the Internet, which can be accessed using the same client software used for the intranet.
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In addition, in a preferred embodiment of the invention, the WAP protocol is used to enable the embedding of the message transfer according to the invention into mobile radio telephony.

Referring now to the figures, Fig. 1 is a graphical representation of the Internet. The computers on the Internet which make up the network are broadly classified as either servers 14, 17 or clients 10, 11, 12, 18, 19. Typically, the Internet servers 17 are part of smaller networks 15, and similarly, many clients 18, 19 are part of local area networks 15.

The part of the Internet that most people are familiar with is the Web. The Web includes those sections of the Internet that use HTTP and HTML to deliver Web pages to end users. HTTP is the HyperText Transfer Protocol used on the World Wide Web and defines how clients and servers should respond to certain commands and how messages should be formatted on the Web. HTML is the HyperText Mark-up Language and is essentially the file format used for Web pages. When using the Web, clients request information over the Internet that is stored in systems controlled by servers. The term "server" often refers to both the system and the software that manages the system.

Turning now to Fig. 2, which illustrates how a client and a server interact, a client computer 20 executes a web browser program 23 which is used by a user to communicate with the server computer via the Internet 22.

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21, which executes a web server program 24 to obtain data. The browser is both a viewer of HTML files and an HTTP client application and is used to read web pages and follow hypertext links. The two most popular browsers, Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, are also extensible via third party supplied plug-ins, Java and ActiveX controls, which give the browsers the ability to be almost universal client applications. Upon request from the user at the web browser 23, the web server 24 converts the HTML-based web page to HTTP and sends it over the Internet 22 for display as a web page on the requesting browser 23.

Using HTML, any word or graphic on any web page can refer to any other web page ("link"). However, web pages cannot make decisions such as confirming a correct password or performing more sophisticated functions such as querying a database. A special programming interface known as the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) 25 is therefore used to extend the capabilities of the web server beyond the web pages alone, allowing a level of interaction that HTML alone cannot provide. CGI is a set of rules that describes how the web server communicates with another piece of software on the same machine, and how the other piece of software (the "CGI script" 26) communicates with the web server.

Reference will now be made to the specific manner in which the preferred embodiment operates. The web server 24 generates an HTML file at the user's request and transmits it to the client 20 via the Internet 22. The browser 23 of the client 20 then processes the HTML file and presents the user with the web page 30 as illustrated in Fig. 3. The web page 30 includes a field 34 which allows the user to enter his email address as a login name which identifies the user. The page also includes an input box 35 for receiving the user's password. Once the user has entered his identification and password, he presses a button 37 to send a request to the web server 24 to write a message. These steps are designated by reference numerals 81 and 82 in the flow chart of Fig. 8.

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The web server 24, receiving the request, starts a CGI script 26 to search a database of the server 21 to retrieve from the database the password associated with the user's email address and to compare the retrieved password with the password entered by the user. If both passwords are identical, the CGI script generates a web page 40 shown in Fig. 4 and presented to the user on his browser 23 (step 83).

The CGI script preferably runs on a UNIX system, but those skilled in the art will appreciate that other systems such as Windows NT may be used instead. The script is preferably written in the Perl programming language, which is an interpreted language, meaning that the script does not need to be compiled. The Perl script for generating the web page 40 of Figure 4 includes the following code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

sub writer {

&eheck_password;

print "

<FORM ACTION=\"zzbox.cgi\" METH0D=P0ST>

<TYPE=\"hidden\" NAME=\"page\" VALUE=\"writerx\">

exit;
}

After the web page 40 has been presented to the user in step 83, the user can enter a subject of the message and the message text itself in step 84. For this purpose, the web page 40 contains a subject field 41 and a message text field 42. To send the message in step 85, the user must enter his password in field 46 and press the send button 47. If the user wants readers to enter a password to read the message, he can activate a checkbox 43 and enter the password that readers should use to read the message in field 44 before sending the message.

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If the user has pressed the button 47 of the web page 40 in step 85 to send, the message is sent from the browser 23 to the web server 24 and a CGI script is started in step 86 to save the message in the database of the server 21. The CGI script that is started for this purpose contains the following Perl programming code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

(...)
sub writerx {

&check_password;

&member_write;

exit;
}

Referring again to Fig. 3, the web page 30 further contains radio buttons 36 which allow the writer to select whether to write a regular email instead of sending a message for storage in the database.

The web page also contains fields 31 and 32 for users who wish to read a previously stored message. Once the login page 30 has been generated and displayed in step 91 of the flow chart of Fig. 9, the user can enter the writer's email address in field 31 and, if required, the password defined by the writer to protect the message in field 32. The user then presses button 33 to submit his request to read the writer's message (step 92). This request is then transmitted to the web server 24. The web server 24 starts a CGI script 26 to generate a web page 50 shown in Fig. 5. The web page 50 is then sent back to the client 20 and presented to the user on the browser 23. The CGI script started in step 93 contains the following Perl code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
(...)

subreader {

if ($member('password_required ^T }) {&check_password;}
&member_read;

(...)
exit;

}

As shown in Figure 5, the web page 50 displayed in step 94 includes a field 51 containing the subject of the message and a field 52 containing the message text. A link 53 is also provided which can be used to close the web page in step 95.

Referring again to Fig. 3, the web page 30, which is the login page for both the writer and any reader, contains a link 38 which enables a search in the database on server 21. When the link 38 is activated, the web server 24 is caused to generate a web page 60, shown in Fig. 6, and send it back to the client 20. The web page 60 contains a field 61 in which the user can enter the name of another user for whom the database is to be searched. After pressing the search button 62 on the web page 60, a request is sent to the server 21 which searches the database for the entered name. The web server 24 starts a CGI script 26 which carries out the database query and formats the search results. The web server 24 then generates HTML code which is sent to the browser 23 to present the user with a web page 70 shown in Fig. 7. The web page 70 contains a table 71 showing the results of the search. Each element of the table 71 is additionally provided with a button which the user can press to retrieve the respective message, substantially as described above in the discussion of steps 93 and 94. The web page 70 also contains a field 72 and a search button 73 which correspond to elements 61 and 62, respectively, of the web page 60 shown in Fig. 6.

The previous embodiment of the invention has been described as containing one message for each writer. In another embodiment, the writer can edit more than one message. Each message can then have its own password, each password being defined by the writer. The writer can then

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reveal different passwords to different groups of readers, e.g. family and business partners.

As previously described, the present invention has many advantages because it provides easy to use interfaces for both the writer and reader to send and request messages. Since the present invention uses the functionality of standard web browsers, remote users have worldwide access and no non-standard processes need to be performed.

As will be apparent to those skilled in the art, the systems and methods of the invention differ from ordinary email in that the writer uses his own email address to send a message and readers use the writer's email address to retrieve the message. Thus, readers themselves do not need to have email access, which is already evident from the fact that the system of the invention uses the HTTP protocol of the World Wide Web and does not involve the email service available on the Internet. A further advantage is that after a reader has sent a request to read a message from the writer, the message is promptly displayed to the user without any annoying delay that can occur when using the email service on the Internet.

As already described above, there are particular advantages in this context when using the WAP protocol, as both the writer and the reader can additionally enjoy the benefits of increased mobility.

The invention is not limited to the use of CGI programs. Rather, in other preferred embodiments of the invention, other implementations such as Java Servlets and Active Server Pages (ASP) can be used. Furthermore, the scripts can be written not only in the Perl programming language but also in other languages such as C, C++, Java, etc.

Claims (12)

1. An apparatus for performing a message transfer from one of a plurality of writers to one of a plurality of readers, comprising:
an interface unit for receiving and sending messages;
a storage device for storing and reading the messages, each message being associated with an identification indicating the writer of the message; and
means for generating a first, second and third page that can be displayed by means of a web browser,
the first page (40) allowing the writer to enter and send a message,
the second side (30) allowing the reader to request the message by entering the identification indicating the writer, and
where the third page (50) presents the message to the reader. 2. The device of claim 1, wherein the identification includes the email address of the writer. 3. Device according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the message transfer takes place via the Internet. 4. Device according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the message transfer takes place via an intranet. 5. Apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein the means for generating the first, second and third pages includes a CGI processor. 6. Apparatus according to claim 5, wherein the CGI processor is configured to execute Perl scripts. 7. Device according to one of claims 1 to 6, wherein
the storage device further stores a password associated with each message,
the second page is still set up to allow the reader to enter a password, and
the third page is only generated and presented to the reader if the password entered is identical to the password associated with the message. 8. Device according to one of claims 1 to 7, wherein the second page contains a field for receiving the identification of the writer, a field for receiving the password assigned to the writer and a button for sending a request to the device for displaying the first page. 9. The apparatus of any one of claims 1 to 8, wherein the storage means further stores a subject of each message. 10. Apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 9, wherein the storage means are arranged to store a plurality of messages for each writer, each message being associated with a unique password defined by the respective writer. 11. Device according to one of claims 1 to 10, wherein the message transfer takes place using the HTTP protocol. 12. Device according to one of claims 1 to 10, wherein the message transfer takes place using the WAP protocol.