HK1108947B - System and method of personal and business web cards - Google Patents

Description

Personal and commercial network name card system and method

This application is a divisional application of patent application No.02806827.0(PCT/CN02/00183) entitled "personal and business web card system and method" filed on 3/21/2002.

Technical Field

The present invention relates to a personal information online management system, and more particularly, to a personal and business web card system, and a method of managing and accessing the personal and business web card system.

Background

To date, most electronic Personal Information Management (PIM) systems have been limited to personal information management systems, where individual or system users enter personal data about themselves and their friends or contacts. The system is provided in a single electronic device, such as a personal computer, a palm top computer, or any other electronic processing device, most commonly using Microsoft Outlook, Lotus, or other address book. However, some of these electronic devices may not be portable and some may not be updated as often despite the fact that some synchronization software is already available. Thus, in practice, resulting in inconsistencies of data stored in different personal electronic devices of a person.

Therefore, several network-based personal information management systems have been established to provide remote access through the internetProgram storage and personal information databases such as addresses, calendars, and contacts. For example,www.ecode.com，www.planetall.comand are andwww.backup.comis such a system. Ecode provides personal information in an electronic card format. In addition, there are many existing various forms of phonebook online services, such as "yellow pages" or "white pages". With the establishment of remote storage and personal information management databases, techniques for accessing such databases have been gradually developed. For example, Contact Networks corporation has several ongoing patent applications, such as: WO 00/67105, WO 00/67106, WO 00/67108, WO 00/67416.

WO 00/67105 discloses a method and apparatus for publishing and calibrating selected user information over a network. It describes a virtual personal information card that can be transferred to different recipients under the control of a publisher. When a publisher changes personal information, the change is propagated to all of the holding publisher cards. It does not give how to more efficiently conduct card retrieval and how users in various languages use the system. Sometimes, one may even forget the website of the remote PIM database. Thus, the remote PIM database may be completely useless.

In almost all remote PIM database systems, each entry, such as name, phone, and sometimes address, can be retrieved using exactly matching words, such as name and phone number. If the entered query does not exactly match an entry, then several of the possible closest records are provided for selection. However, the search often ends with a result of "no matching entry". Thus, the searcher has to repeatedly modify the query. Finally, when there are no results over several attempts, the searcher may abandon the query due to the frustration of repeatedly altering the query. This is because in most cases the searcher lacks an accurate description of the person being searched, for example, a correctly spelled or an accurate exact match word, but only some speech-equivalent words or words. The problem with this search is that the words that need to be searched are completely or accurately "matched" to the recorded words. A mismatch has no result.

Some people who have not been contacted for a long time, or who have seen only one or two times, may not have much information about him or her. He or she may almost forget his or her name. Or sometimes the collected business card or library is lost or there is no such information at hand. Nevertheless, something about him or her is certainly known, such as he or she has previously learned, lived, or worked there, his or her nickname, or his or her hobbies, and so on. In any event, it is really desirable or necessary to find him or her, whatever the reason for this, but without accurate contact information. Using the conventional retrieval methods described above, it is possible that nothing can be found or that thousands of hundreds of times can be tried before the desired information is finally obtained. In actual life, no one is willing to try many times to obtain a simple retrieval result. Therefore, how to intelligently and without much trouble find information of some people has become a problem to be solved.

Electronic information management devices accessible to the internet are now widely used and are becoming more and more popular, such as mobile telephones, pagers, notebook computers, palmtop computers, or any type of personal computer or data processing device. Such devices with such internet access may be found anywhere, such as in an office, school, home, store, library, or other public location. The use of the internet to obtain the desired information may be contemplated if the user is traveling or just away from his or her home or office where personal information files or cards are typically stored. If there is a reliable service on the internet, providing the public with an easy-to-use and accurately accessible database, anyone can get the desired contact information of someone anywhere.

It is therefore an object of the present invention to create a system on the internet that provides an online service for personal information management through which any user of the internet can obtain some desired information of a person based on only a minimal description of that person.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a database system that contains all the necessary information of an individual and that can be quickly and accurately retrieved using any conceivable description of the person being retrieved.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a database system that can be quickly and efficiently retrieved using native languages, such as chinese or japanese.

It is a further object of the present invention to provide a system and method for inputting a search keyword in an address bar of a browser so that a desired web card can be displayed.

It is a further object of this invention to provide such a system and method wherein the information of the web card can be synchronized with the address books of the various devices.

Disclosure of Invention

According to the present invention, a personal and business web card system includes at least one server with at least one search engine; at least one database; and a plurality of electronic devices that can access the internet and connect with the server through the internet. The database contains at least personal data and information of someone who is located in at least one particular geographic area or who is registered with an Internet Service Provider (ISP). The database may contain a plurality of sub-databases for various categories of individuals or businesses. Anyone who accesses the above-mentioned server can retrieve any personal or business information in these databases.

The information is arranged in a hierarchical tree and represented by a hash table, wherein a server and a corresponding database are established, and the search engine not only carries out accurate search, but also carries out fuzzy search by decomposing the query into a plurality of words.

According to the present invention, a method for remotely processing and accessing personal and business contact information via the internet includes the steps of a) providing at least one server with at least one search engine; and at least one database; b) storing personal and business contact information in the database, including but not limited to name, phone number, address, and other background information; c) inputting a search query through one of a plurality of internet-accessible devices of a user; d) analyzing the query with an analyzer having predetermined rules stored therein and decomposing the query into a predetermined number of words; and e) running the words through the database by the search engine to obtain a retrieval result set, wherein the information is arranged in a hierarchical tree and represented by a hash table.

Electronic devices may include personal internet user computers, data devices, and cellular telephones. In this way, individual internet users can instantly access the server, retrieve and exchange any desired information from the server's database. Of course, individual users can also update their information profile by synchronizing with the server.

All of these devices and computers are equipped with a browser or the like, providing an address bar for entering URL addresses or keywords for searching web sites. According to the present invention, the entry of keywords in the browser address bar may display a desired web card on the screen of the electronic device or computer, instead of a web address or a corresponding URL, as if the keywords were entered in a search engine.

The various electronic devices connected to the above-described servers may also include intranets with internal databases, other ISPs 'own databases, and even public telephone service providers and cellular telephone service providers' own databases. These databases may be equipped with firewalls to protect themselves when connected to the specific servers mentioned above. In addition, individual users may retrieve other databases connected to the server via the internet, while any intranet user may access the server via their own intranet or Local Area Network (LAN). Most importantly, the connected databases and personal devices can be synchronized with the databases of the servers, which may be referred to as the master servers, and with other databases. Thus, any update of personal or business information can be updated at the same time at all devices. Another patent application of the same applicant has detailed descriptions of this aspect.

The invention will be better understood from the following description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

Drawings

FIG. 1A illustrates a system of the present invention;

FIG. 1B illustrates a network system of the web card of the present invention;

FIG. 1C is a flow chart illustrating the entry of keywords into the address bar of the browser according to the present invention;

FIGS. 2A-C illustrate layouts of human-machine interface screens of the present invention;

FIG. 3A illustrates a conventional scheme for exact match retrieval data structures;

FIG. 3B illustrates an aspect of the data structure of the present invention;

FIG. 4A is a flow chart of a conventional exact match search;

FIG. 4B illustrates a flow chart of the present invention for fuzzy retrieval of personal and business web cards;

FIGS. 5A and 5B illustrate, respectively, web cards on different devices, with save keys and a selection screen; and

FIG. 5C is a flow chart illustrating the synchronization of the information of the web card with the information of other electronic devices in accordance with the present invention.

Detailed Description

Referring to FIG. 1A, server 11, labeled 3721^TMThe server includes a main database 12, and sub-databases 13, such as company a and company B databases. The various electronic devices are accessing the Internet and then retrieving 3721^TMCommon Internet user tools for the server 11, such as laptop computers, personal computers, cellular telephones, and other data processing devices. Wherever possible, when logging onto the Internet, 3721^TMThe server performs retrieval. FIG. 1 shows that a generic individual user is directly connected to 3721^TMA server 11. However, individual users may also be connected to ports ISP 14 or ASP 15, ISP 14 or ASP 15 in turn being connected to 3721^TMA server 11. The ISP 14 or ASP 15 contains its own database, which may include its own personal or business information or phone book.

In addition, referring to fig. 1A, the different electronic devices may also be internal networks of companies, containing their own internal databases. The databases of such internal networks are typically only available to internal users. When an internal network user needs to retrieve information from others, access to the Internet or an external database, such as 3721, may be required^TMA server 11. On the other hand, other personal or business information is also stored therein for use by users of the internal network. Other personal or business information or publicly known company information needs to be updated from time to time. In this case, a firewall is necessary to protect the internal database from confidential information.

FIG. 1B illustrates the networking architecture of the personal and business network business card system of the present invention. Each box represents a web card server or a system unit. Each system or unit includes its own business card database and business card search engine. For performance and load balancing, each system may include one or more physical servers, such as a main or local web server 11, a main or local search engine, and one or more main or local databases. Service providers (ISP/ICP, etc.) can run a web card unit independently, and most importantly, the web card units, although independent, can communicate with each other through built-in interfaces. Thus, the connected and connected network business card system or unit constitutes one global distributed network business card system. At the global system 20, the user may retrieve any personal web card, regardless of which service provider the desired personal web card is registered with. The contact can be made through network name cards, such as writing email, short messages, or exchanging network name cards.

At any web site, such as a remote PIM service network, the search engine is typically represented as an input field on a web page. Keywords are entered in the search engine field. If the PIM web site is equipped with the software of the present invention, the search engine may retrieve according to the present invention as described below. According to the present invention, the search keyword can be directly entered in the address bar of any browser, such as IE or Netscape, which is generally installed in the browser on the above-mentioned electronic device or computer. At any time when the browser is started and the 3721 website or other related websites are started, the browser can have the network business card retrieval function of the invention by downloading Active X plug-in software.

Referring to fig. 1C, in step 1, when a keyword is input in an address bar, in step 2, a browser of a computer or device having a web card search capability determines whether it is a URL, and if so, the browser displays a corresponding website; if the input is not a URL, the device will determine at step 3 whether the input keyword corresponds to a web site only or to a web card provided by the PIM facilitator or web card server. If the input keyword corresponds to only one web site address, i.e., the corresponding URL, the web page is displayed in step 4, and if the keyword corresponds to any information of the web card, the desired web card from the web card server may be displayed in step 5 instead of displaying the top page of the web card server site. If the entered keyword corresponds to both the web site address and the web card, the browser displays the selection screen page at step 6. In any case, the information of the web card should be selected as a linkable Internet keyword and stored in the web card server. However, the registrant of the web card may choose whether he or she would like to have his or her web card freely retrievable. See the related patent application of the same applicant for Active X plug-in software.

Global name card retrieval may be coordinated by a name card host server, e.g. 3721^TMA server 11. The master server may coordinate the synchronized propagation of any update data between the slave servers. The master server may include a global business card exchange center, and all updates or data from the slave servers may be transmitted to the master server for deliveryTo another or other slave server, thereby synchronizing the updates. When a user makes a search at one of the secondary servers, the search is not only made at the local search engine of the particular secondary server, but is also passed to the business card master search engine. See another related copending application of the same applicant for these features.

Fig. 2A shows a printout result of an actual web card of the present invention. It can be seen that the personal information stored by the server 11 appears in the format 31 of a business card, similar to a business card, but more imaginable. On the business card, any available decoration 36, such as poems or flowers, etc., may be selected, an identification picture 37 and any background and color 38 may be selected. Referring to fig. 2B, the personal information includes a name, a phone number, and an associated address (a doorplate number or a mailbox). But may also contain more information such as the person's company name, address, web site, company telephone and fax, personal cell phone number and email address, etc. When the searcher wants to find a particular person, the search may reveal all necessary contact information.

However, this information is not of course displayed on the card if the person does not choose. Sometimes only the name is displayed on the card to confirm the search result, while the interactive screen provides the searcher with the option of contacting the person to be searched, and the person to be searched can then decide whether to contact the searcher. These options may include, but are not limited to, personal mail boxes (voice or written), public billboards, email boxes, card communication boxes, and even language options. Assuming that the searcher leaves messages or contact information to the people found by the search, he or she can call or write back to the searcher if the found person is the person to find and is willing to contact the searcher. In any event, any personal information is sensitive and needs to be protected in all ways. Further details regarding the privacy aspects of the present invention are found in another related copending patent application by the same applicant.

Referring to fig. 2C, the features of the web card of the present invention include a my card folder 40, a design card 46, a web finder 41, and a message 44 for viewing, etc. In the "design My Business cards" section 46, there is not only the option of visiting the appearance of the business card, but also the option of entering personal information and establishing a level of privacy protection. Referring to fig. 2B, the work information about the individual may also include name, company name and address, job title, telephone number, fax number, email, personal web page, cell phone number, and pager, and the personal information may include sex, age, place of residence, home phone, etc. The most important feature is that the information query may also contain more private data, such as marital status, blood type, family doctor or lawyer, family history, health status, education level, previous place of residence, date and place of birth, hobbies, favorite books, movies, or even pictures.

For most people, it is not desirable to disclose the information to everyone, but it is almost always desirable to disclose the information to different categories of people. For example, people can be roughly divided into three categories. The first category includes social or business contacts, the second category is friends and relatives, and the third category is family members. But sometimes one does not want anyone to know some "private data" except the one that has to know. Thus, some or most of the "more private data" described above is not exposed to persons without particular authorization. Nevertheless, such data may be the basis for a search, if a person happens to know or remember only some fraction of this information, he or she may still make a meaningful search if the person being searched is actually registered with the local network card system or the global network card system. However, it may not be necessary for the searcher to display all the information, but at least let the searcher know that the person exists, for example, at least by the name of the person being searched.

Fig. 2C also shows an interactive screen containing business card holders 42, information synchronization 43, modified business card information 47, distribution business cards 48, privacy protection 49, exchange records 50, and a background selection and design area 51. These features are designed for user convenience only. The user is more freely made to send and receive the web card, so that the personal and business cards can be distributed to and synchronized with the receiver the registered user tries to select, and the card can be retrieved by anyone within the selection limit of the registered user.

Fig. 3A shows a data structure employed by the business card search engine 23 for conventional retrieval for exact or exact matching. Fig. 3B shows a data structure employed by the business card search engine 23 for performing the fuzzy or approximate retrieval method of the present invention. The web card search engine 23 of the present invention performs both precise or exact match retrieval and fuzzy or approximate retrieval. The web card search engine 23 does not use a conventional Relational Database (RDBMS) for retrieval. To ensure retrieval speed and efficiency, certain data structures and index structures are built into memory 58.

Referring to fig. 3A, in addition to establishing a memory structure for storing the network business card data therein, it is critical to establish an efficient and fast index (e.g., using an array and a connection table). The web card search engine 23 uses the hash table 55 and the hierarchical index 56 to perform accurate retrieval of names, and pinyin (phonetic spelling) and homophones. In the search engine 23, the business card data and the index data are both in the form of Unicode codes. The use of hash table 55 and hierarchical index tree 56 for accurate or exact match retrieval is one embodiment. The hash table 55 is a table that includes all 64K character entries of the Unicode code. Under each entry, there is a branch of the hierarchical tree; each node 57, represented by a dot, includes a pointer 59. Each pointer 59 points to the location of the actual business card data stored in memory. And the name of these business cards is the same as the name made up of all the characters along the path of the hash table entry to the node. Thus, name-based accurate retrieval is a process of finding nodes and pointers in a hierarchical tree, as shown in FIG. 3A. The structure of the hash table and hierarchical index tree for pinyin or homophone retrieval is similar to character-based retrieval. The only difference is that phonetic alphabet symbols, rather than characters, appear in the nodes of the hierarchical tree and the entries of the hash table.

Fig. 3B shows an index structure for fuzzy retrieval at the web card search engine 23. The indexing structure of FIG. 3B is similar to that of FIG. 3A. However, the characters constitute a Chinese character or phrase, and are formed at a node 57 from the hash table 55 to the hierarchical tree 56 as shown in fig. 3A. Each node 57 contains a business card pointer 59. Each pointer 59 points to the name of the name card retrieved, or other information including the word. Fig. 3B is actually an inverted index based on the search word.

The indexing structure of fig. 3A and 3B is dynamically maintained. That is, when a user applies for or modifies a web card, the information of the web card, including other retrievable information of all characters of the card, is transmitted to a web card search engine. The search engine 23 adds this information to the two branches of the hierarchical index tree of FIG. 3A based on the name of the business card and its phonetic spelling in Chinese. At the same time, other information and names of the business card are divided into words, and these divided words are added to index pointers 59 corresponding to nodes 57 of the index tree of FIG. 3B.

Currently, almost all countries have their specific character sets, e.g., the specific chinese character set GB2312, which may correspond to the character sets of Unicode codes. Therefore, the web card search engine stores the web card data using Unicode code characters as an encoding format, so that the search mode of the web card search engine of the present invention can be easily applied to other languages, such as japanese and korean, etc.

For a detailed description of the web card search of the present invention, FIG. 4A shows a flow chart for using an exact or exact match search. In the case of exact or exact match retrieval, name-by-name retrieval is performed with the input 61 query string a, which is used as the exact match word for the name. The entry in hash table 55 of fig. 3A can be easily found based on the first character of string a. The process then follows to find at 62 a node Na in the hierarchical tree connected to this entry, which corresponds to the query string a up to the last character. When the characters from the hash table entries to node Na are combined together, the string a of the query is composed. This is a conventional processing method whose time complexity is o (N), where N is the length of the query string. When the node Na is found, the index pointer 63 included in the node Na points to the network business card Ra to be found, which includes all business cards matching the query. If no such node is found, it indicates that none of the web cards stored in the memory 58 match the query string A.

The same is an accurate retrieval mode, but the retrieval based on phonetic spelling or homophone is basically the same as the character retrieval of such a web card as described above. First, it is determined at 65 whether the input query a is an ASCII string. If so, query A is treated as Pinyin string 67. The pinyin string may then be divided into several phonetic units according to the chinese phonetic spelling rules. These phonetic units form phonetic spelling stream a' 68. If query A contains not only phonetic spelling letter symbols, but also Chinese characters, as shown in step 66, the Chinese characters can be converted to corresponding phonetic units via a conversion table stored in memory 58. Thus, the phonetic spelling string A' 68 can be readily derived from the initial query stream A. Then, with the index structure shown in fig. 3A, the node Nb associated with the character string a' can be found at step 69. Thereafter, at steps 70 and 71, a pointer indicating the result Rb may be found. This process is the same as that of character retrieval, i.e., accurate or precise retrieval. At step 72, when the results Ra and Rb are obtained, a final result R may be obtained at step 73.

FIG. 4B illustrates a flow chart of the fuzzy or approximate retrieval of personal and business web cards of the present invention. As shown in fig. 3B, the structure of the index for the fuzzy or approximate search is the same as the structure for the exact or exact match search. For a query string A entered at step 81, such as "I would like to find XYZ doing IT work in Beijing," the search engine 23 would fail and the query would be divided into words by a self-learning dictionary at step 82. These words form the set W. In step 83, each word Wx is processed in the same computational manner as an exact or exact match search, thereby finding a node Nx in the index structure as in fig. 3B. At step 84, a result set Rx is generated from each node Nx. The result set Rx contains web cards with names or other information including the words Wx. All result sets Rx are combined to form one large result set R, step 85. In the combining process of step 86, the similarity of each business card is evaluated with a weight. The similarity may also follow certain rules. Finally, all the web cards in the large result set R are classified and arranged according to similarity, and the number of the selected web card retrieval results is limited according to some rules, so as to obtain the final retrieval result set R of fuzzy or approximate retrieval in step 88.

The above-described retrievable index structure and flowchart shown in fig. 3A and 3B and fig. 4A and 4B can be used not only for a search engine of a web card server but also for retrieval in a browser address bar. Further, when a desired web card is found, it may be desirable to record some information in his or her personal data processing device or computer. It is the function of synchronizing the displayed web card information with other desired devices of the searcher or any designated person.

Fig. 5A and 5B show web cards on different devices, respectively, with save keys and a selection screen. When the save key is clicked, a selection screen is shown. The means for selection is some standard personal data storage device such as a PDA or address book. The network business card system provides a browser with synchronous function started by browser plug-in software. Such plug-ins may be installed in the browser and updated frequently.

Fig. 5C shows a flow chart of synchronization. The synchronization is performed by the browser plug-in. When the retrieval begins, step 91, the browser displays a web card, step 92. The retriever may then click on the "save" key (93) and at step 94 a pull down menu or selection screen is presented showing the different devices to be synchronized. Once the desired device is selected (95), the browser plug-in software attracts the desired web card information to the desired device through the web card server interface, step 96. It will be appreciated that any desired information on the web card may first be selected at step 93 before clicking "save".

Claims (7)

1. A method for retrieving and synchronizing information in a web card format between at least one internet-accessible device and a web card server via the internet, comprising the steps of:

1) inputting a search query keyword at a browser address bar of one of the internet-accessible devices or a search engine of the web card server;

2) determining whether the inputted search query keyword is a URL website address;

3) if not, then judging whether the input search query keyword points to a website address or a desired network business card;

4) if the search query keyword points to a network business card, displaying the network business card, otherwise, displaying a corresponding website; and

5) any desired information of the displayed web card is synchronized with other internet-accessible devices.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the synchronizing comprises: a) selecting desired information from the web card; b) selecting one or more internet-accessible devices that wish to be synchronized; c) and sending the selected information to the selected device capable of accessing the Internet, and synchronizing the information of the network business card with the information of the selected device capable of accessing the Internet.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the search query keyword is a word or phrase in the language of the user.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the search engine utilizes a hash table and a hierarchical index tree for accurate and fuzzy retrieval, whereby the search query key is first decomposed into a plurality of words in any possible combination and the words are retrieved in the hash table and the hierarchical index tree.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the hash table is a table containing all entries of Unicode codecharacters, each entry corresponding to a branch of the hierarchical index tree.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein each node from the hash table to a corresponding branch of the hierarchical index tree is provided with a pointer to a corresponding piece of personal and business contact information.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of: before searching, when the search query keyword not only contains a voice letter symbol, but also contains a Chinese character, converting the Chinese character into a corresponding voice letter symbol according to a preset rule.