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Method, system, and article for telephone notification of an online status of a user
| Details |
Inventors: Lipton, Marc Ira;
Assignee: SBC Properties, LP (Reno, NV)
Primary Examiner: Harvey; Jack B.
Assistant Examiner: Le; Hien C.
Attorney, Agent or Firm: Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione
One or more members of a group are notified of an online status of a user. If a member of the group is off-line and has enabled a telephone notification option, a telephone message indicating the online status of the user is sent to the member. If the member of the group is online, an online message indicating the online status of the user is sent to the member. |
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DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF A PREFERRED EMBODIMENT Embodiments of the present invention beneficially place one or more telephone calls to notify off-line members of a buddy list that a user has gone on-line.
Each member has an option of enabling and disabling notification telephone calls to be placed to him/her.
Further, each member has an option of enabling and disabling the feature of notifying other members of his/her online status.
Optionally, a number of notification telephone calls placed to a member may be limited during a time duration.
As another option, a member may choose to receive notification telephone call for only certain members in a subset of the buddy list.
As a further option, a member may place a telephone call to an interactive voice response (IVR) unit having a storage device which stores the notifications.
Within the telephone call, the IVR provides a message indicating which members of the buddy list are on-line.
FIG.
1 is a flow chart of an embodiment of method of notifying of an online status of a user.
As indicated by block 20, the method comprises detecting an online status of a user.
The online status of the user may be detected by an a computer network service provider, such as an Internet service provider, which serves the user.
Alternatively, the online status of the user may be detected by a node of a computer network, such as a server accessible via the Internet.
In this case, for example, the user's computer may communicate a message to the node via the computer network, where the message indicates that the user has gone online.
The message may be communicated automatically upon the user going online.
U.
S.
Pat.
No.
5,843,478 to Aggarwal et al.
, which discloses an infrastructure and method for tracking the online status of users, is hereby incorporated by reference into this disclosure.
As indicated by block 22, the method comprises determining if a user-initiated notification option is enabled.
The user-initiated notification option dictates whether or not other users are to be notified of the online status of the user
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