Title of Invention

METHOD AND SYSTEM OF USER-INTERESTS DRIVEN LAUNCHING PAD OF MOBILE APPLICATIONS

Abstract

This invention in general, relates to the field of telecommunication. The invention applies to Mobile Application and User interfaces design. This invention addresses the Usability of the mobile device. More Particularly this invention relates to a method and system of User-interests driven launching pad of mobile applications. This invention explains a method and system of user-interests driven launching pad of mobile applications comprising the steps of associating same set of user-defined metadata for each data-element saved on the mobile; marking the tag at the time of viewing the data-elements; explicity defining the tags by the user; and viewing and performing operations on the data-elements associated with the tags.

Full Text

FORM 2 THE PATENTS ACT, 1970 [39 of 1970] & THE PATENTS RULES, 2003 COMPLETE SPECIFICATION (Section 10; Rule 13) METHOD AND SYSTEM OF USER-INTERESTS DRIVEN LAUNCHING PAD OF MOBILE APPLICATIONS SAMSUNG INDIA SOFTWARE OPERATIONS PVT. LTD., BAGMANE LAKEVIEW, BLOCK ‘B1, No. 66/1, BAGMANE TECH PARK, C V RAMAN NAGAR, BYRASANDRA, BANGALORE - 560093 A wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Company Limited, Korea, an Indian Company The following Specification particularly describes the nature of the invention and the manner in which it is to be performed FIELD OF THE INVENTION This invention in general, relates to the field of telecommunication. The invention applies to Mobile Applications and User Interfaces design. This invention addresses the Usability of the mobile device. More particularly, this invention relates to a method and system of User-interests driven launching pad of mobile applications. DESCRIPTION OF RELATED ART There are systems/prior-art available for defining the metadata for the data elements on the phone. For example - MPEG standard. The systems for storing the “about information” of any data (video, audio, image) etc have been there. These systems store this metadata for the content along with the content - for example, in the form of EXIF header. This metadata information goes along with the data content. The metadata information thus stored is common for all users. Different applications on the mobile-device manipulate this data for performing the user-intended tasks. These applications may or may not be using the same database for these operations. Examples of applications are - phonebook, SMS, MMS, Camera, File-viewer, etc. The present mobile applications address the usability by defining Ul guidelines across the applications. For example - how a left-soft-key will be used (for positive action), how the center-select key will be used (for “OK” action), etc. These Ul guidelines are not always uniform across different mobile device manufacturers. The present applications provide static way of classifying the data-elements. For example - the phonebook or IM application may provide for configuring some entries as “friends”, others as “relatives”, and so on. The camera application may provide for a way of putting the photos into different folders. The advanced mobile phones have “search” function implemented across the data-elements in the phone, for example - Google desktop. This search function typically searches against a text input given. The following is the search results for prior art in the related fields, and mention of how this invention is different. 1) US20060035632A1 bearing the title “Apparatus and Method for Facilitating Contact Selection in Communication Devices” was filed on August 16, 2OO4.This patent publication provides a method and apparatus for facilitating contact selection in communication devices. The technique enables monitoring the communication attributes of previous communication. Plural history lists are maintained of contacts, which satisfy selection criteria, based on the monitored communication attributes. The history lists enable a user to select an intended contact with minimum keystrokes. The patent publication describes a method for automatic categorization of contacts into multiple categories. However, the patent publication does not describe categorization of data elements other than contacts. 2)US7003327 bearing the title “Heuristically assisted user interface for a wireless communication device” was filed on June 14, 2OOO.The Assignee is Openwave Systems Inc. The patent publication provides an apparatus and method for management of contacts in a mobile device. The mobile device assists a user with management and utilization of contact identifiers such as phone numbers, email addresses, facsimile numbers, uniform resource locator, etc. Content stored in the mobile device is processed and analyzed for presence of predetermined classes of contact identifiers. The patent publication further enables the user to automatically undertake specific tasks when messages or calls from pre-identified contacts are received. The patent publication provides a user interface for automatic categorization and management of contact information in a mobile device. However, no information is given about management of data elements other than contact information. 3)JP2003219065A bearing the title “Mobile Phone and Information Management Method in the Mobile Phone” was filed on January 18, 2002. The Assignee is NEC Access Technica Ltd. To provide a user interface by which a user can easily select/search area information and easily operate such as erasure of data of the area information in a mobile phone with a function of receiving area information through an area information distribution service. The patent publication describes categorization of information into different directories according to the location or area of operation of the mobile phone. However, patent publication does not describcategorization of data according to the user interest and updating the same manually or automatically. LIMITATIONS -There is no common thread of usability across applications that could map user tasks (intention for using the mobile device) - except providing having same Ul guidelines and providing ability to invoke one application from the other. For example - it is possible to invoke a calling application from the SMS viewer application. The user could select the option for making a call to the person who sent the SMS. There are presently ways of organizing the data-elements within an application based on user-interests, but they don’t cut across different applications simultaneously. However the present mobile device user-interfaces don’t provide a way of invoking apps for user’s temporal interests (for example - “house-hunting”, “organizing dinner”, or “preparing report”, etc) of the user, from one screen. The interests of the user could be classified as ‘trigger-type’ (example - checking weather forecast, seeing the game-score, etc.) and ‘persistent-type’ (example -organizing dinner, house-hunting, etc). The data-elements (like vcards, photos, appointments, etc) for the latter type of interests get accumulated over a period of time. The user, at present, is supposed to keep that in his mind what he wants to do, and search through different data-units on the phone to accomplish these tasks. With the increase in number of applications, the amount of data on/from the phone - the usability starts failing. These applications do not address the fact that the user looks at each application or data element in the phone from the same perspective - and that is about how to accomplish his temporal tasks/interests. The available metadata frameworks and task-driven computing solutions are too cumbersome and heavy to be usable. Some of them require defining the task in terms of a task description language, capturing the work- flow of a task. The metadata in these kinds of frameworks is tied to the data, as a header, and is the integral part of the data. While in this proposal, the association is only kept only by the user, and for the user. The “about information” that the user associates for a data-element can be an XML file. This format of storing the “about information” saves the storage space -since the same information is not stored with every data-element. For example -a number of multimedia objects (songs, photos, images, etc), contacts (vcards), calendar events, messages etc here map to the same XML file. By indexing to the set of XML files, the duplication of metadata is avoided. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The idea is based on the fact that people associate same tags/labels or “about information” across different aspects of their living. Same tag (for example -”organizing-dinner” or “house-hunt”) is identified by user for classifying or “mentally tagging” his contacts, messages, calendar events, photos. Therefore this can be the unifying factor for all applications on a phone. Another thing is that important (for user) tags aren’t many and the list of important-ones keeps changing - therefore this mapping reflects the current user interests better, and thereby requiring fewer key presses for getting the desired work done. The metadata here is not just the information about the data - but it is the information about the data from user’s perspective. The user-perspective is thus abstracted, and the about information is not duplicated for all data elements individually - as is done in the prevalent metadata frameworks. Accordingly, this invention explains a method of user-interest driven launching pad of mobile applications comprising the steps of: (a) associating same set of user-defined metadata for each data-element saved on the mobile; (b) marking tags at the time of viewing the data-elements; (c) explicitly defining the tags by the user; and (d) viewing and performing operations on the data-elements associated with the tags. The data-unit can be associated with multiple tags. The tags are in the form of XML files or as simple text string. The tags can be defined by automatically deciphered by looking at the data-element. The tags and the related data-elements can be shared between users through their mobile devices. The data-elements when shared between user devices involve synchronization between their tag-list before actual data-transfer. The data-units can be located over the Net for the said method. Accordingly this invention further explains a system of user-interests driven launching pad of mobile applications comprising: (a) means for associating same set of user-defined metadata for each data- element saved on the mobile; (b) means for marking the tag at the time of viewing the data-elements; (c) explicitly defining the tags by the user; and (d) means for viewing and performing operations on the data-elements associated with the tags. These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the ensuing detailed description of the invention taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE ACCOMPANYING DRAWING Figure 1 depicts the proposed view/operate-on “tagged” data-elements. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENION The preferred embodiments of the present invention will now be explained with reference to the accompanying drawings. It should be understood however that the disclosed embodiments are merely exemplary of the invention, which may be embodied in various forms. The following description and drawings are not to be construed as limiting the invention and numerous specific details are described to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention, as the basis for the claims and as a basis for teaching one skilled in the art how to make and/or use the invention. However in certain instances, well-known or conventional details are not described in order not to unnecessarily obscure the present invention in detail. The summary of the proposed invention is as follows:1.A mobile device has lots of data-units - as contacts, calendar events, messages, photos, etc. 2. Each data-unit saved on the mobile is associated with same set of user-defined metadata - called “tags”. 3.A data-unit can have multiple tags also. 4.The tags can be in the form of XML files or as simple text string. 5.The tags on the data-elements could be marked at the time of viewing the data-elements - which could be at the time of data-element’s creation or later. The tags could be explicitly defined by the user, or in a more advanced version -automatically deciphered by looking at the data-element. 6.A new application shall be provided for viewing and doing operations on the data-elements associated with the tag. (for example - a view will be there providing all contacts, calendar events, messages, photos, etc associated with “house-hunt” tag) 7The “tags” and the related data-elements could be shared between two individuals through their mobile devices. 8.The data-units when shared between two devices will do the synchronization between their tag-list, and then do a data-transfer between them. 9The data-units need not be only on the device. They could be located over the Net also. ADVANTAGES The invention is more intuitive. It suggests increased usability. Fewer key-presses required toget to the required places. Avoids duplication of the “about information” for all the elements. 1) Tagging any data-elements against the user-intended temporal tasks which could be done from a mobile device - and providing a way for invoking corresponding mobile applications against that view. 2) The tagging could either be explicitly done by user, or it could be deciphered directly from the data-elements and other user-context information. 3) The metadata here is the user-interest specific information that’s not duplicated for each data-element, instead the data-elements index to the metadata - and thereby save space. 4) The data-elements need not be physically on the device - they could be located over the Net. 5) Synchronize and Exchange of tag-list and the data-elements between two devices shall be possible It will also be obvious to those skilled in the art that other control methods and apparatuses can be derived from the combinations of the various methods and apparatuses of the present invention as taught by the description and the accompanying drawings and these shall also be considered within the scope of the present invention. Further, description of such combinations and variations is therefore omitted above. It should also be noted that the host for storing the applications include but not limited to a microchip, microprocessor, handheld communication device, computer, rendering device or a multi function device. Although the present invention has been fully described in connection with the preferred embodiments thereof with reference to the accompanying drawings, it is to be noted that various changes and modifications are possible and are apparent to those skilled in the art. Such changes and modifications are to be understood as included within the scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims unless they depart therefrom. GLOSSARY OF TERMS AND DEFINITIONS THEREOF Context: The information about user’s intention and environment (location, schedule, availability of self/others, etc). Data-element: Any unit of data on the mobile device - for example: contacts, calendar-appointment, photos, messages. Mobile Device: Any device that is used for mobile computing - like mobile phone, PDA, navigator, etc. Tag: Meta information about the data-element that maps to the user’s intent or task.

Documents:

925-CHE-2006 AMENDED PAGES OF SPECIFICATION 08-10-2013.pdf

925-CHE-2006 FORM-13 08-10-2013.pdf

925-CHE-2006 FORM-3 08-10-2013.pdf

925-CHE-2006 FORM-5 08-10-2013.pdf

925-CHE-2006 POWER OF ATTORNEY 08-10-2013.pdf

925-CHE-2006 AMENDED CLAIMS 08-10-2013.pdf

925-CHE-2006 EXAMINATION REPORT REPLY RECEIVED 08-10-2013.pdf

925-CHE-2006 OTHER PATENT DOCUMENT 08-10-2013.pdf

925-CHE-2006 OTHER PATENT DOCUMENT. 08-10-2013.pdf

925-CHE-2006 OTHERS 08-10-2013.pdf

925-che-2006-abstract.pdf

925-che-2006-claims.pdf

925-che-2006-complete description.pdf

925-che-2006-correspondance -others.pdf

925-che-2006-drawings.pdf

925-che-2006-form 1.pdf

925-che-2006-form 26.pdf