ITC382 11255412 A2

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Contents

Problem

Contact Details

In todays fast paced world, travel, while it has brought the world together, it has become harder to keep in contact with friends and co-workers. People change address/phone number, switch email accounts, buy a new mobile phone, switch to a new/different IM account, change jobs, change partners. Due to human psychology and sociology, a single method of communication is not sufficient, you cant do everything with simply email/IM, different methods of communication suit different needs of communication. With this in mind, a single person can collect a sizable list of contact details, perhaps with multiple addresses, multiple phone numbers, email addresses etc. Details for at work, and at home.

Communication void

The ease of travel has another impact on sociology, the fact that people have the ability to travel widely and meet many people, sometimes getting to know someone very well. In such cases, people are likley to continue communicating through whatever means they deem suitable. The situation also arises where people may not become involved enough to continue regular communication, however they may still be interested in the lives of such aquaintances. This is an unfilled void in the communication market. The proposed system aims to provide a solution.

Product audience

This product is potentially geared towards two primary audiences. The first being groups of friends or aquaintances, and the second being a group of co-workers within an organisation.

Friends

Friends wish to maintain up to date contact details, and keep up to date on the movements and lives of their friends, whether they communicate with them frequently or not.

Business

Businesses may make use of the system, by creating an employee index, including employees home details, which are maintained accurately by the users. Some employees may wish to provide 'news' to other employees (for example, progress of a project).

Scope

Prior Art

Many elements of the proposed system currently exist, Address books, collaborative environments, blogging sites. What this system proposes to do is combine them in a unique and functional way, to promote time efficient communication, and effective information management.

Address book

The on-line address book mirrors the manual address book. a list of names and details. This is seen today in email clients such as outlook and thunderbird, and also in on-line messaging systems such MSN and ICQ. ICQ has always supported a comprehensive user details database, having this much data about a person is not always desirable however. Some people may not wish to publicly distribute their mobile phone number for example, however they may be quite happy to publicly display their home phone number or email address to the world. As a remedy to this problem, the Invite/Authorise paradigm used in the IM world for allowing people to communicate, could be extended to allow/disallow people from viewing certain details.

Blogs

The blog may be perceived in different ways to different users. Business users may wish to use such a feature as a notice board, or simple newsgroup mechanism, for communicating news and progress to co-workers, and for this information to be hidden to the rest of the world, while other users may use it to inform their friends/acquaintances of major news and events in their lives.

This is not intended to replace the classical blog, but to function as a simplified version for use within the system, and where the invite/authorise mechanism may also be used to alert "friends" or "co-workers" (people authorised or associated with the writer) whenever an update is written.

Hardware/Software/GUI/Network/Technical

Solution

The solution is a form of Collaborative online address book, where users may change their own details, and define who has access to the details.

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