WO2004021722A1

WO2004021722A1 - Method and system of providing web-contents to a mobile communication device via e-mail

Info

Publication number: WO2004021722A1
Application number: PCT/KR2003/001753
Authority: WO
Inventors: Jae-Jun Ko
Original assignee: Jae-Jun Ko
Priority date: 2002-08-31
Filing date: 2003-08-29
Publication date: 2004-03-11
Also published as: KR20040020694A; AU2003256116A1

Abstract

Method and system of providing web-contents to a mobile communication device via E-mail are disclosed. Various contents of a lot of websites can be provided to each of mobile communication devices through a contents provider system. The contents provider system is adapted to receive and store a predetermined pattern of E-mail containing text, image, movie, music or other web-contents from the websites. The contents contained in the received E-mail are extracted and then automatically converted to a form accessible by each of the mobile communication devices. The device user may gain access to the contents provider system to read the contents.

Description

METHOD AND SYSTEM OF PROVIDING WEB-CONTENTS TO A MOBILE COMMUNICATION DEVICE VIA E-MAIL

FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a method and a system for providing web-contents to a mobile communication device via an E-mail, and more particularly, to a method and a system for providing web-contents to a mobile communication device via an E-mail, in which a variety of contents on a variety of websites are transmitted to a server of the present invention as a form of an E-mail through the function provided on the website to send to a mobile phone, and the server reconstruct the web-contents such as text, image, movie, or music as a phone-page that can be provided to the mobile phone of a user so that the user can take the contents with the mobile phone.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Many kinds of contents are now provided on numerous websites on

Internet.

Such contents can be classified to text contents, image contents, audio contents, and video contents such as a movie. The text contents have been mainly provided at the past due to the problem of transmission speed, however, the multimedia contents increase nowadays with the help of the

Internet network of ultra-high speed.

The contents provided by a newspaper company are the typical type of the text contents. The newspaper company provides the readers with numerous new articles every day through the newspaper or the website. The readers that read the articles not through the newspaper but through the website can use various kinds of services provided by the website. The examples of the services that provided on each article are a storage service that provides the function to store the articles on a PC, a printing service that provides the function to print the articles, and the E-mail service that provides the function to send the articles to other persons as an E-mail.

Especially, the E-mail service is a service that the person who has read the articles can send the articles as an E-mail to other persons that he thinks to require the articles. However, in order to send the articles via the E-mail, he has to know the E-mail address of the receiver, and even when he knows the

E-mail address, the rapid transmission of the contents is not possible if the receiving person does not check the E-mail or checks the E-mail after a long period of time.

In particular, even under the recent trend that the most of the people has the mobile phone, when a person wants to send important articles on real-time, he has to dial to the mobile phone of the other person and then read the articles in person so that the other person can hear the articles, or he has to send the summary of the articles with the short message service that make it possible to send the characters smaller than about 40 characters, by which the articles cannot be sent exactly. The method and system for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail according to the present invention have not been known anywhere.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been proposed to overcome the above- described problems, and it is the object of the present invention to provide a method and a system for providing web-contents achieved on various websites via an E-mail on real-time to a person who needs the information. To achieve the above object, the present invention provides a method for providing web-contents to a mobile communication device of a receiver via an E-mail from a transmitter, the method comprising the steps of: receiving the web-contents at a predetermined format of the E-mail; forming a phone- page capable of being connected with the mobile communication device, with the web-contents transmitted at the predetermined format of the E-mail; providing an address of the phone-page to the mobile communication device of the receiver; determining whether the receiver connects to the phone-page; and providing a content of the phone-page to the wireless communication device as the receiver connects to the phone-page. Here, it is preferable to record a fee information regarding to a use of the content of the receiver, as the receiver connects to the phone-page.

The web-contents may be text contents, image contents, audio contents, or video contents.

In the mean time, the format ofthe E-mail comprises an E-mail address of the receiver who receives the E-mail; an E-mail address of the transmitter who provides the web-contents; an identification number of the mobile communication device of the receiver who receives the web-contents; an identification number of a mobile phone of the transmitter who transmits the web-contents; a message of the transmitter to be transmitted of which length is confined to a predetermined size; and the web-contents.

According to the present invention, a system for providing web-contents to a mobile communication device of a receiver via an E-mail from a transmitter is provided wherein the system comprises: a means for receiving the web-contents at a predetermined format of the E-mail; a means for forming a phone-page capable of being connected with the mobile communication device, with the web-contents transmitted at the predetermined format of the E-mail; a means for providing an address of the phone-page to the mobile communication device of the receiver; a means for determining whether the receiver connects to the phone-page; and a means for providing a content of the phone-page to the wireless communication device as the receiver connects to the phone-page. Here, it is preferable to further comprises a means for recording a fee information regarding to a use of the content ofthe receiver, as the receiver connects to the phone-page.

BREIF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing the ambient condition of the system for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail;

FIG. 2 is an illustrative view for showing the process to provide text contents among the web-contents to the mobile communication device, which is performed by the system for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail as shown in FIG. 1 ; and

FIG. 3 is a flow chart showing the method for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail, which is performed by the server for providing the service to provide the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail as shown in FIG. 1.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE EMBODIMENTS

Hereinbelow, the present invention is described in greater detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing the ambient condition of the system for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail. As shown in FIG. 1, the system 100 for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail of the present invention is connected with a plurality of websites 150 through the wire/wireless communication network 140. Numerous users 160 connect to the websites 150 using personal communication devices 164 and 168 such as personal computers 162 and 166, a mobile phone, or a PDA. The websites that can be connected simultaneously with the personal computers 162 and 166, the mobile phone, the PDA do not exist, and the most of the websites are connected with the personal computers 162 and 166. Most ofthe users achieve various information through the contents on the websites 150 connected with the personal computers 162 and 166. In such a situation, if he wants to provide other persons with the information that he has achieved, he transfers the achieved information on the website using the transfer service to the mobile phone if the transfer service is provided on the website.

The system 100 for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail provides, when the user, that is, the transmitter, uses the service provided by the system in order to send the achieved information, the service that the contents that the transmitter wants to transmit are delivered as a predetermined format of an E-mail from the corresponding website so that the receiver can achieve the contents with his mobile phone. The system 100 includes a server 100 for providing the web- contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail, which performs the method for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail according to the present invention, an E-mail database 120 that is connected with the server 100 and stores the E-mail provided from the website 150, and a mail format database 130 that stores the information about the website ID which identifies the website that has sent the E-mail, and the information about the predetermined format of the contents that are provided by the E-mail. The E-mail database 120 has at least the information about the mobile phone number of the transmitter, the mobile phone number of the receiver, the website that has sent the E-mail, and the contents transmitted by the transmitter. Besides such information, the information includes the phone-page information on which the E-mail is stored after being converted. The detailed description about the wire/wireless communication network 140 for transmitting and receiving the data between the system 100, the website 150 and the user is omitted, as that has been established and used already and is not the main idea of the present invention.

Hereinbelow, the method for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail performed by the server 110 for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E- mail shown in FIG. 1 is illustrated with reference to FIGS. 2 and 3.

FIG. 2 shows an embodiment of the present invention in which the present invention is employed on the website of a newspaper company that provides the text base information among a variety of websites. As shown in FIG. 2, two windows 210 and 212 are displayed on the website of newspaper company A, in which the left window 210 contains the contents of an article and the right window 212 is generated when the user clicks the "mobile phone" button among the buttons for processing the articles provided on the left window 210 such as a storage button, a mailing button, a printing button, and a mobile phone button. The transmitter clicks the "mobile phone" button on the left upper area ofthe left window 210 when he wants to transmit the article to a mobile phone of a specific person. Then, the right window 212 is generated, on which the transmitter inputs the phone number of a receiver, the phone number of the transmitter, and the message to be transmitted, and then clicks the "send" button.

The contents recorded on the right window 212 is reconstructed to a predetermined format 214 that can be recognized by the system according to the present invention shown in FIG. 1 as follows. That is, the format includes a predetermined E-mail address for sending the E-mail from the server at the newspaper company A that runs the website of the newspaper company A to the server 110 ofthe present invention, a predetermined E-mail address of the transmitting position for representing the website of the newspaper company A, the phone number of the receiver that the transmitter input, the phone number of the transmitter, and the contents and the message to be transmitted by the transmitter, that is, the article of the newspaper. In this situation, the predetermined E-mail address of the transmitting position can include the information about the sort of the contents that are being transmitted. In other words, whether the contents are text, image, video or music can be included. Since the E-mail address can be set in advance and is used repeatedly at the system, the length ofthe address may be much longer than a general mail address.

As shown in the figure, the E-mail of which format has been converted to that of an E-mail used in the server at the newspaper company A is transmitted to the server 1 10 for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail of the present invention. The server 110 for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail performs the main functions thereof such as to analyze whether the format ofthe received E-mail is a predetermined format, to construct a phone- page corresponding to the received E-mail, and to provide the mobile phone of the receiver with a call-back URL that is the address of the phone-page so that the receiver can refer to the phone-page through the wire/wireless communication network. As the receiver connects to the phone-page with the call-back URL, the connection history is recorded to be used as a fee information. Among the pictures displayed on the mobile phone of the receiver shown on the left lower area of FIG. 2, the picture A 218 shows the state that the information about the call-back URL has been received, and the other picture B 220 shows the contents that the transmitter wants to send, which is displayed when the receiver who has received the call-back URL connects to the phone-page by pressing the "connection" button. The embodiment shown in FIG. 2 is merely an example of a text base website among the various kinds of websites, and the information about image, video, or music can also be transmitted to the mobile phone easily through the similar fashion as described above.

FIG. 3 is a flow chart showing the method for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail, which is performed by the server 110 for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail as shown in FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 3, whether the E-mail to which the function to send to the mobile phone is attached is received from the website is determined in advance. (S302) As it is determined that the E-mail is received in Step 302, the E-mail is analyzed. (S304). The analysis ofthe E-mail is performed with reference to the format of contents and the website ID stored in the mail format database 130 shown in FIG. 1. The validity of the received E-mail is determined through the analysis of the E-mail performed in the step 304. (S306) If the E-mail is determined to be valid in the step 306, that is, if the E-mail is received at the format of the E-mail predetermined at the website serving the function of sending to the mobile phone, the phone-page corresponding to the format of the mail is generated. (S308) Then, the call-back URL for connecting to the phone-page from the phone number of the receiver included in the E-mail is provided. (S310) Afterwards, whether the receiver connects to the phone- page is determined (S312), and as the receiver connects, the data of the corresponding phone-page is provided (S314) and the fee information according to the connection is recorded. (S316) If the connection is not performed in the step 312, the process is then finished.

The present invention is described with the website that provides contents, however, if a specialized site for sending a long mail exists, the E-mail of such a site can also be processed. In other words, it is possible that the transmitter sends not only the infonnation of a general website but also the infonnation of a long paragraph that he has made. In such a case, the information that the transmitter has made corresponds to the contents of the above-mentioned website.

INDUSTRIAL APPLICABILITY

As described above, the following effect can be achieved by using the system for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via the E-mail according to the present invention. At first, if a user wants to inform other person of a newspaper article that he has read on a website, the other person can read the article sent to his mobile phone. Furthermore, if the user sends the newspaper article to his own mobile phone, the user himself can also read the newspaper article. Moreover, the text as well as the image, the movie, the music can be sent and enjoyed.

Although the prefereed embodiment of the present invention has been described, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that the present invention should not be limited to the described preferred embodiment, but various changes and modifications can be made within the spirit and the scope of the present invention. Accordingly, the scope of the present invention is not limited within the described range but the following claims.

Claims

WHAT IS CLAIMED IS:

1. A method for providing web-contents to a mobile communication device of a receiver via an E-mail from a transmitter, the method comprising the steps of: receiving the web-contents at a predetermined format ofthe E-mail; forming a phone-page capable of being connected with the mobile communication device, with the web-contents transmitted at the predetermined fonnat ofthe E-mail; providing an address of the phone-page to the mobile communication device ofthe receiver; determining whether the receiver connects to the phone-page; and providing a content of the phone-page to the wireless communication device as the receiver connects to the phone-page.

2. The method for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via an E-mail of claim 1 , further comprising a step of recording a fee infonnation regarding to a use of the content of the receiver, as the receiver connects to the phone-page.

3. The method for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via an E-mail of claim 1 or 2, wherein the web- contents are text contents, image contents, audio contents, or video contents.

4. The method for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via an E-mail of claim 1 or 2, wherein the format of the E-mail comprises: an E-mail address ofthe receiver who receives the E-mail; an E-mail address ofthe transmitter who provides the web-contents; an identification number of the mobile communication device of the receiver who receives the web-contents; an identification number of a mobile phone of the transmitter who transmits the web-contents; a message of the transmitter to be transmitted of which length is confined to a predetennined size; and the web-contents.

5. A system for providing web-contents to a mobile communication device of a receiver via an E-mail from a transmitter, the system comprising: a means for receiving the web-contents at a predetermined format of the E-mail; a means for forming a phone-page capable of being connected with the mobile communication device, with the web-contents transmitted at the predetermined format ofthe E-mail; a means for providing an address of the phone-page to the mobile communication device ofthe receiver; a means for determining whether the receiver connects to the phone-page; and a means for providing a content of the phone-page to the wireless communication device as the receiver connects to the phone-page.

6. The system for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via an E-mail of claim 5, further comprising a means for recording a fee information regarding to a use of the content of the receiver, as the receiver connects to the phone-page.

7. The system for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via an E-mail of claim 5 or 6, wherein the web- contents are text contents, image contents, audio contents, or video contents.

8. The system for providing the web-contents to the mobile communication device via an E-mail of claim 5 or 6, wherein the format of the E-mail comprises: an E-mail address ofthe receiver who receives the E-mail; an E-mail address ofthe transmitter who provides the web-contents; an identification number of the mobile communication device of the receiver who receives the web-contents; an identification number of a mobile phone of the transmitter who transmits the web-contents; a message ofthe transmitter to be transmitted of which length is confined to a predetermined size; and the web-contents.