JP2004005722A - Service provision system - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To transmit data such as a mail by the optimum format to a personal digital assistant inferior in its function. <P>SOLUTION: This system is provided with a medium converting part 102 for converting various kinds of media such as a text and an image included in the mail or the like into media of different formats, and a terminal response part 103 for receiving connection from a terminal used by a user, for executing user authentication and acquisition of terminal capacity, and for transmitting the data such as the mail to the terminal. A content of the data such as the mail is converted thereby in response to the terminal used by the user to transmit information under the optimum format to the user terminal. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO

Description

{Circle over (1)} The present invention relates to a service providing system, and more particularly, to the convenience of a case where a user receives various services at various terminals and various places.

In recent years, with the spread of personal computers and portable information terminals, the types of terminals that receive data such as e-mails and the places where they receive data have become diverse depending on users and situations.

However, when reading data such as mail on a terminal with a relatively low display capability, such as a portable information terminal, the mail may not be displayed correctly depending on the content of the mail, or may be deleted from the spool even though the mail could not be read. There was a problem that it might be done.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention solves the above-mentioned problems, and provides a service providing system that can transmit information to a user in an optimal form by converting the content of data such as mail according to a terminal used by the user. The purpose is to provide.

A service providing system according to the present invention is a service providing system including a communication terminal and a service providing device that transmits media to the communication terminal via a communication path, wherein the service providing device is Means for receiving information about the processing capability of the communication terminal, receiving the connection, converting the medium transmitted to the communication terminal into a format suitable for the processing capability of the communication terminal, and converting the medium after the conversion. Means for transmitting to the communication terminal, wherein the communication terminal is connected to the service providing apparatus and transmits own processing capability information to the service providing apparatus, and the conversion transmitted from the service providing apparatus. Means for receiving the media later. As a result, the content of data such as mail is converted according to the terminal used by the user, and information can be sent to the user in an optimal form.

As described above, according to the present invention, by converting the content of data such as mail according to the terminal used by the user, it is possible to obtain an effect that information can be sent to the user in an optimal form.

Hereinafter, an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a system configuration according to an embodiment of the present invention. In FIG. 1, reference numeral 101 denotes a spool integration unit which integrates a plurality of spools and enables access as a single spool, and 102 converts various media such as texts and images included in mail to media of different formats. A media conversion unit 103 for converting receives a connection from a terminal used by a user, performs user authentication and obtains terminal capability, and a terminal response unit 104 for transmitting mail to the terminal. A mail arrival notifying unit for notifying, 105 is a mail urgency obtaining unit for checking the urgency of mail in the mail spool, and 106 is a communication for selecting which communication channel should be used to notify the user of mail arrival. A method selection unit 107 is a position information management unit that manages information on communication channels accessible to the user, and 108 is connected by various communication channels. A mail spool group consisting of mail spools by a plurality of mail service providers whose access methods are known; 109, a communication path network consisting of various communication paths connected by wired or wireless lines; 110, various terminals available to the user Is a group of user terminals.

First, the case where the user obtains a mail list from a terminal will be described. The user attempts to connect to this system using a nearby terminal. The terminal connects to the terminal response unit 103 using any type of communication path in the communication path network 109.

FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram of the terminal response unit in the present embodiment. In FIG. 2, reference numeral 201 denotes a terminal response control unit that controls the operation of the terminal response unit, and reference numeral 202 denotes a terminal capability storage unit that retains the capability of a terminal during communication.

The terminal response control unit 201 authenticates the connected terminal and specifies the user. Further, the capability of the terminal is inquired according to a predetermined protocol, and the obtained capability information is stored in the terminal capability storage unit 202.

The terminal capability is acquired by a method of inquiring about the function required by the terminal response control unit for each communication, by sending the terminal name from the terminal side, the terminal name held by the terminal response control unit in advance For example, a method of referring to a correspondence table of the abilities may be used.

FIG. 3 shows an example of the terminal capability stored in the terminal capability storage unit 202 according to the present embodiment. This example shows that the terminal has the ability to receive and display text of 30 Kbytes or less and the ability to receive and display binary images up to 320 × 200 pixels.

When the user inputs a command for displaying a mail list, the terminal response control unit 201 sends user information and a mail list display command to the spool integration unit 101.

FIG. 4 is a configuration diagram of the spool integration unit according to the present embodiment. In FIG. 4, reference numeral 401 denotes a spool communication control unit for communicating with a plurality of spools; 402, an operation conversion unit for converting a command for a single spool into a command for a plurality of spools; 403, a command for the spool; A mail operation response unit 404 to be returned, a user management table 404 holding the spool used by the user and information necessary for the use, and a reference numeral 405 stores the result converted by the operation conversion unit 402 for a later operation. This is a conversion result holding unit.

(4) The command from the terminal response unit 103 is received by the mail operation response unit 403 and sent to the operation conversion unit 402. The operation conversion unit 402 converts the command into a command group for a plurality of spools with reference to the user management table 404.

FIG. 5 shows an example of the user management table in the present embodiment. In the user management table 404, a spool access method used by the user and information necessary for access are registered in advance. In the case of a list display command, the operation conversion unit 402 converts the mail list display command into a list display command for each registered spool.

The converted command is sent to each spool through the spool communication control unit 401. List information obtained from each spool is collected from the spool communication control unit 401 to the operation conversion unit 402.

FIG. 6 shows an example of the list information obtained here. The mail number is a number used to designate a specific mail in this system, the spool number is the number indicating the spool where the mail exists, the ID in the spool is the ID for accessing the mail in the spool, the mail The ID is a unique identifier added to the mail on the mail sending side. The information in FIG. 6 is recorded in the conversion result holding unit 405 for the subsequent processing of the operation command from the user.

(6) The mail number from which the duplication is eliminated and the title of the mail used for displaying the mail list are sent to the terminal response unit 103 through the mail operation response unit 403.

(4) The terminal response unit 103 sends the received list to the terminal through the communication network 109, and completes the processing of the mail list display command.

Thus, even if the user receives a number of mail services, the user can use the mails by simple operations without being conscious of how to use each service.

Next, a case where the user reads mail from a terminal and deletes mail from the spool will be described. For simplicity, it is assumed that the user has already obtained a mail list by the mail list display command.

The user selects the mail to be read from the mail list and issues a read command for the mail. Here, the read command includes the mail number. The read command is sent to the terminal response unit 103 through the communication network 109. The terminal response unit 103 sends a read command to the spool integration unit 101.

Here, the mail operation response unit 403 sends a read command to the operation conversion unit 402. Based on the information of FIG. 6 recorded in the conversion result holding unit 405, the operation conversion unit 402 determines which spool the read-designated mail exists in, and sends the mail read command for that spool to the mail read command. Perform the conversion. If the mail specified to be read here is a duplicate mail existing in a plurality of spools, the mail is converted into a read command for one of the spools.

The converted command is sent to the spool via the spool communication control unit 401, and the read result is returned to the terminal response unit 103 via the mail operation response unit 403.

Here, the terminal response unit 103 converts the mail content as needed. FIG. 7 is an example of a table expressing the contents of the mail used by the terminal response unit. The terminal response unit 103 refers to the table of FIG. 7 and the capabilities of FIG. 3, and if it is determined that the capabilities of the terminal are not enough to display the mail, the content of the mail is Convert to a device that matches the capabilities of the terminal.

In this example, first, the length of the text exceeds the receiving capacity of 30 Kbytes, so the text is truncated to 30 Kbytes. In addition, since the terminal cannot display a moving image, the media converting unit 102 converts a part of the moving image into a binary image of 320 × 200 pixels.

For example, convert appropriate four frames out of 100 frames into a binary image of 320 × 200 pixels. At this time, when a conversion that damages the original mail information occurs, such as truncation of text or conversion from a moving image to a still image, the terminal response unit 103 adds an information loss flag to the table in FIG. As an example of the conversion in which the information is not lost, there is a case where the entire text is converted as an image in order to transmit the text content to a terminal capable of displaying only the image.

(4) The terminal response unit 103 sends the mail converted as described above to the user terminal through the communication network 109. At this time, with respect to the mail with the information missing flag, the information is also sent to the user terminal to inform the user that not all the information of the mail has been read. For example, the terminal adds a description such as "There is lost information" to the title of the mail.

(4) When the contents of the mail have been successfully transmitted to the user terminal, the terminal response unit 103 starts the mail deletion process. First, referring to the table of FIG. 7, if there is an information loss flag, deletion is not performed. If there is no information loss flag, a delete command is generated for all spools in which the mail exists, referring to FIG. 6, and sent to the spool group 108 through the spool communication control unit 401.

From the above, the user can read the mail in a format according to the capability of the terminal currently used. Also, if the terminal used by the user cannot receive all of the contents of the e-mail, the e-mail will not be deleted, so the user must read the complete e-mail contents on a terminal with high ability at a later date. Can be.

In addition, the same mail arriving at a plurality of spools used by the user is deleted when the user receives the complete contents of the mail, so that the inconvenience of reading the same mail many times is solved. .

Next, a case in which a mail is notified to a certain user will be described. The e-mail incoming notification unit 104 determines whether there is an e-mail to be notified of the incoming at regular time intervals. The mail arrival notifying unit 104 inquires of the mail urgency obtaining unit 105 whether an e-mail with an urgency that needs to be notified of arrival has not arrived. The mail urgency acquiring unit 105 acquires a mail list by sending a mail list command to the spool integrating unit 101.

FIG. 8 is a correspondence table of the urgency of a mail to a certain user and the transmission method used by the mail urgency acquiring unit 105 of the present embodiment. From this table and the acquired mail list, mails requiring an incoming notification are extracted, and a list including information such as a set of a mail number and a transmission method and a title required for the incoming notification is sent to the mail incoming notification unit 104.

The mail arrival notification unit 104 extracts only the transmission method from this list and sends it to the communication method selection unit 106.

FIG. 9 shows an example of position information held by the position information management unit 107 according to the present embodiment, which shows a communication method for a certain user and information on a position at which the user can be estimated to have been recently used among places where the communication can be used. For example, in a PHS telephone network, this table can be created based on the location registration information of the PHS terminal possessed by the user. When the registered position is "-", it indicates that the communication method cannot identify the position of the user as in a normal mobile phone.

The communication method selection unit 106 estimates the cost when each communication path is used based on the position information, and arranges a list of transmission methods sent from the mail arrival notification unit 104 in ascending order of cost to receive the mail. Return to the notification unit 104.

Note that the communication method selection unit 106 may select a transmission method in consideration of reliability, high speed, and the like for each transmission method.

The mail arrival notification unit notifies the user of the arrival of the mail via the communication network 109 based on the sorted transmission method list.

(4) As described above, it becomes possible to notify the user of only important mail information worthy of notifying the user through an optimal route.

System configuration diagram in one embodiment of the present invention Configuration diagram of a terminal response unit according to an embodiment of the present invention FIG. 4 is an example diagram of a terminal capability table according to an embodiment of the present invention. Configuration diagram of a spool integration unit in one embodiment of the present invention FIG. 4 is an example of a user management table according to the embodiment of the present invention. Example diagram of mail list information in one embodiment of the present invention FIG. 4 is an example of a mail content table according to the embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 5 is an example diagram of a correspondence table of mail urgency and transmission method according to the embodiment of the present invention FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating an example of user location information according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Explanation of reference numerals

Reference Signs List 101 spool integration unit 102 media conversion unit 103 terminal response unit 104 mail arrival notification unit 105 mail urgency acquisition unit 106 transmission path selection unit 107 position information management unit 108 mail spool group 109 communication path network 110 user terminal group 201 terminal response control unit 202 Terminal capability storage unit 401 Spool communication control unit 402 Operation conversion unit 403 Mail operation response unit 404 User management table 405 Conversion result holding unit

Claims (13)

A service providing system having a communication terminal and a service providing device that transmits media to the communication terminal via a communication path,
The service providing device accepts a connection from the communication terminal, acquires information regarding the processing capability of the communication terminal, and converts the media transmitted to the communication terminal into a format suitable for the processing capability of the communication terminal. Means, and means for transmitting the media after the conversion to the communication terminal,
The communication terminal includes means for connecting to the service providing apparatus and transmitting its own processing capability information to the service providing apparatus, and means for receiving the converted media transmitted from the service providing apparatus. A service providing system. Means for transmitting its own processing capacity information to the service providing apparatus; and means for receiving a medium transmitted from the service providing apparatus and converted into a format corresponding to its own processing capacity. Communication terminal. Means for receiving a connection from a communication terminal, acquiring information on the processing capability of the communication terminal, means for converting a medium to be transmitted to the communication terminal into a format suitable for the processing capability of the communication terminal, and Means for transmitting media to the communication terminal, from a service providing apparatus having a communication terminal receiving the media via a communication path,
Means for connecting to the service providing apparatus and transmitting its own processing capability information to the service providing apparatus; and means for receiving the converted media transmitted from the service providing apparatus. Communication terminal. A service providing apparatus for transmitting media via a communication path to a communication terminal having means for transmitting its own processing capability information,
Means for accepting a connection from the communication terminal and acquiring information on the processing capability of the communication terminal; means for converting the media transmitted to the communication terminal into a format suitable for the processing capability of the communication terminal; Means for transmitting the medium to the communication terminal. 5. The service providing apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the means for converting the media into a format suitable for the processing capability of the communication terminal converts a moving image medium into an image medium. 5. The service providing apparatus according to claim 4, wherein the means for converting the media into a format suitable for the processing capability of the communication terminal converts text media into image media. 5. The service providing apparatus according to claim 4, wherein when information loss occurs when converting the media into a format suitable for the processing capability of the communication terminal, information about the information loss is transmitted to the communication terminal. 5. The service according to claim 4, wherein the means for accepting a connection from the communication terminal and acquiring information on the processing capability of the communication terminal includes a terminal capability storage unit for storing the processing capability of the communication terminal acquired in advance. Providing device. A communication terminal for communicating with the service providing apparatus according to claim 4,
A communication terminal comprising: means for transmitting its own processing capability information to the service providing apparatus; and means for receiving the converted media transmitted from the service providing apparatus. A terminal capability storage unit for storing capability information of a communication terminal to which a mail is to be transmitted, and transmission in a state where a part of information of an email to be transmitted according to the capability of the communication terminal stored in the terminal capability storage unit is partially lost Transmitting means for performing
A service providing apparatus for transmitting the e-mail to the communication terminal so as to cause the communication terminal to indicate that the transmission is performed in a state in which the information is partially lost; . A terminal capability storage unit for storing capability information of a communication terminal of a mail transmission destination, and a conversion unit for converting the mail transmitted to the communication terminal into a format corresponding to the capability of the communication terminal stored in the terminal capability storage unit And means for transmitting the mail after the conversion to the communication terminal,
A service providing apparatus for transmitting the e-mail to the communication terminal so as to cause the communication terminal to indicate that the transmission is performed in a state in which the information is partially lost; . A terminal capability storage unit for storing capability information of a communication terminal of a mail transmission destination, and a conversion unit for converting the mail transmitted to the communication terminal into a format corresponding to the capability of the communication terminal stored in the terminal capability storage unit And means for transmitting the mail after the conversion to the communication terminal,
The conversion unit converts the mail within a range of the capability of the communication terminal stored in advance in the terminal capability storage unit by a notification from the terminal,
A service providing apparatus for transmitting the e-mail to the communication terminal so as to cause the communication terminal to indicate that the transmission is performed in a state in which the information is partially lost; . Depending on the capability of the communication terminal to which the mail is sent, the sending means for normally sending the mail, or sending the mail in a state where a part of the information of the mail to be sent is missing, and the mail when the mail is sent normally. And a mail deletion processing unit that does not execute the deletion process when the mail is transmitted in a state where a part of the information of the mail is lost,
A service providing apparatus, wherein when the mail is transmitted in a state where a part of the information of the mail is lost, the user of the mail destination can acquire the mail in a normal state. .

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