JP2007221351A - Silent incoming call system of electronic information - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an electronic information system which enables a transmission terminal side that transmits electronic information to control the ringtone of a receiving terminal. <P>SOLUTION: The electronic information system is provided as composed of a transmitting terminal and a receiving terminal. The transmitting terminal acquires electronic information that should be transmitted to a receiving terminal together with silent incoming call information which makes the receiving terminal receive incoming call without ringtone, and transmits them to the receiving terminal. The receiving terminal judges whether silent incoming call information is included in the received electronic information or not. When it is found that the silent incoming call information is included, the receiving terminal controls an incoming call output so as not to output a ring tone that is generated when the electronic information is received. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to an electronic information system having a receiving terminal that controls output of a ringtone when electronic information is received.

  In recent years, communication by electronic mail has become active. Conventionally, e-mail exchange mainly using a PC (personal computer) has been performed, but in recent years, e-mail exchange using a mobile phone has become particularly active. When exchanging electronic mail using a mobile phone, mail reception processing is performed without the user consciously performing a mail confirmation request operation on the server. In other words, the user receives mail in real time.

  For such convenience, the exchange of e-mails using mobile phones is widely spread, but the following problems have arisen. For example, since mail is transmitted to the other party in real time, a phenomenon such as refraining from sending mail in the middle of the night considering the environment on the receiving side has occurred. Also, some users are set to forward all received emails to a mobile phone. For email senders, the destination email address is portable or for a PC. Regardless of the situation, there is a complication of having to send an email in consideration of various circumstances such as the other party's situation and environment.

  In this way, there is a situation in which the advantages of e-mail, such as being usable without worrying about TPO (Time, Place, Occasion), cannot be fully exhibited. In order to solve this problem, for example, a technique has been developed for controlling the ringtone to be silent when an e-mail is received under a predetermined condition.

  The invention described in Patent Document 1 discloses an invention related to a portable terminal device that has a sensor that detects vibration, determines that the user is in the train by the detected vibration, and controls the ringtone. Yes.

Further, the invention described in Patent Document 2 discloses an invention related to a portable terminal device that controls ringtones and vibrations when a voice call or mail is received when the alarm clock function is turned on. .
JP 2004-328100 A JP 2004-56651 A

  However, all of the conventional techniques are inventions in which the ringtone is controlled by using the setting of the receiving terminal itself or the detection of the receiving terminal sensor as a trigger. For this reason, there has been a problem in that it is impossible to control the output of a ringtone when an e-mail is received at the receiving terminal due to the intention from the transmitting terminal side. Therefore, for the user on the transmission terminal side, the mail must still be transmitted in consideration of the environment of the user of the reception terminal, and the complexity has not been solved.

  Therefore, the present invention has been made in view of such problems, and provides an electronic information system that enables control of a ring tone at a receiving terminal on the transmitting terminal side that transmits the electronic information. Objective.

  Therefore, in order to solve this problem, the present invention provides an electronic information system including a transmission terminal and a reception terminal. The transmitting terminal includes an electronic information acquisition unit that acquires electronic information to be transmitted to the receiving terminal, including silent incoming information that is information for causing the receiving terminal to make a silent incoming call, and the acquired electronic information to the receiving terminal. And an electronic information transmitting unit that transmits the information. In addition, the receiving terminal includes an electronic information receiving unit that receives electronic information, a ringing tone output unit that can output a ringtone in response to reception of the electronic information, and whether the received electronic information includes silence incoming information. Controls the ringtone output unit so as not to output the ringtone generated when receiving the electronic information when the determination unit determines that the silent incoming information is included in the determination unit A control unit.

  According to the present invention, since a terminal that transmits electronic information can control a ring tone at the receiving terminal, the electronic information can be transmitted without worrying about the other party's environment. Therefore, it is possible to exchange electronic information without hesitation at night and the like, and it is possible to provide a free communication means that is not affected by time or circumstances. In addition, for example, when an advertisement is distributed as electronic information, it is possible to distribute the advertisement without feeling uncomfortable for the user.

  Hereinafter, embodiments of each invention will be described. Note that the present invention is not limited to these embodiments, and can be implemented in various modes without departing from the spirit of the present invention.

<< embodiment >>
<Overview of embodiment>
The present embodiment relates to an electronic information system that enables a transmitting terminal to control a ring tone when electronic information is received at a receiving terminal.

  FIG. 1A is a diagram showing an example of a mode at the time of transmission of a conventional electronic mail. In FIG. 1A, a greeting mail is transmitted from the transmission terminal to the reception terminal. Here, for example, when the user of the receiving terminal is sleeping, a ring tone is output when a mail is received, and sleep is disturbed. Although it is possible to silence the mail ringtone by setting the receiving terminal as in the conventional technology, this is not always effective because it may miss a highly urgent mail. It was not a good solution. In contrast, FIG. 1B is a diagram for explaining the outline of the present embodiment. In FIG. 1B, when a user of a transmission terminal transmits an electronic mail, the transmission terminal is controlled so that information for making a silent call at the reception terminal is included in the electronic information. Sending against. Then, in the receiving terminal, when the electronic mail is received, control is performed so as not to output a ringtone. Therefore, the user of the receiving terminal can receive the e-mail in real time without disturbing sleep.

<Configuration of Embodiment 1>
FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example of functional blocks in the present embodiment. As shown in FIG. 2, the “electronic information system” (200) in the present embodiment is composed of a “transmission terminal” (210) and a “reception terminal” (220). The “transmission terminal” (210) includes an “electronic information acquisition unit” (211) and an “electronic information transmission unit” (212). The “receiving terminal” (220) includes an “electronic information receiving unit” (221), a “ringtone output unit” (222), a “determination unit” (223), and a “control unit” (224). Have.

  Each unit, which is a component of the present invention, is configured by either hardware, software, or both hardware and software. For example, as an example for realizing these, when a computer is used, hardware composed of a CPU, a memory, a bus, an interface, a peripheral device, and the like, and software that can be executed on these hardware are listed. be able to. Specifically, the functions of each part are realized by processing, storing, and outputting data on the memory and data input via the interface by sequentially executing the program expanded on the memory (this book) The same applies throughout the specification).

  First, the transmission terminal 210 will be described. The transmission terminal 210 corresponds to any terminal that can transmit electronic information to be described later. Specific examples of the transmission terminal include a PC, a mobile phone, a PDA, a game machine equipped with a communication function, and the like.

  The electronic information acquisition unit 211 acquires electronic information to be transmitted to the receiving terminal 220 including silent incoming information that is information for causing the receiving terminal 220 to make a silent incoming call. The “electronic information” specifically includes an electronic mail, but a message exchanged between terminals of the same operator, such as SMS (Short Message Service), is also included in the electronic information. The “silent incoming call information” is information acquired by being included in electronic information. As will be described later, the receiving terminal that has received the electronic information including the silent incoming call information is controlled so as not to output the ringing tone. The output can be indirectly controlled.

  A specific example of the silent incoming call information will be described with reference to FIG. FIG. 3A is a diagram illustrating an example of a header portion of an electronic mail. In the header, information on the sender and receiver of the mail, the server through which the mail has passed, the title, and the like are described. As a specific example of the silent incoming call information, information indicating a silent incoming call may be added to this header. For example, in FIG. 3A, a header item X-Ringertone is added as information indicating a silent incoming call, and None is described as the parameter. Various methods are conceivable as methods for including silent incoming information (“X-Ringertone: None” in FIG. 3A) in the header. For example, if a GUI (Graphical User Interface) displays a check box for whether or not to include silent incoming information, and the user creates a mail by checking the check box, the silent incoming information is displayed in the mail header. ("X-Ringertone: None"). In addition, a message box for inquiring whether to include silent incoming information when creating a mail may be displayed. Alternatively, it may be configured so that it is not necessary to select whether to include silent incoming call information every time a mail is created by setting whether to include silent incoming call information in advance in the mailer settings.

  Further, the silent incoming information may not necessarily be included in the header. FIG. 3B is a diagram illustrating an example of a mail creation screen. For example, if a character string (for example, “$ Ringertone: None $$”) indicating that there is a silent incoming call is included in the “subject” portion of FIG. 3B, the mail in which the character string is input Silent incoming call information may be acquired by creating In addition to the subject, the mail text may include a character string indicating that the incoming call is a silent call. Furthermore, a file indicating the silent incoming call information in an attached file (for example, the extension is “.rngno”). ) Is attached, the silent incoming call information may be acquired by attaching the file.

  As described above, in the transmission terminal, the silent incoming information can be included in the electronic information in various forms. However, the receiving terminal described later requires a function of interpreting the silent incoming information according to the form. . For example, when the transmission terminal side includes the silent incoming call information in the header, the receiving terminal side needs a function of referring to the silent incoming call information in the header.

  The electronic information transmission unit 212 transmits the acquired electronic information to the receiving terminal. As a method for transmitting electronic information to a receiving terminal, for example, electronic information is transmitted to the receiving terminal via a mail server using a TCP / IP protocol.

  Next, the receiving terminal 220 will be described. Specific examples of the receiving terminal include a PC, a mobile phone, a PDA, a game device equipped with a communication function, etc., as with the transmitting terminal, and any device that can receive electronic information is included. Is.

  The electronic information receiving unit 221 receives electronic information. In the reception of electronic information, in addition to reception of an electronic mail or the like, for example, reception of a new message indicating that the electronic mail has arrived at the server is also included in “reception of electronic information”.

  The ring tone output unit 222 can output a ring tone in response to reception of electronic information. The ring tone output unit normally outputs a ring tone when electronic information is received. However, if the received electronic information includes silence incoming information as described later, the ring tone output unit outputs a ring tone. A feature of the present embodiment is that it is possible not to perform the operation. The ringing tone is output through, for example, a speaker of the receiving terminal. The ringtone includes sounds such as music melody and human voice data. In this way, the ringtone includes all sounds output from the receiving terminal triggered by the reception of electronic information. The ring tone output unit may be a component that outputs sound like a speaker, or may be a part that performs control for outputting a ring tone.

  The determination unit 223 determines whether silent incoming information is included in the received electronic information. As an example, referring to the header of the received electronic information, it is determined whether or not silence incoming information is included in the header. This determination process is executed before the ring tone output process by the ring tone output unit.

  When the determination unit 223 determines that the silence incoming information is included, the control unit 224 causes the ringtone output unit 222 not to output the ringtone that is generated when the electronic information is received. Control. Controlling the ring tone output unit so as not to output the ring tone means that, for example, when receiving normal electronic information, an API (Application Program Interface) that executes the output of the ring tone is activated to output the ring tone. However, if silent incoming information is included, the ringtone output unit is controlled so as not to output the ringtone by not calling the API for outputting the ringtone. be able to.

<Processing flow of the embodiment>
FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining the processing flow of the present embodiment. Note that the processing flow shown below can be implemented as a program to be executed by a computer or a readable recording medium on which the program is recorded (the same applies to the description of the processing flow in this specification). is there).

  First, electronic information including silent incoming information is acquired at the transmitting terminal (S411). This corresponds to, for example, a case where a mail is created in a state where a silent incoming call information input check box in an electronic mail creation application or the like is turned on. Next, the transmitting terminal transmits the electronic information acquired in S411 to the receiving terminal (S412).

  The receiving terminal receives the electronic information transmitted from the transmitting terminal in S412 (S421). Then, it is determined whether the silence information is included in the electronic information received in S421 (S422). If it is determined in S422 that silent incoming information is included, control is performed so as not to output a ringtone (S423). On the other hand, if it is determined in S422 that the silent incoming call information is not included, the process proceeds to S424, and processing when normal electronic information is received is executed. Specifically, a ringing tone output process is performed to alert the user that an electronic information has been received.

<Specific Configuration Aspect of Embodiment>
FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating an example of a specific configuration aspect of the present embodiment. FIG. 5A shows an example of a specific configuration aspect of the transmission terminal, and FIG. 5B shows an example of a specific configuration aspect of the reception terminal.

  In FIG. 5A, the transmission terminal includes a CPU 501, RAM 502 constituting an electronic information acquisition unit, a CPU 501, RAM 502, I / O 503 constituting an electronic information transmission unit, a system bus 504 as a transmission system thereof, and the like. have. When acquiring electronic information, the CPU reads out instructions stored at a predetermined address of the mail creation application temporarily stored in the RAM, and outputs various instructions. As an example, the CPU outputs a command for adding a header as silent incoming information to a storage address of a predetermined mail header in the RAM. Thereafter, when sending an e-mail, the CPU outputs a command to divide the information about the e-mail temporarily stored in the RAM into packets and send it through I / O.

  On the other hand, the receiving terminal in FIG. 5B includes a CPU 511, RAM 512, and I / O 513 that constitute an electronic information receiving unit, a CPU 511, a RAM 512, a speaker 515 that constitutes a ring tone output unit, a determination unit, and a control unit. CPU 511, RAM 512, I / O 513, and a system bus 514 as a transmission system thereof. When the CPU reads out the resident monitoring program stored in the RAM and is activated, when the electronic information is received, the activated resident monitoring program detects that the electronic information has been received through the I / O. . The CPU reads out processing when the reception of this electronic information is detected from the RAM, and sequentially outputs instructions for subsequent processing. For example, the header of the e-mail received and temporarily stored in the RAM is read to search for silence incoming information. If the silent incoming call information is included, the CPU does not issue a command to output the incoming call tone data stored in the RAM. By doing so, it is possible to realize a silent incoming call when an e-mail is received.

<Effects of the embodiment>
In this embodiment, since it is possible to control the output of the ringtone of the receiving terminal at the transmitting terminal, electronic information can be exchanged without hesitation at night. For this reason, for example, in the case of distributing an advertisement or the like, the advertisement can be distributed without feeling uncomfortable for the user.

<Other configurations>
In the present embodiment, the output control of the ring tone has been described, but the receiving terminal may be configured to control a predetermined operation when electronic information is received. For example, in the case of receiving electronic information including silent incoming call information, a receiving terminal having a function of starting vibration may be controlled so as not to start the vibration function in the same manner as the process related to the ringing tone. Is possible. Further, it may be controlled not to perform lamp display when electronic information is received. Alternatively, the ringtone may be output as a weak sound.

  In addition, for example, when electronic information including silent incoming call information is received, the receiving terminal may be configured to set whether to transfer the electronic information to a mail address addressed to the company. . In addition, when the receiving terminal has an alarm function and the setting is enabled, when electronic information including silent incoming call information is received, the alarm processing is executed by referring to the time information of the receiving terminal. A ring tone for notifying reception of the electronic information may be output after the set time. Alternatively, when electronic information including silent incoming call information is received, the alarm sound may be changed to notify the user that the electronic information has been received.

  In the other configurations described above, the receiving terminal that has received the electronic information including the silent incoming call information has been described. However, such processing need not necessarily be performed only by the silent incoming call information. That is, the transmission terminal may transmit dedicated information for performing processing of other configurations. For example, information called no-vibration information may be acquired instead of silent incoming information at the transmission terminal and transmitted to the reception terminal. A series of operations in this case can be performed in the same manner as the operation at the time of silent incoming call already described.

The figure which shows a prior art example and the outline | summary of embodiment Functional block diagram for explaining the embodiment The figure for demonstrating the silence incoming information of embodiment The figure explaining the flow of processing of an embodiment The figure for demonstrating the concrete structure aspect of embodiment.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 200 Electronic information system 210 Transmission terminal 211 Electronic information acquisition part 212 Electronic information transmission part 220 Reception terminal 221 Electronic information reception part 222 Ringing tone output part 223 Judgment part 224 Control part

Claims (4)

An electronic information system comprising a transmitting terminal and a receiving terminal,
The sending terminal
An electronic information acquisition unit for acquiring electronic information to be transmitted to the receiving terminal, including silent incoming information that is information for making a silent incoming call at the receiving terminal;
An electronic information transmitter that transmits the acquired electronic information to the receiving terminal;
Have
The receiving terminal
An electronic information receiver for receiving electronic information;
A ringtone output unit capable of outputting a ringtone in response to reception of electronic information;
A determination unit for determining whether the received electronic information includes silent incoming call information;
When it is determined that the silent incoming information is included in the determining unit, a control unit that controls the ringing tone output unit so as not to output a ringing tone that occurs when the electronic information is received;
An electronic information system.   The transmission terminal according to claim 1.   The receiving terminal according to claim 1. An operation method of an electronic information system comprising a transmission terminal and a reception terminal having a ringtone output unit capable of outputting a ringtone in response to reception of electronic information,
On the sending terminal,
Electronic information acquisition step for acquiring electronic information to be transmitted to the receiving terminal, including silent incoming information that is information for making a silent incoming call at the receiving terminal;
An electronic information transmission step of transmitting the acquired electronic information to the receiving terminal;
And execute
On the receiving terminal,
An electronic information receiving step for receiving electronic information;
A determination step for determining whether the received electronic information includes silent incoming call information;
A control step for controlling the ring tone output unit so as not to output the ring tone generated when the electronic information is received when it is determined that the silent incoming information is included in the determination step;
The operation method of the electronic information system to execute.

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