US 7,543,243 B2
Identifying likely recipients of a message
Jordan Luther King Schwartz, Seattle, Wash. (US); Marc Adam Silbey, Seattle, Wash. (US); Ahsan Syed Kabir, Seattle, Wash. (US); Cees Van Dok, Bellevue, Wash. (US); Hilary Palmen, Redmond, Wash. (US); Gail Borod Giacobbe, Seattle, Wash. (US); Sandra Barnet, Seattle, Wash. (US); and Vivien Park, Seattle, Wash. (US)
Assigned to Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Wash. (US)
Filed on Jan. 15, 2003, as Appl. No. 10/342,652.
Prior Publication US 2004/0135816 A1, Jul. 15, 2004
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. G06F 3/00 (2006.01)
U.S. Cl. 715—811  [715/752; 715/711; 715/862] 29 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method in a computing environment for identifying a likely recipient of electronic mail (e-mail) message comprising:
maintaining a list of likely recipients based on the frequency the likely recipients have been messaged by a user, wherein:
(1) the list comprises the number of times each listed likely recipient has been messaged,
(2) the list contains a maximum number of recipients, and
(3) new recipients and older recipients are added to and deleted from the list, respectively, on a first in first out (FIBO) basis;
receiving an indication that a messaging system requires a recipient designation;
automatically displaying the list of likely recipients for the e-mail message, wherein the likely recipients are included in an address book associated with the messaging system;
prompting a user to add contact information of a non-address book recipient to the address book when the user previously addresses and sends e-mail messages to the non-address recipient two or more times, wherein the non-address book recipient is a second recipient designation that has not been included in the address book;
providing the ability to select one or more recipients from said list of likely recipients;
accepting a selected one or more recipient as targets for the e-mail message
determining that six or more recipients were targeted for the message; and
because six or more recipients were targeted for the message, refusing to adjust the indications in the list of frequently messaged recipients.