The present invention relates generally to the electronic transfer of information, and more particularly, to systems, methods and computer program products for user-selected calendar and task announcements.
Improvements to computer processing power and computer operating systems (e.g., Microsoft Windows) have led to the capability of personal computer users being able to keep more than one application program open at the same time. With the advent of high-speed Internet service, one of the applications that many persons find helpful to continue running while busy at other tasks on their desktops is their calendar application program. In some applications, when a meeting invitation arrives as an email, a “ping” tone is often heard to inform the user that a new message has arrived, but then the user must bring their email application up to determine the originator of the message, the subject matter, the import, and other attributes of the message. Not until the recipient has read the event or opened his email “in box” and examined the event does he know whether it was a wise decision to interrupt his other work for this message. Further, as multiple event messages come in throughout the day, it becomes inefficient to drop a task to examine the import of each event. Similarly, when a calendar and/or task event (“event”) become “due” or active, a “ping” tone can be heard, which alerts the user that the event has become “due” or active. Alternatively, several applications offer “pop-up” windows when an event or task becomes due. In all cases, the user must visually refer to the pop up text or the event/meeting/task text to discern the nature of the reminder. In addition, calendar applications can be shared in which several users on a network can be linked to a common calendar application and users can have distributed access to the tasks and events associated with the calendar application.
Techniques have been proposed for allowing a user to associate a particular audio file with a particular entry/person in an address book, which can be similarly linked to the broadcast of an event to another user or a group associated with the event or task. Thus, distinctive audio files may be used to inform the user of the presence of a new event and to indicate the nature and/or urgency of the event.
While this technique may be extremely useful in practice, recipient associated announcements are dictated from the recipient's point of view (e.g., a message from a particular source is always urgent). They may be general in nature and do not take into account the changing environment and situations facing senders.
The sender on the other hand has the timely knowledge of the many circumstances, content, context, necessity and urgency associated with an event and associated action and many other attributes of the events that might be conveyed with an event announcement. Thus, there is a need to take advantage of the sender's real time knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the composition of an event and the sender's ability to gauge the effect of a particular announcement on the recipient.