Contact management system having wireless telephone interface capability

Abstract

A contact management system having wireless telephone interface capability for managing contact information and the contents of a wireless telephone's phone book memory. The contact management system comprises, according to a preferred embodiment, a computer system communicatively connectable to wireless telephone, and a contact management software application operating on the computer system. The contact management system enables the collection and maintenance of information pertaining to a plurality of contacts, including voice telephone numbers of the contacts. The contact management system also enables selection and grouping of user-identified voice telephone numbers into fone lists which are independently selectable and downloadable to a wireless telephone via a communication interface which is capable of choosing an appropriate device driver which is compatible with the wireless telephone. During the creation of the fone lists, the contact management system generates abbreviated forms of contact names (i.e., short names) associated with voice telephone numbers included in the fone lists. In doing so, the system utilizes the memory limitations of the wireless telephone (i.e., as uploaded from the wireless telephone) to determine the maximum number of characters includeable in the short names. The system also utilizes the memory limitations to determine the maximum number of characters includeable in the telephone numbers and the maximum number of entries includeable in a fone list. Additionally, the system detects differences between current versions of voice telephone numbers maintained by the system and versions of voice telephone numbers previously downloaded to a wireless telephone by the system and alerts the user of the differences.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.