Patent ID: 9497308
Filing Date: 2016-11-15
CPC Classification: H04L,H04M,H04W

Claim Text:
1. A method of managing messages, the method comprising: providing a communications software program to a computing device associated with a user, wherein the communications software program, installed on the computing device associated with the user, is configured as a first destination address, and wherein a mobile phone associated with the user is associated with a destination phone address, and wherein the first destination address is different than the destination phone address; enabling a Short Message Service (SMS) message from a sender's mobile phone originally addressed to the destination phone address associated with the mobile phone of the user to be mirrored to the communications software program configured as the first destination address, installed on the computing device associated with the user; receiving via an Internet Protocol connection, by the communications software program, the mirrored SMS message from the sender's mobile phone in association with a phone address of the sender's mobile phone, wherein the received mirrored SMS message is originally addressed to the destination phone address associated with the mobile phone of the user; enabling the user, via a user interface of the communications software program, to view the received mirrored SMS message on the computing device associated with the user and to create a contact record from the received mirrored SMS message, the contact record including at least the phone address of the sender's mobile phone; enabling the user, via the user interface of the communications software program, to create a reply Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) message corresponding to the received mirrored SMS message, wherein the reply message is addressed to the phone address of the sender's mobile phone; wherein the reply message comprises an audio message or a photo; initiating transmission of the MMS reply message corresponding to the received mirrored SMS message to a Multimedia Message Service Center (MMSC); and synchronizing the created contact record with a plurality of instances of the communications software program associated with a respective plurality of computing devices of the user.