Patent ID: 7308088

Claim:
A method of automatically updating a database in a wireless portable communication device, wherein the database contains contact data that is associated with actual or potential communicants, comprising: initiating a message from a message originator to a message recipient under the control of the message originator; receiving at a message center coupled to a communications network both message originator information provided automatically by the communications network as the caller ID identifying the telephone number of the message originator, and a non-facsimile picture obtained from the message originator prior to transmitting the caller ID to a wireless portable communication device; causing the communications network to wirelessly transmit the caller ID and the picture from the message center to the wireless portable communication device; maintaining contact data in a database resident in a computer system, the contact data comprised of at least one of name, telephone number, address, sound or image information; transmitting updated and/or new contact data from the computer system to the wireless portable communication device using a radio frequency communication link, and; receiving the transmitted updated and/or new contact data in the wireless portable communication device and updating the database resident in the wireless portable communication device.