Patent ID: 7421067

Claim:
A system for communicating a multimedia announcement from a calling party to a called party as part of a voice call therebetween, the system comprising: a calling party device operated by the calling party, a called party device operated by the called party, and a sewer operably coupled to said calling party device and to said called party device over a communication network therebetween; wherein said server includes or interfaces to at least one database for storing presence data and permissions data for a plurality of users, wherein presence data associated with a given user represents availability of the given user, wherein permissions data associated with a given user represents whether communication of multimedia announcements to the given user should be selectively allowed or blocked, and wherein presence data and permissions data for the called party is specified by communication from said called party device; wherein said calling party device includes first means for identifying the called party, second means for selecting a given multimedia announcement, third means for communicating with said server to determine serviceability of the called party based upon said presence data and said permissions data for the called party, and fourth means for selectively initiating communication of the given multimedia announcement from said calling party device to said called party device based upon serviceability of the called party as determined by said third means; and wherein said called party device includes means for receiving the given multimedia announcement and means for playing the given multimedia announcement in conjunction with a call made from said calling party device to said called party device over said communication network.