Patent ID: 7433920

Claim:
In a system capable of real-time communication with one or more contacts at one or more other systems, a method of tracking real-time communication data, within a single contact tracking application that tracks real-time communication data for real-time communication using any of a plurality of diverse real-time communication providers and applications, the method comprising acts of: receiving, at a global real-time communication data store, real-time communication data from each of a plurality of diverse real-time communication applications corresponding to a plurality of diverse real-time communication providers; receiving, at the global real-time communication data store, e-mail communication data from each of a plurality of diverse e-mail communication providers; querying the global real-time communication data store for real-time and e-mail communication data corresponding to one or more contacts that are dynamically determined at the global real-time communication data store, based on one or more properties associated with the real-time or e-mail communication data, to be one or more recent contacts; and displaying the one or more recent contacts on a user interface generated by the contact tracking application such that an indication is displayed with at least one of the one or more recent contacts wherein the indication represents a number of unread e-mail messages and unread real-time communication notifications that have been received from the corresponding contact.