Patent ID: 7987236

Claim:
A method for enabling a recipient to control presentation of an audio identifier informing the recipient of an arrival of a digital communication from a sender in a communication session, the method comprising: receiving a first digital communication from a sender directed to a recipient; accessing, upon receipt of the first digital communication, a sender-designated first audio identifier that identifies the sender to the recipient or sender-related information that identifies the sender to the recipient; presenting, to the recipient and contemporaneous with receipt of the first digital communication, the first audio identifier or sender-related information; enabling the recipient to select, upon presentation of the first audio identifier or sender-related information, an option from a set of communication preference options for handling future communications received from the sender, the set of communication preference options including: (1) a first option selectable to accept a future digital communication from the sender and to enable use of the first audio identifier to inform the recipient of arrival of the future digital communication from the sender, and (2) a second option selectable to accept the future digital communication from the sender but to use a second audio identifier instead of the first audio identifier to inform the recipient of arrival of the future digital communication; storing a communication preference corresponding to the selected option in a data store; receiving, subsequent to receipt of the first digital communication, a second digital communication from the sender directed to the recipient; accessing, upon receipt of the second digital communication, the communication preference from the data store; enabling the recipient to perceive message contents of the second digital communication; conditioned on the accessed communication preference corresponding to the first option, enabling perception by the recipient of the first audio identifier prior to or concurrent with perception of the message contents of the second digital communication to inform the recipient of arrival of the second digital communication; and conditioned on the accessed communication preference corresponding to the second option, enabling perception by the recipient of the second audio identifier instead of the first audio identifier prior to or concurrent with perception of the message contents of the second digital communication to inform the recipient of arrival of the second digital communication.