Patent ID: 6934767

Claim:
A method of operating a server machine to expand input strings of characters received from client machines that include character input devices, comprising: storing, in a location accessible to said server machine, one or more mappings between abbreviated substrings and expanded substrings; receiving, at the server machine, a request to perform a server action including at least one of an email operation, a chat operation, and a calendar operation; receiving, at the server machine, an unexpanded input string of characters associated with said request from a client machine that includes a character input device, the unexpanded input string including at least one abbreviated substring, each preceded and followed in the unexpanded input string by word delimiters, each abbreviated substring belonging to a set of abbreviated substrings in an applicable mapping of said one or more mappings; automatically finding one of the abbreviated substrings based on the preceding and following word delimiters; determining a current time; determining, based on said applicable mapping and said current time, that the abbreviated substring corresponds to a particular expanded substring of a plurality of substrings by expanding said abbreviated substring to an intermediate expanded substring without regard to said current time and expanding said intermediate expanded substring to said particular expanded substring based on said current time; producing an expanded input string that is a version of the unexpanded input string with the abbreviated substring replaced by said particular expanded substring; and performing said server action including incorporating said expanded input string into display data associated with said at least one of an email operation, a chat operation, and a calendar operation.