Patent 7624172 was granted and assigned to aol (company) on November, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A communications system including one or more alert gates and an alert controller. Each alert gate is configured to detect a different type of alert feed corresponding to a particular kind of alert. The alert controller is connected to the alert gates and operable to receive detected alerts from the alert gates and to deliver the detected alerts to a user of the communications system.