Method and apparatus for dynamically presenting content using an interface for setting conditional network destinations

• US 10,305,997 B2
• Filed: 11/17/2017
• Issued: 05/28/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 03/03/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Life in Mobile Innovations, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Life in Mobile Innovations, Inc.
• Inventors: Lim, John W., Packes, John M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Hess, Daniel A
• Application Number:
  US15/815,901
• Publication Number:
  US 20180139290A1
• Time in Patent Office: 557 Days
• Field of Search: 235375
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9554 by using bar codes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9558 Details of hyperlinks; Management of linked annotations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0207 Discounts or incentives, e.g. coupons or rebates
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0277 Online advertisement
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/222 using geographical location information, e.g. messages transmitted or received in proximity of a certain spot or area
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 61/10 of different types
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/563 Data redirection of data network streams
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/021 Services related to particular areas, e.g. point of interest [POI] services, venue services or geofences
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/029 Location-based management or tracking services
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/14 Short messaging services, e.g. short message services [SMS] or unstructured supplementary service data [USSD]

Abstract

QR codes or the like are used in hardlink applications, by which different users may receive different information in response to a user'"'"'s interaction with a touchpoint. The content delivered to a particular user in response to a hardlink code or a presented hyperlink may be dependent on the time of the scan, the geographic location of the user, a weather condition at the geographical location, personal information associated with the user, a number of previous scans of the code by prior individuals, and any combination of the these or other variables, which may be determined by an originator of the QR code or other party. User devices may be re-directed to alternate content or network addresses based on one or more programmed conditions.

Claims

1. A method performed by a computer server system in communication with remote computing devices over a communication network, comprising:

establishing a re-direction web site on the communication network for receiving incoming web traffic and conditionally re-directing the web traffic,

establishing a graphical user interface at the re-direction web site for receiving selections of programmed conditions and a plurality of destination network addresses;

storing, in an electronic memory, a first network addresses and a second network address in a computer-readable format received from the graphical user interface;

storing, in the electronic memory, a first condition for re-directing incoming web traffic to the first network address, the first condition based on first geographic locations, first times at the geographic locations, and weather conditions at the first geographic locations, which are determined in response to indications received from devices of users over the communication network;

storing, in the electronic memory, a second condition for re-directing incoming web traffic to the second network address, the second condition based on second geographic locations, second times at the geographic locations, and weather conditions at the second geographic locations, which are determined in response to indications received from devices of users over the communication network;

receiving, at the re-direction web site from a user device of a user, an indication of a interaction with a touchpoint that has been presented to the user and that directs a browser of the user device to the re-direction web site;

in response to receiving the interaction, determining a geographic location of the user, a time at the geographic location of the user, and a weather condition at the geographic location of the user;

re-directing the user device to the first network address when the first condition has been met; and

when the first condition has not been met, re-directing the user device to the second network address when the second condition has been met.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the user device comprises a global positioning system (GPS) interface for determining the geographic location of the user, and the user device transmits the geographic location of the user with the indication.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the user device comprises a camera, including at least one of a still camera and a video camera, for imaging the touchpoint, and further comprises software instructions for decoding the touchpoint after said imaging.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the touchpoint comprises at least one of:

a one-dimensional barcode, a two-dimensional barcode, a quick response (QR) code, a dataform, a dataglyph, alphanumeric text, a photographic image, a symbology, a hardlink code, a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), an input to a search engine, a visit to a social media site, a product packaging, a visual print media, audio data, visual data, and audio-visual data.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the communications network comprises at least one of:

a data communications network, a computer network, a cellular telephone network, a cellular data network and a wireless network.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the interaction comprises a transmission of an alphanumeric character string by Short Message Service (SMS) from the user device to an SMS address that is visually displayed to the user at the geographic location.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the weather condition at the first and second geographical locations is determined by referencing a weather site on the computer network.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one of the first condition and the second condition further includes at least one real-time data variable that can be automatically verified by a data query on the data communication network.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the user device comprises at least one of:

a smartphone and a computing device.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

storing, in the electronic memory, a third network address and a third condition for re-directing incoming web traffic to the third network address; and

re-directing the user device to the third network address when the first condition and the second condition are not met, and the third condition is met.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the third condition requires only that the first condition and the second condition are not met.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the third condition comprises at least one of:

a geographic location of the user device, the time of day at the geographic location of the user device, a weather condition at the geographic location, a device type of the user device, a radial distance of the user device from a second geographic location, a future or forecasted weather condition at the geographic location, a historical weather condition at the geographic location, a individual weather variable at the geographic location, an outcome of a pseudo-random number generator, a referral status of the user device, a returning visitor status of the user device, a frequency of touchpoint interaction by the user device, a history of touchpoint interactions by the user device, a social media activity of the user, a social media trending topic, a keyword search entered into a search engine by the user, a level of inventory of a product, a score of a sports game, and a value of a stock market ticker.