Place specific buddy list services
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
An information service provides search and notifications to inform when certain people (e.g., friends, family, business contacts, etc.) are nearby so as to facilitate communications with those people. Users may define lists of people whose locations may be tracked by positioning equipment based on personal communications/computing devices carried by the people. The information service processes this people and place data to identify those of the listed people that are in the user'"'"'s vicinity, and provide notifications and user-initiated search results informing the user such as via the user'"'"'s personal communications/computing device.
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Citations
44 Claims
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1-24. -24. (canceled)
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25. In a data communications network having a plurality of mobile personal information devices and at least one server computer, a method of providing a place-and-people based information service run on the at least one server computer to users operating the mobile personal information devices, comprising:
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defining for a user of the information service a list of people;
receiving reports of locations of the mobile personal information devices operated by the user and by the listed people;
determining based on the reported locations which of the listed people are within a specified proximity of the user, wherein the specified proximity is independent of geographic distance between the user and the listed people; and
transmitting information identifying which of the listed people are within the specified proximity of the user to the user'"'"'s mobile personal information device. - View Dependent Claims (26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33)
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34. A place-specific buddy list service system operated on server computers of a distributed data communications network for access from personal data communications computers, the system comprising:
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a database maintaining a people/place state for a user of the service, the people/place state enumerating at least one group of people also using the service and locations of such people;
a people location tracker operating responsive to reports of the location of the people to update the people/place state; and
an inference engine operating to process the people/place state to infer which of the people are in the user'"'"'s proximity, and to generate a notification for the user having information identifying the people inferred to be in the user'"'"'s proximity, wherein the inference engine infers which people are in the user'"'"'s proximity based at least in part on a place context of the user, the place context comprising;
the location of the user; and
information indicating a current task of the user. - View Dependent Claims (35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41)
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42. In a data communications network having a plurality of mobile personal information devices and at least one server computer, a method of providing a resource information service run on the at least one server computer to users operating the mobile personal information devices, comprising:
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defining for a user of the information service a list of resources;
receiving reports of locations of the listed resources and a mobile personal information device operated by the user;
determining based at least in part on the reported locations which of the listed resources are within a specified proximity of the user, wherein the determining is performed by an inference engine using a place context of the user; and
transmitting information identifying which of the listed resources are within the specified proximity of the user to the user'"'"'s mobile personal information device;
wherein the resources are resources other than people. - View Dependent Claims (43, 44)
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Specification