CONTACT INITIALIZATION BASED UPON AUTOMATIC PROFILE SHARING BETWEEN COMPUTING DEVICES

• US 20080123683A1
• Filed: 08/15/2006
• Published: 05/29/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 08/15/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: THOMAS, MATHEWS, CHENG, TSZ S., HASSELL, DANIEL
• Granted Patent: US 8,346,863 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 370/464
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 User profiles
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2203/655 Combination of telephone service and social networking
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/0036 where the data service is an information service
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 7/0063 where the network is a peer-to-peer network
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/10 Connection setup
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 8/205 Transfer to or from user equipment or user record carrier

Abstract

A method of initiating contact based upon automatically shared profile data can include a step of automatically and wirelessly exchanging profile information between at least two computing devices. A determination can be made as to whether a contact opportunity exists by comparing received profile information with a set of previously established contact rules. A notification of a contract opportunity can be automatically presented upon one of the computing devices, depending upon whether the profile information favorably, compares with the contact rules.

Claims

1. A method of initiating contact based upon automatically shared profile data comprising:

automatically wirelessly exchanging profile information between at least two computing devices;

automatically determining whether a contact opportunity exists by comparing received profile information with a set of previously established contact rules;

automatically presenting a notification upon at least one of the two computing devices of a contact opportunity, wherein presentation of the notification depends upon whether the profile information favorably compares with the contact rules.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising;

automatically establishing a wireless personal area network between said at least two devices, wherein the profile information is exchanged via the personal area network.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the wireless personal area network conforms to a BLUETOOTH specification.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the wireless personal area network is a virtual cooperative network created by at least three computing devices, wherein a range of the virtual cooperative network is greater than a range of a personal are network that either of said at least two computing devices are able to create without assistance of at least one additional computing device.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

providing a user-selectable option to establish a communication between the two computing devices; and

responsive to a user selection of the option, establishing a communication between the two computing devices.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the established communication is an interactive, bidirectional, real-time communication.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein separate transceivers of said at least two computing devices are used to establish a communication channel for exchanging the profile information and to establish a different communication channel for the communication of the establishing step.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the profile information and the contact rules are user configurable.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein said at least two computing devices are mobile computing devices.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein each of said at least two computing, devices is a device selected from a group of devices consisting of a mobile telephone, a personal data assistant, a wearable computer, a handheld media player, and a handheld entertainment device.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the two computing devices includes a profile handling agent, wherein said profile handling agent is a set of machine readable instructions, which causes the computing devices to perform the exchanging, determining and exchanging steps.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the steps of claim 1 are performed by at least one of a service agent and a computing device manipulated by the service agent, the steps being performed in response to a service request.

13. A machine-readable storage having stored thereon, a profile handling agent having a plurality of code sections, said profile handling agent comprising:

a broadcasting module configured to broadcast profile information over an automatically established wireless personal area network, wherein the profile information includes a set of user configurable, user-specific information, which is stored locally upon a mobile computing device within which the profiling handling agent executes; and

a receiver module configured to receive responses to the broadcasted profile information over the personal area network, wherein the mobile computing device automatically presents a notification whenever a received response indicates that a contact opportunity, exists, where the contact opportunity is based at least in part upon the profile information.

14. The machine-readable storage of claim 13, wherein the receiver module is further configured to receive profile information sent from a different computing device over the personal area network, said profile handling agent further comprising:

a contact rules module configured to compare received profile information against a set of previously established and user configurable contact rules, wherein when the contact rules indicate a favorable comparison, the mobile computing device sends an interpersonal contact request to a device that sent the received profile information.

15. The machine-readable storage of claim 13, said profile handling agent further comprising:

an administration module configured to manage a plurality of stored profiles for the mobile computing device and to selectively active different ones of the stored profiles depending on occurrences of a set of user configured conditions, wherein the broadcasted profile information is dependent upon which of the stored profiles are active.

16. The machine-readable storage of claim 13, said profile handling agent further comprising:

a security module configured to secure the profile agent against receiving malicious code and configured to prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing the broadcasted profile information.

17. A computing, device comprising:

a machine-readable storage having stored thereon, a profile handling, agent, wherein said profiling agent causes the computing device to automatically and wirelessly exchange profiling information with other computing devices, to automatically determining whether contact opportunities exist by comparing received profile information with a set of previously established contact rules, and to automatically present a notification of a contact opportunity based upon a response from a different give to profiling information conveyed from said device.

18. The computing device of claim 17, wherein the computing device is a mobile computing device selected from a group of devices consisting of a mobile telephone, a personal data assistant, a wearable computer, a handheld media player, and a handheld entertainment device.

19. The computing device of claim 17, further comprising:

a transceiver configured to establish a wireless personal area network over which the profiling information is conveyed over a peer-to-peer communication channel.

20. The computing device of claim 19, further comprising:

a different transceiver configured to establish an interactive, bidirectional, real-time communication with other computing devices, wherein said computing device configured to automatically establish the real-time communication with the different device based upon a user selectable option, which has been selected responsive to the notification.