Method of Automatically Building a Customised Software Application for a Specific Type of Wireless Computing Device

• US 20080222621A1
• Filed: 12/06/2005
• Published: 09/11/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/06/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Lemon, Inc. (Gen Digital Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Omnifone Ltd.
• Inventors: Lewis, Robert John, Lamb, Michael Ian, Sullivan, Mark Peter, Sant, Philip Anthony, Pocock, Stephen William, Knight, Mark Stephen
• Granted Patent: US 8,621,423 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/151
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/71 Version control security arrangements therefor G06F21/57; Configuration management

Abstract

A customised software application can be built for a specific type of Wireless Computing Device by (a) automatically determining attributes of that type of Wireless Computing Device; (b) automatically determining which Software Components from a library of Software Components are compatible with that type of Wireless Computing Device based on values of the attributes determined in (a); and (c) automatically combining the compatible Software Components together to generate a customised build of the application, compatible for that type of Wireless Computing Device. The attributes can be metadata. This approach enables rich Network Applications to be automatically built for Wireless Computing Devices of a wide variety of types.

Claims

1. A method of automatically building a customised software application for a specific type of Wireless Computing Device, the method comprising the steps of:

(a) automatically determining attributes of that type of Wireless Computing Device;

(b) automatically determining which Software Components from a library of Software Components are compatible with that type of Wireless Computing Device based on values of the attributes determined in (a);

(c) automatically combining the compatible Software Components together to generate a customised build of the application, compatible for that type of Wireless Computing Device.

2. The method of claim 1 in which the attributes of the Software Components are also determined and the step of determining which Software Components are compatible includes the step of comparing the values of the attributes of that type of Wireless Computing Device to the values of the attributes of the Software Components.

3. The method of claim 1 in which attributes for that type of Wireless Computing Device are defined as Metadata.

4. The method of claim 1 in which the attributes for different types of Wireless Computing Device are also defined as Metadata.

5. The method of claim 4 in which the method includes the further step of determining attributes of a Wireless Network, to which the device is connected, as Metadata.

6. The method of claim 5 in which the method includes the further step of determining attributes of combinations of different Wireless Networks and different types of Wireless Computing Devices as Metadata.

7. The method of preceding claim 3 in which the metadata attributes for different types of Wireless Computing Device define one or more of:

device identification;

market information;

network configuration;

physical characteristics;

network configuration;

media/content capabilities;

HTTP connection;

SMS communications;

Java APIs and libraries;

Java application security;

user interface capabilities;

user assistance properties.

8. The method of claim 5 in which the metadata attributes for the Wireless Network include one or more of the following:

identification;

openness;

SMS system reliability;

parent operator ID;

contract types offered;

data connectivity offered;

customer contact details;

typical network names.

9. The method of claim 1 in which the Software Components in the library are restricted in functionality so that appropriate components can be matched to any variant of any attribute of that type of Wireless Computing Device or Wireless Network to which that type of device can be connected or combination of the two.

10. The method of claim 1 in which each software component is referenced by Metadata describing the instances and conditions in which the component should be used as part of the customised build of the application.

11. The method of claim 10 including the step of automatically determining which Software Components are compatible with that type of Wireless Computing Device is achieved by automatically matching the Metadata of the Wireless Computing Device with the Metadata referencing each software component.

13. The method of claim 1 comprising the step of configuring the compatible Software Components depending on the Wireless Computing Device attributes.

14. The method of claim 1 in which the compatible Software Components in the library are compiled into the customised version of the software application.

15. The method of claim 14 in which further applications for that type of Wireless Computing Device can be customised for that specific type of Wireless Computing Device by using additional Metadata and mark-up syntax representing a new or different application and generating a new application for that Wireless Computing Device.

16. The method of claim 3 in which the Metadata attributes for that type of Wireless Computing Device are determined automatically by a test application downloaded to an example of that type of Mobile Telephone.

17. The method of claim 16 in which the Metadata attributes for that type of Wireless Computing Device are further determined by manual testing

18. The method of claim 17 in which the Metadata attributes for the application generated for that type of Wireless Computing Device can be manually tested and tuned for that type of Wireless Computing Device.

19. The method of claim 1 in which the resultant customised build of the application is an application execution platform with an embedded application to run on the platform.

20. The method of claim 19 in which the application execution platform is combined with the definition of an application to result in an end-user application.

21. The method of claim 20 in which the end user application is defined in Metadata mark-up language.

22. The method of claim 21 in which the end user application can include executable software.

23. The method of claim 1 in which the specific type of the Wireless Computing Device is a function of the manufacturer, model and firmware deployed on that type of telephone.

24. The method of claim 23 in which the specific type of the Wireless Computing Device is a function also of the Mobile Network to which a given Wireless Computing Device is connected.

25. The method of claim 1 in which the customised applications are Network Applications selected from the group:

mobile content portal (carrying editorial, news, ringtones, wallpapers and other types of Mobile Content), gambling, dating, banking, location based services, directories, gaming, chatting, peer-to-peer applications.

26. A method of building an application delivery platform, in which the platform is adapted to be able to build a customised software application by performing the method of claim 1, in which the platform is built by:

(a) building a library of Software Components associated with the application;

(b) building a library of attributes of different Wireless Computing Devices;

(c) providing the platform with a means to determine attributes of a given type of Wireless Computing Device;

(d) providing the platform with a means to automatically compare those attributes with the attributes of Software Components forming the library of Software Components associated with the application;

(e) providing the platform with a means to automatically determine which Software Components are compatible with that type of Wireless Computing Device;

(f) providing the platform with a means to combine the compatible Software Components together to provide a customised build of the application, suitable for that type of Wireless Computing Device.

27. A software application built using the method of claim 1.

28. A method of downloading content to a Wireless Computing Device, the method comprising the step of using the software application defined in claim 27 to download content.

29. A method of deploying an application to a Wireless Computing Device, comprising the steps of:

(a) the Wireless Computing Device connecting to a Server;

(b) the Server establishing the appropriate Software Components that are compatible with that Wireless Computing Device so that an application, suitably customised for that Wireless Computing Device and obtained using the method defined at claim 1 above, is provided to the Wireless Computing Device;

(c) installing that customised application onto the Wireless Computing Device.

30. A Wireless Computing Device when running an application that has been deployed to it using the method of claim 29.

31. A Server programmed to deploy an application to a Wireless Computing Device using the method of claim 29.

12. The method of claim 12 in which automatically determining which Software Components are compatible with that type of Wireless Computing Device is achieved by matching the Metadata of the Wireless Network attributes with the Metadata referencing each software component.