CENTRALIZED LOCATION BROKER

• US 20080299989A1
• Filed: 05/31/2007
• Published: 12/04/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/31/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: King, Simon P., Naaman, Mor, Nair, Rahul, Ahern, Shane, Coates, Tom, Willison, Simon, Hammond, Paul
• Granted Patent: US 8,045,995 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/456.1
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 5/02 using radio waves using satellite radio beacon systems for determining position G01S19/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72457 according to geographic location
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 2242/14 with services dependent on location
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/029 Location-based management or tracking services
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 64/00 Locating users or terminals or network equipment for network management purposes, e.g. mobility management

Abstract

A centralized location system includes a location update application programming interface (API) to receive varying types of location inputs for a user from at least one location-providing application. A memory stores a location of the user and the location inputs, wherein the location update API periodically updates in the memory the location inputs when location updates are received from the at least one location-providing application. A location export API, upon request from a location-based service application, processes the location inputs to estimate a location of the user, which location estimate replaces the stored location in memory and is sent to the location-based service application. A user interface enables the user to specify a location granularity for at least one of the at least one location-providing application and the location-based service application.

Claims

1. A centralized location system comprising:

a location update application programming interface (API) to receive varying types of location inputs for a user from at least one location-providing application;

a memory to store a location of the user and the location inputs, wherein the location update API periodically updates in the memory the location inputs when location updates are received from the at least one location-providing application;

a location export API to, upon request from a location-based service application, process the location inputs to estimate a location of the user, which location estimate replaces the stored location in memory and is sent to the location-based service application; and

a user interface to enable the user to specify a location granularity for at least one of the at least one location-providing application and the location-based service application.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the memory stores the location inputs from the at least one location-providing application according to the location granularity associated therewith as specified by the user, and wherein the location sent to the location-based service application is confined to the granularity as specified by the user.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one location-providing application comprises a device that supplies the location inputs including at least one of a global positioning satellite (GPS) latitude/longitude coordinate set, a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) cell tower identifier, and a Bluetooth identifier.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one location-providing application comprises an entity that supplies the location inputs including at least one of a user-specified identifier or location and an identifier provided by a third party location tracking application.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the location granularity comprises at least one of an address, a zip code, a city, a state, a country, and a latitude/longitude coordinate set.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the location-based service application comprises at least one of location-based alerts, location-based advertising, coupon distribution, and a service that uses the location of the user to provide focused content.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the processed location inputs from the at least one location-providing application comprises an extensible markup language (XML) structure including one or more of a street address, a zip code, a neighborhood, a city, a state, and a longitude/latitude coordinate set.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the one or more of the street address, the zip code, the neighborhood, the city, the state, and the longitude/latitude coordinate set are ordered in a hierarchy of containing locations.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the processed location inputs from the at least one location-providing application comprise an extensible markup language (XML) structure including a smallest definable bounding box according to the specified location granularity of the at least one location-providing application.

10. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

an authenticator to communicate with APIs and to register developers of location-providing, and location-based, service applications, wherein the developers are issued at least one of an application token and a secret so that the APIs recognize the location-providing, and location-based, service applications when they attempt to read or write the user location.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein location updates sent to a first location-based service application on a first user device causes the same location update to be sent to one of the first and a second location-based service application on a second user device by the first user device.

12. A method for centralizing management of user location for third party use with a centralized location system, comprising:

receiving from a user a location granularity for at least one location-providing application and for at least one location-based service application;

receiving location inputs from the at least one location-providing application;

storing the location inputs in a database according to the location granularity specified by the user for each location-providing application;

receiving a query from a location-based service application for the location of the user;

processing the location inputs together to formulate an estimate of the current location of the user; and

updating the location of the user in memory with the estimate of the current location.

13. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

sending the updated location of the user to the location-based service application in response to the query and in accordance with the location granularity specified by the user for the location-based service application.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the location granularity comprises at least one of an address, a zip code, a city, a state, a country, and a latitude/longitude coordinate set.

15. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

receiving a second query from a location-based service application before receiving any further location inputs from the at least one location-providing application; and

sending the location of the user stored in memory to the location-based service application in response to the second query and in accordance with the location granularity specified by the user for the location-based service application.

16. The method of claim 13, wherein the location-based service application comprises a first location-based service application, and sending a location update to the first location-based service application on a first user device causes the same location update to be sent to one of the first and a second location-based service application on a second user device by the first user device.

18. The method of claim 12, wherein the at least one location-providing application comprises a plurality of location-providing applications that supply varying types of location inputs, wherein processing the location inputs together comprises standardizing the varying types into a single format.

19. The method of claim 12, further comprising:

registering the at least one location-providing application and the at least one location-based service application for system access by providing to the applications an application token and a secret;

comparing a hashed encrypted version of the secret provided by an application attempting access with a hashed encrypted version thereof stored at registration; and

identifying the application attempting access upon finding a match of the hashed encrypted secret and verifying the application token.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the at least one location-providing application comprises a device that supplies the location inputs including at least one of a global positioning satellite (GPS) latitude/longitude coordinate set, a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) cell tower identifier, and a Bluetooth identifier.

21. The method of claim 19, wherein receiving location inputs from the at least one location-providing application comprises receiving from the user or an entity location inputs including at least one of a user-specified identifier or location and an identifier provided by a third party location tracking application.

22. The system of claim 12, wherein the at least one location-based service application comprises at least one of tagging media content, annotating data records, and use of presence indicators to track location continuously.

17. (canceled)

23. A method for centralizing management of user location for third party use with a centralized location system, comprising:

registering, by a location-based service application, for system access;

receiving at least one of an application token and a secret;

querying a location of a user from the system after registration, wherein the system identifies the location-based service application based on at least one of the received application token and a hashed encrypted version of the secret; and

receiving an updated location for the user according to a location granularity specified by the user for the location-based service application, wherein the updated location is estimated from processing location inputs for the user obtained from at least one location-providing application.

25. The method of claim 23, wherein the at least one location-providing application comprises an entity that supplies the location inputs including at least one of a user-specified identifier or location and an identifier provided by a third party location tracking application.

26. The method of claim 23, wherein the at least one location-based service application comprises at least one of location-based alerts, location-based advertising, coupon distribution, and a service that uses the location of the user to provide focused content.

27. The method of claim 23, wherein the at least one location-based service application comprises a first location-based service application, and receiving an updated location for the user comprises receiving the updated location from a second location-based service application on another device with which the first location-based service application is in communication.

24. (canceled)