USER DEFINED NAMES FOR DISPLAYING MONITORED LOCATION

• US 20100004857A1
• Filed: 07/02/2008
• Published: 01/07/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/02/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Qualcomm, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Palm, Inc. (TCL Technology Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Chen, Larry, Pereira, Mindy, Hornyak, Matthew
• Granted Patent: US 9,140,552 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 701/209
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• 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 4/18 Information format or content conversion, e.g. adaptation by the network of the transmitted or received information for the purpose of wireless delivery to users or terminals
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 64/00 Locating users or terminals or network equipment for network management purposes, e.g. mobility management

Abstract

A user'"'"'s location may be tracked by tracking a device associated with the user. The user'"'"'s location may be published (e.g. on a website) using a user defined name or some other name that is not related to the coordinates of the location based on the tracked location of the device. If published to a website, the name may be uploaded to the website in a user-editable area of the website, which area may or may not be directed to tracking the location of the user. The device may also be configured to trigger reminders based on whether the device is leaving an area and/or based on whether the device is approaching a location based on the location'"'"'s membership in a class of locations (e.g. approaching a grocery store).

Claims

1. A method for providing a user-defined name to represent a current location of a user, the method comprising:

storing a user-defined name to be associated with a location along with data indicative of the association in memory;

receiving data indicative of a current location of the mobile computing device;

determining whether the current location of the mobile computing device is associated with the user-defined name; and

providing the user-defined name associated with the current location of the mobile device to a recipient that is not the mobile computing device as the location of the user of the mobile computing device based on the determination of whether the current location of the mobile computing device is associated with the user-defined name.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the user-defined name comprises providing the user-defined name to a server to be published on a web page.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising receiving data indicative of information that the user can use to access the web page, wherein providing the user-defined name comprises publishing the user-defined name using the data indicative of information that the user can use to access the web page.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the user-defined name comprises entering text of the user-defined name into a field provided by a web page for entering text.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the field is not a field dedicated to entering location information.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving data indicative of a user input, the data being representative of the user-defined name to be associated with the location that was entered on a user input device.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein receiving a user input representative of a user-defined name to be associated with a location comprises receiving contact information in a contacts application on the mobile computing device.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein storing a user-defined name to be associated with a location along with data indicative of the association in memory comprises storing a plurality of user-defined names to be associated with a single location.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising determining which of the plurality of user-defined names to provide to the recipient based on the intended recipient of the provided user-defined name.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising

storing a plurality of user-defined names associated with a plurality of locations in memory,

determining whether the current location of the mobile computing device indicated by the received data is associated with one of the plurality of user-defined names;

and

publishing the one of the plurality of user-defined names if the current location of the mobile computing device indicated by the received data is associated with the one of the plurality of user-defined names.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising publishing information indicative of the fact that the current location of the mobile computing device indicated by the received data is not associated with one of the plurality of user-defined names if the current location of the mobile computing device indicated by the received data is not associated with one of the plurality of user-defined names.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving data indicative of the current location of the mobile computing device comprises receiving the data indicative of the current location of the mobile computing device from a location determining circuit of the mobile computing device.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein determining whether the current location of the mobile computing device is associated with the user-defined name comprises determining whether the current location is in proximity to the location associated with the user-defined name in the memory.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein being in proximity to the location associated with the user-defined name requires that the current location be within a distance of the location, the distance not being more than two city blocks.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein storing a user-defined name to be associated with a location along with data indicative of the association in memory comprises storing a free-form user-defined name.

16. A method for publishing a generic name to represent the location of a user, the method comprising:

receiving data indicative of a user input on a user input device, the data being representative of a generic name to be associated with a location;

storing the generic name to be associated with the location along with data indicative of the association in memory;

receiving data indicative of a current location of the mobile computing device;

determining whether the current location of the mobile computing device is associated with the generic name; and

publishing the generic name associated with the current location of the mobile device as the location of the user of the mobile computing device based on the determination of whether the current location of the mobile computing device is associated with the generic name.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein receiving data indicative of the current location of the mobile computing device comprises receiving the data indicative of the current location of the mobile computing device from a positioning circuit of the mobile computing device.

18. A mobile computing device, comprising:

a location determining circuit configured to receive data indicative of the current location of the mobile computing device;

a memory; and

a processing circuit configured to receive data indicative of a user-defined name associated with a location, store the user-defined name associated with the location along with data indicative of the association in the memory;

receive data indicative of a current location of the mobile computing device from the location determining circuit;

determine whether the current location of the mobile computing device is associated with the user-defined name; and

publish the user-defined name associated with the current location of the mobile device as the location of the user of the mobile computing device based on the determination of whether the current location of the mobile computing device is associated with the user-defined name.

19. A mobile computing device, comprising:

a location determining circuit configured to receive data indicative of the current location of the mobile computing device;

memory configured to store access information usable to access a server that is configured to display information over a network; and

a processing circuit configured to receive data indicative of a current location of the mobile computing device from the location determining circuit, to access the server, and to provide data indicative of the current location of the mobile device as the location of the user of the mobile computing device, the user-defined name being published in a manner such that the server will display the user'"'"'s location in a display field that is not dedicated to displaying the location of the user.

21. The mobile computing device of claim 19, wherein the location associated with the task comprises an area bounded by a boundary and leaving the location is determined based on crossing the boundary.

20. A mobile computing device, comprising:

a location determining circuit configured to determine the current location of the mobile computing device; and

a processing circuit configured to implement an application having a task list function, the processing circuit being further configured to allow location to be associated with tasks of task list, to receive data indicative of a current location of the mobile computing device from the location determining circuit, and to provide reminders for a task based on the mobile computing device leaving a location associated with the task.

22. A system, comprising a processing circuit configured to implement an application having a task list function, the processing circuit being further configured to receive data indicative of a task, to analyze the data indicative of the task, and to find locations associated with the task based on the analysis.

23. The system of claim 22, wherein the processing circuit is further configured to receive data indicative of a current location of a mobile computing device from a location determining circuit and to provide reminders for a task based on the data indicative of the current location of the mobile computing device.

24. The system of claim 22, wherein the processing circuit being configured to analyze the data indicative of the task and to find locations associated with the task based on the analysis comprises the processing circuit being configured to analyze data indicative of the task that does not comprise location information and to find locations associated with the task based on the analysis of the data indicative of the task that does not comprise location information.

25. The system of claim 22, wherein the processing circuit being configured to analyze the data indicative of the task and to find locations associated with the task based on the analysis comprises the processing circuit being configured to analyze data indicative of the task that includes location information and to find additional locations associated with the task based on an analysis of the location information.

26. The system of claim 22, wherein the processing circuit is configured to find locations associated with the task based on the analysis and further based on user preferences input in the system.

27. The system of claim 22, wherein the processing circuit is configured to find locations associated with the task based on the analysis and further based on monitored activities of a user.

28. The system of claim 22, wherein the processing circuit being configured to find locations associated with the task comprises receiving data from a database remote from the processing circuit.

29. The system of claim 28, further comprising a network interface coupled to the processing circuit, the data from the database provided to the processing circuit using the network interface.

30. The system of claim 22, further comprising a mobile computing device, the mobile computing device comprising the processing circuit.

31. The system of claim 30, wherein the processing circuit is configured to pre-load location data related to tasks of the task application.

32. The system of claim 31, wherein the processing circuit is configured to pre-load location data based on route information.

33. The system of claim 22, further comprising a mobile computing device and a server, the server comprising the processing circuit and configured to communicate data related to the task application to the mobile computing device.

34. The system of claim 22, wherein the processing circuit is configured to provide a route based on location information associated with tasks of a task application.

35. The system of claim 22, wherein the task application comprises a set of tasks and the processing circuit is configured to provide a user with an option to route to a subset of the set of tasks, the subset comprising a plurality of tasks.