SYSTEM AND METHODS FOR PROVIDING LOCATION INFORMATION USING LOCATION BASED QUEUES

• US 20100203903A1
• Filed: 02/09/2009
• Published: 08/12/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 02/09/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Ramanathan, Sri, Trevathan, Matthew B., Terry, Matthew A., DINGLER, John R., Nielsen, Mark D.
• Granted Patent: US 8,787,929 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/456.500
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/1104 Session initiation protocol [SIP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/02 Protecting privacy or anonymity, e.g. protecting personally identifiable information [PII]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/08 Access security
• 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 80/10 adapted for application session management, e.g. SIP [Session Initiation Protocol] connection management H04W76/00; arrangements for session management H04L67/14

Abstract

A location based service and method configured to provide a mechanism for delivering location to a subscribing user using a location queuing system. The method is implemented on a computing infrastructure and includes receiving one or more SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) messages with location information of a user. The method further includes publishing the location information to a location system queue with related timestamp information

Claims

1. A method implemented on a computing infrastructure comprising:

receiving one or more SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) messages with location information of a user; and

publishing the location information to a location system queue with related timestamp information.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more SIP messages are modified SIP messages.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the modified SIP messages include an abbreviation in a header to identify the SIP messages as including location information.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising polling location information at predefined intervals and time-stamping the location information in the location system queue.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising queuing the polled location information with the time stamp information and an address of the user.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising encrypting the location information.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising sending the encrypted location information to an authorized subscribing user with a key to decrypt the encrypted location information.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising determining that the key was previously sent to the authorized subscribing user.

9. The method of claim 6, further comprising receiving a key for the encryption.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining that an authorized subscribing user has permission to access the location information.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising sending the location information to a subscribing user using a modified “

to”

SIP message.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the location information is obtained from at least one of a GPS coordinate, A-GPS coordinate and triangulation methodologies and broadcast to a location queue service.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the steps are provided on a computing infrastructure which is at least one of maintained, deployed, created and supported by a service provider.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the steps are provided on a software component, a hardware component or a combination of the software component and the hardware component.

15. A computer program product comprising a computer usable storage medium having readable program code tangibly embodied in the storage medium, the computer program product being operable to:

receive broadcasted location information of a user at predefined intervals from a modified SIP message;

publish the location information to a queue with timestamp information and a user address; and

send the location information of various timestamp intervals to an authorized subscribing user in order to track the location of the user over a time period.

16. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the computer program product is further operable to encrypt the location information prior to sending to the authorized subscribing user.

17. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the modified SIP message includes an abbreviation that can be detected by the computer program product.

18. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the computer program product is further operable to encrypted the location information and determine that the authorized subscribing user has received a key to decrypt the location information.

19. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the computer program product is further operable to provide detailed information of the location information using a user interface.

20. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the computer program product is provided on a computing infrastructure which is at least one of maintained, deployed, created and supported by a service provider on a fee and/or subscription basis.

21. A method for providing location information to one or more users, comprising:

providing a computer infrastructure being operable to;

receive a modified SIP message with location information from a user at defined times;

queue the location information with time stamp information representative of the defined times;

determine that a subscribing user has permission to view the location information; and

send the location information to the subscribing user in order to display a route of the user over the defined times.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein the computer infrastructure is further operable to encrypt the location information prior to sending to the subscribing user and send a key to the subscribing user to decrypt the encrypted location information.

23. The method of claim 21, wherein the steps are provided on a software component, a hardware component or a combination of the software component and the hardware component.

24. The method of claim 21, wherein the computer infrastructure is further operable to generate detailed information of certain locations of the location information.

25. A system comprising:

a location platform configured to receive location information from a broadcasted modified SIP based message having location information therein, the location platform including;

a storage mechanism to store and publish the location information from a location queue; and

a policy server storing permission information of one or more subscribing users which can have access to the published location information.