COLLECTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF SENSE-ON-DEMAND DATA

• US 20110202626A1
• Filed: 09/15/2010
• Published: 08/18/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 04/21/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Alan Caplan, Keith D. Rosema
• Original Assignee: Alan Caplan, Keith D. Rosema
• Inventors: Caplan, Alan, Rosema, Keith D.
• Granted Patent: US 8,521,835 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/217
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9537 Spatial or temporal dependent retrieval, e.g. spatiotemporal queries

Abstract

A method and system for collecting and distributing sense-on-demand data is provided. The sense-on-demand data system uses a network of centralized computers and remote units. The centralized computers may be operated by or on behalf of the operator of the sense-on-demand data system, and the remote units may be operated by users of the network. The remote units may consist of a variety of mobile and fixed-location devices, such as cellular telephones, personal data assistants, laptop computers, desktop computers, and stand-alone data sensor units. The system receives requests for information, identifies remote units that are proximate to the location, forwards the requests to the identified remote units, receives responses from the remote units, and provides responses to the requester.

Claims

1. A method in a computing system for collecting information, the method comprising:

receiving a request for information from a requester;

identifying responding remote devices capable of providing the requested information;

sending the request to the identified remote devices;

receiving a response from an identified remote device, the response including information collected by the remote device after receiving the request; and

sending the information of the received response to the requester as a response to the request.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein a remote device is a mobile device of a user.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the mobile device collects the requested information from the user of the mobile device.

4. The method of claim 3 including generating a rating of users indicating quality of the information collected from the users.

5. The method of claim 2 wherein the request relates to a geographic area from which the information is to be collected.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein remote device is a proxy server that provides a connection other remote device.

7. The method of claim 1 including archiving responses to requests and when a request is received, identifying archived responses to the request and sending an identified archived response to the requester.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein an archived response is sent to the requester before responses are received from the remote devices.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein a request has an associated time-in-force and wherein requests are sent to responding remote devices until the time-in-force has expired.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein a remote device is at a fixed location.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein the remote device at a fixed location automatically collects information using sensors connected to the remote device.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the received request has an associated start time and the request is sent to the identified remote devices after the start time has passed.

13. The method of claim 1 wherein the requester indicates a price that the requester is willing to pay for the requested information and remote devices are identified based on price for which the remote device will provide the collected information.

14. The method of claim 1 including assigning a system-wide address to each remote device, the system-wide address of a remote device being mapped to a local address of the remote device.

15. The method of claim 1 wherein the identifying includes ranking the remote devices based on an attribute selected from the group consisting of location of the remote device, authorization of the remote device, third-party ranking of the remote device, sensing type of the remote device, and time since last request was sent to the remote device.

16. The method of claim 1 wherein a request for information is received in response to the requester selecting a link on a web page of a third party.

17. A method in a computing system for collecting information, the method comprising:

receiving a request for information from a requester, the request relating to a geographic location;

identifying potential responders based on proximity to the geographic location of the request;

sending the request for the information to the identified responders;

receiving a response from an identified responder, the response including the requested information; and

sending to the requester a response with the requested information received from an identified responder.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein the requests are sent to mobile devices of the identified responders.

19. The method of claim 18 wherein the requested information is collected from a user of a mobile device after the request is received by the mobile device.

20. The method of claim 18 wherein the requester submits the request without knowing whether any mobile devices are proximate to the geographic location.

21-39. -39. (canceled)