Subscribing to mobile media sharing

• US 8,380,786 B2
• Filed: 09/21/2010
• Issued: 02/19/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 09/22/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Thwapr, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Thwapr, Inc.
• Inventors: Hoffert, Eric, Gutta, Vijay Bhaskar Reddy, Newsome, Richard Leigh, Lin, Chiamu May, Goldstein, Bruce M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Quang N
• Application Number:
  US12/887,422
• Publication Number:
  US 20110072114A1
• Time in Patent Office: 882 Days
• Field of Search: 709/203, 709/206, 709/217, 709/219, 709/231, 709/246
• US Class Current: 709/203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents

Abstract

A user is able to subscribe to an object by sending a mobile message or through a website. The object can be a file or a channel. The subscription message can use hierarchical mobile keywords. The user can adjust their registration information to control how much information is received from the subscription, when, and to what device the subscription is delivered.

Claims

1. A method of distributing information, comprising:

receiving, by a computer at a central facility from a subscriber, a request to subscribe to a channel, the request identifying an address associated with a recipient, the channel being an electronic folder for receiving content at respectively different times and being associated with a subscription list;

adding, by the computer at the central facility, the address of the subscriber to the subscription list associated with the channel;

at a first time, receiving, at the computer at the central facility, first content for the channel, the first content being at least one of a first media file, metadata relating to the first media file and text of a comment relating to the first media file;

sending, from the computer at the central facility to each of the addresses in the subscription list, a notice message that the first content is available;

receiving, at the computer at the central facility, a request for the first content from a destination device associated with one of the addresses in the subscription list;

obtaining, by the computer at the central facility, characteristics of the destination device from a third party server;

storing the characteristics of the destination device at the computer at the central facility;

configuring, by the computer at the central facility, the first content in accordance with the characteristics of the destination device;

sending, from the computer at the central facility to the destination device, the configured first content;

at a second time, receiving, at the computer at the central facility, second content for the channel, the second content being at least one of a second media file, metadata relating to the first or second media files and text of a comment relating to the first or second media files;

sending, from the computer at the central facility to each of the addresses in the subscription list, a notice message that the second content is available;

receiving, at the computer at the central facility, a request for the second content from the destination device;

retrieving, by the computer at the central facility, the stored characteristics of the destination device;

configuring, by the computer at the central facility, the second content in accordance with the characteristics of the destination device; and

sending, from the computer at the central facility to the destination device, the configured second content.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the request to subscribe is an SMS message having at least one keyword identifying the channel.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the request to subscribe is a send-to-phone message identifying a phone number of the destination device.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the send-to-phone message originates from one of (i) a website provided by the computer at the central facility, (ii) a third party website, and (iii) a mobile device.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising

receiving, from a source of the first content or from the destination device, a recipient address for the content;

sending, from the computer at the central facility to the recipient address, a notice message that the first content is available;

receiving, at the computer at the central facility, a request for the first content from a recipient device associated with the recipient address;

obtaining, by the computer at the central facility, characteristics of the recipient device from the third party server;

storing the characteristics of the recipient device at the computer at the central facility;

arranging, by the computer at the central facility, the first content in accordance with the characteristics of the recipient device; and

sending, from the computer at the central facility to the recipient device, the arranged first content.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the first content is in response to one of:

(i) an email attachment,

(ii) uploading from a website,

(iii) uploading from a source device,

(iv) an MMS message with embedded content,

(v) an audio signal generated in real-time, and

(vi) bulk uploading via mRSS.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the notice message is sent according to a notice method specified by the subscriber during a registration process.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the first content includes a media file, and further comprising

transcoding, by the computer at the central facility, the received media file to generate a set of pre-transcoded media files,

storing, at the central facility, the set of pre-transcoded media files, and wherein the sending of the configured first content sends one of the pre-transcoded media files.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the first content includes a media file, and configuring includes

transcoding, by the computer at the central facility, the media file based on the characteristics of the destination device to generate an on-demand transcoded media file, and wherein the sending of the configured first content sends the on-demand transcoded media file.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein

the first content includes a media file;

configuring includes preparing, by the computer at the central facility, a web page based on the characteristics of the destination device and a source of the media file, the source being one of an individual and an enterprise; and

the sending of the configured first content also sends the web page.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein obtaining characteristics of the destination device includes

sending, by the computer at the central facility, a request to a phone number server, the request including a phone number of the destination device, and

receiving, at the computer at the central facility from the phone number server, characteristics associated with the phone number.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the characteristics include at least one of (i) whether the phone number is valid, (ii) a carrier associated with the phone number, (iii) which of a mobile and a wireline service is associated with the phone number, and (iv) a country of the phone number.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising

receiving a device model from the destination device, and wherein obtaining characteristics of the destination device includes

providing, by the computer at the central facility, the device model to a look-up table server, and

receiving, at the computer at the central facility, the characteristics from the look-up table server.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the characteristics include at least one of (i) whether the device model supports streaming video, (ii) whether the device model supports file downloading, (iii) interaction ability of the device model with regard to touch screen, keypad and keyboard, (iv) supported multimedia format types, (v) video codecs in the device model, (vi) audio codecs in the device model, (vii) whether the device model can execute downloaded software, (viii) whether the device model supports Javascript, (ix) whether the device model supports email, and (x) whether the device model supports MMS messaging.

15. The method of claim 1, wherein

configuring includes adding an ad to the first content;

and

the sending of the configured first content also sends the ad.

16. The method of claim 1, further comprising generating, by the computer at the central facility, a display for the object showing device types that recently viewed the object, the device types selected from a non-keypad phone, a flip-type phone, a social network, a personal computer, a tablet computer, and a set-top box for Internet television.

17. The method of claim 1, further comprising generating, by the computer at the central facility, a display showing a matrix of comments associated with the object, at least one of the comments associated with an image, each comment occupying a cell in the matrix.

18. The method of claim 1, further comprising generating, by the computer at the central facility, a display showing a map indicating the geographical location of senders of media files sent to the recipient.

19. A method of distributing information, comprising:

receiving, by a computer at a central facility from a subscriber, a request to subscribe to a channel, the request identifying an address associated with a recipient, the channel being an electronic folder for receiving content at respectively different times and being associated with a subscription list;

adding, by the computer at the central facility, the address of the subscriber to the subscription list associated with the channel;

receiving, at the computer at the central facility, content for the channel, the content being at least one of a media file, metadata relating to the media file and text of a comment relating to the media file;

sending, from the computer at the central facility to each of the addresses in the subscription list, a notice message that the content is available;

receiving, at the computer at the central facility, a request for the content from a destination device associated with one of the addresses in the subscription list;

retrieving from a storage at the central facility, by the computer at the central facility, stored characteristics of the destination device, the stored characteristics having been obtained from a third party server in response to a previous request from the destination device;

configuring, by the computer at the central facility, the content in accordance with the characteristics of the destination device; and

sending, from the computer at the central facility to the destination device, the configured content.