System and method for creating and managing geofeeds

• US 8,612,533 B1
• Filed: 03/07/2013
• Issued: 12/17/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 03/07/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Tai Technologies Inc. (Crisis24)
• Original Assignee: Geofeedr, Inc.
• Inventors: Harris, Philip B., Mitchell, Scott K., Mulroy, Michael J.
• Primary Examiner(s): JEAN GILLES, JUDE
• Application Number:
  US13/788,760
• Time in Patent Office: 285 Days
• Field of Search: 709/206, 709/217, 709/204, 709/207, 709/218
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/487 using geographical or spatial information, e.g. location
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/75 Media network packet handling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal

Abstract

The disclosure relates to systems and methods of burning, snapshotting, streaming and curating geofeeds, each geofeed including a plurality of geofeed content items that are aggregated from a plurality of content providers using respective requests formatted specifically for individual ones of the plurality of content providers, where each individual set of a plurality of content is relevant to one or more geographically definable locations. Archives of a geofeed may be generated by burning portions or all of the geofeed content items and/or generating snapshots of geofeeds at different times. A real-time geofeed may be streamed by continuously or periodically obtaining newly available geofeed content items and updated a geofeed stream in real-time. Collections of geofeed content items may be curated in order to organize and follow geofeed content items of interest.

Claims

1. A system for providing a geofeed stream, the system comprising:

one or more processors configured to execute one or more computer program modules, the one or more computer program modules comprising;

a geofeed streamer module configured to;

receive a request for a geofeed stream that includes real-time updates of geofeed content items that are relevant to one or more geographically definable locations and aggregated from a plurality of content providers based on requests formatted specifically for individual ones of the plurality of content providers;

obtain a first geofeed content item that is available at a first time, wherein the first geofeed content item is relevant to the one or more geographically definable locations and is aggregated from at least a first one of the plurality of content providers;

generate the geofeed stream that includes the first geofeed content item as at least part of the geofeed stream;

cause the geofeed stream to be communicated;

obtain a second geofeed content item that is available at a second time after the first time but unavailable at the first time, wherein the second geofeed content item is relevant to the one or more geographically definable locations and is aggregated from the first one of the plurality of content providers or a second one of the plurality of content providers; and

cause the second geofeed content item to be communicated such that the geofeed stream is updated with the second geofeed content item.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the second geofeed content items is aggregated from the second one of the plurality of content providers different from the first one of the plurality of content providers.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the geofeed streamer module is further configured to:

generate a first request formatted specifically for the first content provider, the request comprising a specification of the one or more geographically definable locations and a time since last refresh value, wherein the time since last refresh value specifies that content that was available before the time since last refresh value should not be provided; and

obtain the first geofeed content item from the first one of the plurality of content providers based on the first request.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the geofeed streamer module is further configured to:

generate a plurality of requests formatted specifically for individual ones of the plurality of content providers, each request comprising a specification of the one or more geographically definable locations;

aggregate a plurality of geofeed content items from the plurality of content providers based on the plurality of requests;

obtain a time since last refresh value, wherein the time since last refresh value specifies that content that was available before the time since last refresh value should not be included in the geofeed stream;

filter the plurality of geofeed content items based on the time since last refresh value; and

obtain the first geofeed content item based on the filtered plurality of geofeed content items.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the geofeed streamer module is further configured to:

set the first time to a time since last refresh value, wherein the time since last refresh value specifies that content that was available before the time since last refresh value should not be included in the geofeed stream;

obtain the second geofeed content item based on the time since last refresh value.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the geofeed streamer module is further configured to:

iteratively obtain additional geofeed content items at intervals from the plurality of content providers; and

cause the additional geofeed content items to be communicated to update the geofeed stream.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the geofeed streamer module is further configured to:

filter the additional geofeed content items based on geofeed stream preferences used to filter in or out content from the additional geofeed content items for inclusion in the geofeed stream.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the geofeed stream and the updated geofeed stream share at least one geofeed content item in common.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the geofeed stream and the updated geofeed stream include different geofeed content items.

10. A system of burning a geofeed, the system comprising:

one or more processors configured to execute one or more computer program modules, the one or more computer program modules comprising;

an archive module configured to;

receive a request to burn a geofeed, the geofeed comprising a plurality of geofeed content items that are relevant to one or more geographically definable locations and aggregated from a plurality of content providers based on requests formatted specifically for individual ones of the plurality of content providers;

obtain at least a first one of the plurality of geofeed content items, wherein the first geofeed content item that is relevant to the one or more geographically definable locations;

store one or more aspects of the first one of the plurality of geofeed content items in response to the request to burn the geofeed; and

cause the one or more aspects of the first one of the plurality of geofeed content items to be provided.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the one or more aspects comprise the first one of the plurality of geofeed content items or information that describes the first one of the plurality of geofeed content items.

12. The system of claim 10, wherein the one or more aspects comprises one or more links to other content included in the first one of the plurality of geofeed content items, the archive module further configured to:

parse the first one of the plurality of geofeed content items;

obtain the one or more links to other content based on the parse;

store the one or more links; and

cause the one or more links to be provided.

13. The system of claim 10, wherein the one or more aspects comprise raw content from a first one of the plurality of content providers that provided the first one of the plurality of geofeed content items.

14. The system of claim 10, wherein the archive module is further configured to:

obtain one or more burn parameters that specify the one or more aspects to be stored when the geofeed is burned; and

store the one or more aspects of the first one of the plurality of geofeed content items based on the one or more burn parameters.

15. The system of claim 10, wherein the archive module is further configured to:

receive a request to access at least a portion of the geofeed;

cause the one or more aspects of the first one of the plurality of geofeed content items to be provided based on the request for the geofeed.

16. The system of claim 10, wherein the archive module is further configured to:

receive a request to access at least a portion of a second geofeed that is related to a second one more geographically definable locations that is at least partially coextensive with the one or more geographically definable locations; and

cause the one or more aspects of the first one of the plurality of geofeed content items to be provided based on the request for the second geofeed.

17. A system of curating geofeed content into one or more collections, the system comprising:

one or more processors configured to execute computer program modules, the computer program modules comprising;

a curator module configured to;

receive a first collection identifier to be associated with a first geofeed content item of a first geofeed and a geofeed content item of the first geofeed, wherein the first geofeed includes a plurality of geofeed content items are relevant to one or more geographically definable locations and aggregated from a plurality of content providers based on requests formatted specifically for individual ones of the plurality of content providers;

store an association of the first collection identifier with the first geofeed content item and an association of the first collection identifier with the second geofeed content item;

receive a request for a first collection identified by the first collection identifier;

obtain the first geofeed content item and the second geofeed content item based on the request for the first collection; and

cause the first geofeed content item and the second geofeed content item to be provided based on the first collection identified by the first collection identifier.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the curator module is further configured to:

receive a second collection identifier to be associated with a third geofeed content item of the first geofeed;

store an association of the second collection identifier with the third geofeed content item;

receive a request for a second collection identified by the second collection identifier;

obtain the third geofeed content item based on the request for the second collection; and

cause the third geofeed content item to be provided based on the second collection identified by the second collection identifier.

19. The system of claim 17, wherein the curator module is further configured to:

receive the first collection identifier to be associated with a fourth geofeed content item of a second geofeed, wherein the second geofeed includes a plurality of geofeed content items are relevant to one or more second geographically definable locations that are different from the one or more geographically definable locations and aggregated from the plurality of content providers based on the requests formatted specifically for individual ones of the plurality of content providers;

store an association of the first collection identifier with the fourth geofeed content item of the second geofeed; and

further obtain the fourth geofeed content item; and

further cause the fourth geofeed content item to be provided based on the first collection identified by the first collection identifier.

20. The system of claim 17, wherein the curator module is further configured to:

obtain the first geofeed content item locally.

21. The system of claim 17, wherein the curator module is further configured to:

generate a request formatted specifically for a first one of the plurality of content providers that provided the first geofeed content item; and

obtain the first geofeed content item from the first one of the plurality of content providers.