Event notification and organization utilizing a communication network

• US 8,428,561 B1
• Filed: 03/27/2009
• Issued: 04/23/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 03/27/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: T-Mobile USA, Inc. (Deutsche Telekom AG)
• Original Assignee: T-Mobile USA, Inc. (Deutsche Telekom AG)
• Inventors: Vance, Michael Steffen, Benson, Jared T., Robertson, Christian, Shah, Shilpa R., White, Gabriel J., Phillips-Hamblett, Natalie, Temple, Sinclair M., Giardini, Anthony, Panchal, Prarthana H., Chou, Joyce
• Primary Examiner(s): Karikari, Kwasi
• Application Number:
  US12/413,438
• Time in Patent Office: 1,488 Days
• Field of Search: 455/412.2, 455/412.1, 455/456.1, 455/514, 455/519, 455/518
• US Class Current: 455/412.2
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72451 according to schedules, e.g. using calendar applications
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72457 according to geographic location
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/21 for social networking applications

Abstract

A user of a telecommunications or other computing device may notify his or her contacts of an event of interest, which event may be modified by the user'"'"'s contacts without requiring the permission of the originating user to do so. In this regard, an event organizing service receives an event notification request from a user of a telecommunications device (e.g., a mobile telephone), automatically identifies the user'"'"'s contacts to whom the event notification is to be published, and publishes the event notification to the automatically identified contacts. A contact who receives the event notification may update the event, e.g., by modifying data describing the event, without the permission of the originating user. Accordingly, a contact who has received the event notification may modify the event (e.g., change the date/time, change the location, etc.) and the event organizing service may publish a notification for the updated event to the originating user and his or her contacts informing them of the modification. It will be appreciated that as updates to the event are made by the user'"'"'s contacts (and in some cases the user herself), the event is ultimately organized by the user'"'"'s social network or community without requiring the user to organize the details of or manage the event herself.

Claims

1. A system for notifying contacts of events, the system comprising:

a data store that stores event records, each event record describing an event; and

a computing device in communication with the data store, the computing device operative to;

obtain an event request from a mobile computing device, the event request including data describing an event of interest to a user of the mobile device and of possible interest to contacts of the user;

without requiring action by the user, automatically identify contacts of the user to whom a notification of the event is to be published, wherein at least one of the contacts is automatically identified based at least in part on a frequency of communication with the user;

generate an event record based on the event request obtained from the mobile computing device, the event record including the data describing the event of interest;

receive a modification to the data describing the event of interest from at least one of the automatically identified contacts, wherein the at least one of the automatically identified contacts has not been granted organizer rights for the event;

modify the data describing the event of interest in response to the modification without permission from anyone who has been granted organizer rights;

store the event record in the data store; and

publish a notification of the event described in the event record to a plurality of computing devices, each computing device associated with each of the automatically identified contacts of the user.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the computing device is further operative to obtain location data for the event.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the location data for the event is based upon a location of at least one of the event, the user and a contact of the user.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the computing device is further operative to obtain and store supplemental data in the event record.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the notification of the event is published as at least one of an electronic message, a voice message or a user interface display.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the computing device automatically identifies the contacts of the user to whom a notification of the event is to be published from a set of contacts.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the contacts of the user are automatically identified further based at least in part on at least one of a type of the event, a location of the event, time of the event, input of the user, location of the user, and location of at least one contact.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein the contacts are obtained from at least one of the mobile device of the user, the computing device in communication with the data store, and another computing device.

9. A method for notifying a user'"'"'s contacts of an event of interest to the user, the method comprising:

as implemented by one or more computing devices configured with specific executable instructions,

without requiring action by the user, automatically identifying the user'"'"'s contacts to be notified of the event, wherein at least one of the contacts is automatically identified based at least in part on a frequency of communication with the user;

generating an event record including data describing the event of interest, which data is freely modified without an organizer'"'"'s authorization and by request from at least one automatically identified contact to whom organizer rights for the event of interest have not been granted; and

publishing an event notification for the event described in the event record to a plurality of computing devices, each of the computing devices associated with an automatically identified contact.

10. The method of claim 9 further comprising obtaining location data for the event.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the location data is based on at least one of a location of the event, a location of the user and a location of the contact of the user.

12. The method of claim 10 further comprising estimating a time of arrival to the event for the user based on the location data.

13. The method of claim 10 further comprising estimating a time of arrival to the event for at least one of the automatically identified contacts to whom the event notification was published based on the location data.

14. The method of claim 10, wherein the location data is used to automatically identify the user'"'"'s contacts to be notified of the event.

15. The method of claim 9, wherein the event notification comprises at least one of a descriptor of the event, location of the event, time of the event, message regarding the event and contact information for the event.

16. The method of claim 9, wherein the user'"'"'s contacts are automatically identified from a set of contacts maintained by at least one of a telecommunication service, a social network service and a message publication service.

17. The method of claim 9, wherein the user'"'"'s contacts are automatically identified further based at least in part on at least one of a type of the event, location of the event, time of the event, input of the user, location of the user, and location of at least one contact.

18. A system for notifying contacts of an event of possible interest, the system comprising:

a data store that stores event records, each event record describing an event; and

a computing device in communication with the data store, the computing device operative to;

automatically identify contacts to whom a notification of an event of possible interest to the contacts is to be provided, wherein at least one of the contacts is automatically identified based at least in part on a frequency of communication with a user of the computing device;

generate an event record including data describing the event of possible interest;

receive a modification to the data describing the event of interest from at least one automatically identified contact who has received the notification but who has not been provided organizer rights for the event;

modify the data describing the event of interest in response to the modification without action by anyone who has been provided organizer rights for the event; and

publish a notification of the event described in the event record to at least one computing device, the at least one computing device associated with an automatically identified contact.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the computing device is further operative to obtain data describing the event of possible interest from at least one originating computing device.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein the originating computing device is a mobile computing device.

21. The system of claim 18, wherein the computing device is further operative to automatically obtain location data for the event.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the location data for the event is based upon a location of at least one of the event, a location of the originating computing device and a location of the at least one computing device to which the notification is published.

23. The system of claim 22, wherein the computing device is further operative to generate an estimate of a time of arrival to the event based on the location data.

24. The system of claim 18, wherein the computing device is further operative to store supplemental data in the event record.

25. The system of claim 18, wherein the notification of the event is published as at least one of an electronic message, a voice message or a user interface display.

26. The system of claim 18, wherein the contacts of the user are automatically identified further based at least in part on at least one of a type of the event, location of the event, time of the event, location of the originating device, and location of the at least one computing device to which the notification is published.

27. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having a computer-executable component for publishing to contacts of a user, a notification of an event of interest the user, the computer-executable component comprising:

an event organizing component operative to;

without requiring input from the user, automatically identify contacts to whom the notification of the event of interest to the user is to be published, wherein at least one of the contacts is automatically identified based at least in part on a frequency of communication with the user;

generate an event record including data describing the event of interest, which data is modifiable by the automatically identified contacts who have received the notification of the event of interest, wherein the data is modifiable without granting organizer rights for the event to the user or the automatically identified contacts; and

publish a notification of the event described in the event record to a plurality of computing devices, each computing device associated with an automatically identified contact.

28. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 27, wherein the event organizing component is further operative to obtain data describing the event of possible interest from a computing device associated with the user.

29. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 28, wherein the computing device associated with the user is a mobile computing device.

30. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 27, wherein the event organizing component is further operative to obtain location data for at least one of the event, the user and at least one automatically identified contact.

31. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 30, wherein the event organizing component is further operative to automatically identify contacts to whom the notification of the event of interest to the user is to be published further based at least in part on the location data.

32. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 27, wherein the event organizing component is further operative to generate an estimate of a time of arrival to the event based on the location data.

33. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 27, wherein the notification of the event is published as at least one of an electronic message, a voice message or a user interface display.

34. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 27, wherein the event record includes at least one of a descriptor of the event, location of the event, time of the event, and message regarding the event.

35. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 27, wherein the notification of the event includes a locator to a resource from which a computing device associated with an automatically identified contact may retrieve data describing the event of interest.