Event notification and organization utilizing a communication network

• US 8,676,626 B1
• Filed: 03/27/2009
• Issued: 03/18/2014
• 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
• Primary Examiner(s): Puente, Emerson
• Assistant Examiner(s): SWIFT, CHARLES M
• Application Number:
  US12/413,459
• Time in Patent Office: 1,817 Days
• Field of Search: 719/318, 715/751, 715/752, 715/753, 715/758, 715/759, 709/204, 705/7.18, 705/7.19
• US Class Current: 705/7.16
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/109 Time management, e.g. calendars, reminders, meetings or time accounting

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 organizing 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 associated with the mobile device and of possible interest to contacts of the user;

without requiring input by the user, automatically identify contacts of the user to whom a notification of the event is to be published;

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, which data is modifiable by contacts of the user who have not been granted organizer rights without permission from anyone who has been granted organizer rights;

publish a notification of the event described in the event record to one or more contact computing devices, each contact computing device associated with an automatically identified contact of the user;

obtain a modification to the data describing the event of interest from a computing device associated with at least one automatically identified contact who has not been granted organizer rights;

without requiring that the modification be proposed to anyone who has been provided organizer rights for the event, update the event record with the modification to the data; and

publish a notification of the event described in the updated event record to the mobile device associated with the user and to each of the one or more contact computing devices.

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 1, wherein the computing device is further operative to obtain supplemental data for the event from an external source.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the computing device automatically identifies the contacts of the user based 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.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the computing device obtains a plurality of modifications to the data describing the event of interest and updates the event record with each of the plurality of modifications in a chronological order in which the plurality of modifications are obtained.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the plurality of modifications are obtained from the mobile device associated with the user and a contact computing device associated with at least one automatically identified contact.

7. A method for organizing an event of interest to a contact, the method comprising:

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

obtaining a modification to data describing the event of interest from a computing device to which a notification for the event of interest has been published;

without requiring that the modification be proposed to an organizer of the event, updating an event record including data describing the event of interest with the modification to the data, wherein the event record is updated without obtaining either permission or organizer rights from the organizer of the event;

automatically identifying contacts to be notified of the updated event record; and

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

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the event notification is published as at least one of an electronic message, a voice message or a user interface display.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the event notification comprises at least one of a descriptor of the event, location of the event, time of the event, a message regarding the event and an estimated time of arrival to the event.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein the contacts are automatically identified from a set of contacts maintained by at least one of a telecommunications service, a social network service and a message publication service.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein a plurality of modifications to the data describing the event of interest are obtained.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the event record is updated with each of the plurality of modifications in an order in which the plurality of modifications are obtained.

13. The method of claim 11 further comprising providing an event history for the event of interest, the event history describing the plurality of modifications with which the event record has been updated.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the event history describes the plurality of modifications with which the event record has been updated in at least one of a chronological order in which the plurality of modifications were obtained and an order depending on a priority assigned to one or more modifications.

15. A system for organizing 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;

obtain modifications to data describing the event of interest from one or more computing devices to which an event notification for the event of interest has been published;

without requiring that the modifications be proposed to anyone who has been provided organizer rights for the event, update an event record including data describing the event of interest with the modifications to the data in an order in which the modifications are obtained, wherein the event record is updated without obtaining either permission or organizer rights from anyone who has been provided organizer rights for the event; and

generate one or more event update notifications for publication to the one or more computing devices to which the event notification has been published as the event record is updated with the modifications, each of the computing devices associated with a contact who may be interested in the event.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein at least one of the one or more computing devices from which the modifications to data describing the event of interest are obtained is a mobile computing device.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the event update notification is published as at least one of an electronic message, a voice message or a user interface display.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the computing device is further operative to automatically identify one or more contacts who may be interested in the event.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the contacts are automatically identified from a set of contacts maintained by at least one of a telecommunications service, a social network service and a message publication service.

20. The system of claim 19, wherein a conflict between obtained modifications is resolved by enabling the contacts to vote on the obtained modifications.

21. The system of claim 15, wherein the event update notification comprises at least one of a descriptor of the event, location of the event, time of the event, message regarding the event, and an estimated time of arrival to the event.

22. The system of claim 15, wherein the event record is updated with the modifications in an order in which the modifications are obtained.

23. The system of claim 15, wherein the event record is updated with the modifications in an order depending on a priority assigned to one or more modifications.

24. The system of claim 15, wherein the computing device is further operative to generate an event history for the event of interest, the event history describing the modifications with which the event record has been updated.

25. The system of claim 24, wherein the event history describes the modifications with which the event record has been updated in the chronological order in which the modifications were obtained.

26. The system of claim 24, wherein the event history describes the modifications with which the event record has been updated in a priority order assigned to the modifications.

27. A non-transitory computer-readable medium having a computer-executable component for organizing an event, the computer-executable component comprising:

an event organizing component operative to;

obtain modifications to data describing the event of interest from one or more computing devices to which an event notification for the event of interest has been published;

without requiring that the modifications be proposed to an organizer of the event, update an event record including data describing the event of interest with the modifications to the data in an order, wherein the event record is updated without obtaining organizer rights from the organizer of the event; and

generate one or more event update notifications for publication to the one or more computing devices to which the event notification has been published as the event record is updated with the modifications, each of the computing devices associated with a contact who may be interested in the event.

28. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 27, wherein at least one computing device from which a modification is obtained is a mobile computing device.

29. 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 computing device from which a modification is obtained.

30. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 29, wherein the event organizing component is further operative to update the event record based on the obtained location data.

31. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 30, 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.

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

33. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 27, wherein the event update notification includes a locator to a resource from which data describing the updated event is accessed.

34. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 33, wherein the data describing the updated event comprises at least one of a descriptor of the event, location of the event, time of the event, message regarding the event, and an estimated time of arrival to the event.

35. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 27, wherein the event organizing component is further operative to automatically identify one or more contacts who may be interested in the event.

36. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 35, wherein the contacts are automatically identified from a set of contacts maintained by at least one of a telecommunications service, a social network service and a message publication service.

37. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 27, wherein the order in which the event record is updated is a chronological order in which the modifications are obtained.

38. The non-transitory computer-readable medium claim 27, wherein the order in which the event record is updated depends on a priority assigned to the modifications.

39. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 27, wherein the event organizing component is further operative to generate an event history for the event of interest, the event history describing the modifications with which the event record has been updated.

40. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 39, wherein the event history describes the modifications with which the event record has been updated in an order depending on at least one of the chronological order in which the modifications were obtained and a priority assigned to the modifications.

41. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 27, wherein the event organizing component is further operative to enable contacts to vote on conflicting modifications.