Situation information system

A method for conducting shopping functions in shopping areas including stores and malls wherein information is communicated wirelessly by providers of services and merchandise, including offers pertaining to the buying and selling of said services and merchandise, to potential customers severally using mobile computers with radios substantially continually receiving telephone numbers of said providers and obviating the resulting interference imposed by the obligatory answering of a ringing telephone as automated updates occur, comprising the steps of:

• a. acting substantially simultaneously with receipt of a gating pulse from a transmitter, transmitting customer information, including identification and location information, severally by said mobile computers with radios, and receiving said identification and location information in said situation information system,
• b. ascertaining subsequently whether said location information of a selected subset of said mobile computers with radios indicates said computers suitably proximate to said offers, or display thereof, presented by said providers, and
• c. transmitting one or more said offers including by visual, aural, and other data types and other pertinent information, severally to said subset of said mobile computers with radios according to said customers' selections and contingently dependent on subsequent actions of said customers whereby said customers using said computers with radios can shop more knowledgeably and efficiently.

A method of communicatively executing, including making apparent to the aural and tactile senses of the user, one or more transmittable mappable hypertext items representing people, organisms, and objects, including buildings, roads, vehicles, and signs, on a computer in a manner scalably representing interrelationships of said objects, comprising the steps of:

• a. searching each of one or more unique mappable information code sequences, each of which said code sequences serving to uniquely represent one of said items and copied from the memory of said computer or received from an alternate source, for a field containing geographical coordinates, said each of said code sequences includes an item reference field, a name field, a location field including said geographical coordinates, and a data field,
• b. converting said coordinates to an appropriately proportionate representation on said computer, and
• c. displaying selectably scalably said items on said computer whereby said user may quickly receive and display timely situation information mapped in the context of spatial information, including appropriate to a geographical or other area, in which said mappable hypertext items are quickly received, mapped, and optionally executably selected by said user to provide additional of said situation information or received, stored, and transmitted by a provider of said situation information.

A method of receiving in a mobile computer substantially moving relative to locations of timely interest to the user of said computer, including one or more sources of transmitted digital information describing said locations including services and resources currently available at said locations from one or more selectable visit lists of said sources of said information capable of being organized according to said locations' proximity, timeliness, and other criteria into the memory of said computer, substantially continually receiving telephone numbers of providers of said services and resources and obviating the resulting interference imposed by the obligatory answering of a ringing telephone as automated updates occur, comprising the steps of:

• a. executing information from a selectably precedent source of said digital information on said mobile computer, including being viewed on a display,
• b. receiving substantially simultaneously information from subsequently selected of the remaining of said sources of said digital information from said organizable sources on said lists, and
• c. storing said information from said sources in a retrievable manner in said mobile computer memory for execution selectably alternatively and timely, including preemptively or subsequently, to said information from any of said sources whereby time-critical, location-dependent information transmitted comparatively slowly from multiple sources of said digital information can be received by a traveler using said mobile computer in a timely way while information currently executing is utilized.