Place-specific buddy list services
AssigneeMicrosoft Technology Licensing, LLC
InventorJean Pierre De Vries
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An information service provides search and notifications to inform when certain people (e.g., friends, family, business contacts, etc.) are nearby so as to facilitate communications with those people. Users may define lists of people whose locations may be tracked by positioning equipment based on personal communications/computing devices carried by the people. The information service processes this people and place data to identify those of the listed people that are in the user's vicinity, and provide notifications and user-initiated search results informing the user such as via the user's personal communications/computing device.
Claims20
A method for providing a location information service, the method comprising:
- receiving, from a first mobile computing device, a first report of a location of the first mobile computing device;
- determining, based at least in part on the first report of the location, one or more places near the location of the first mobile computing device;
- communicating to the first mobile device a first instruction for the first mobile device to display information for the one or more places;
- and
- upon receiving an indication that a selection of a specific place from the one or more places was made, communicating to the first mobile device a second instruction to provide a prompt seeking authorization to communicate the specific place to a second mobile computing device.
One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media encoding computer executable instructions which, when executed by at least one processor, performs a method for providing a location information service, the method comprising:
- inferring a location of a first mobile computing device;
- determining, based at least in part on the inferred location of the first mobile computing device, one or more places near the location of the first mobile computing device;
- receiving, from the first mobile computing device, an indication that a selection of a specific place from the one or more places was made;
- and
- communicating to the first mobile device a second instruction to provide a prompt seeking authorization to communicate the specific place to a second mobile computing device.
A system comprising:
- one or more processors;
- and
- a memory coupled to the one or more processors, the memory for storing instructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform a method for providing a location information service, the method comprising:
- receiving, from a first mobile computing device, location information for the first mobile computing device indicating the first mobile device is at a location;
- determining, based at least in part on the location information, one or more places near the location of the first mobile computing device;
- communicating to the first mobile device a first instruction for the first mobile device to display information for the one or more places;
- receiving, from the first mobile computing device, an indication that a selection of a specific place from the one or more places was made;
- and
- communicating to the first mobile device a second instruction to provide a prompt seeking authorization to communicate the selection of the specific place to a second mobile computing device.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.