Source: http://www.google.com/patents/US20050251557?dq=inventor:%22Arthur+R.+Hair%22&ei=VAy0Tsa4NYTl0QGQiqWiBA
Timestamp: 2017-11-25 01:30:24
Document Index: 288315026

Matched Legal Cases: ['art 431', 'art 431', 'art 433', 'art 433', 'art 433', 'art 434', 'art 433', 'art 433', 'art 434', 'art 434', 'art 434', 'art 434', 'art 434', 'art 432', 'art 434', 'art 434', 'art 434', 'art 432', 'art 432', 'art 431', 'art 431', 'art 433', 'art 431', 'art 431', 'art 433', 'art 433', 'art 433', 'art 435', 'art 433', 'art 432', 'art 432', 'art 432', 'art 532', 'art 534', 'art 534', 'art 534', 'art 534', 'art 534', 'art 535']

Patent US20050251557 - Push-type information delivery method, push-type information delivery system ... - Google Patents
Providing a new contents delivery method that is suitable for community networks and reduces leaks of personal information. Presentities indicating channels for information delivery are formed on presence service, and virtual channel communication terminals corresponding to their presentities are logically...http://www.google.com/patents/US20050251557?utm_source=gb-gplus-sharePatent US20050251557 - Push-type information delivery method, push-type information delivery system, information delivery apparatus and channel search apparatus based on presence service
Publication number US20050251557 A1
Application number US 10/893,316
Also published as CN1694402A, US7571207
Publication number 10893316, 893316, US 2005/0251557 A1, US 2005/251557 A1, US 20050251557 A1, US 20050251557A1, US 2005251557 A1, US 2005251557A1, US-A1-20050251557, US-A1-2005251557, US2005/0251557A1, US2005/251557A1, US20050251557 A1, US20050251557A1, US2005251557 A1, US2005251557A1
Inventors Masahiro Yoshizawa, Kenji Kasuga
Original Assignee Hitachi., Ltd.
US 20050251557 A1
Providing a new contents delivery method that is suitable for community networks and reduces leaks of personal information. Presentities indicating channels for information delivery are formed on presence service, and virtual channel communication terminals corresponding to their presentities are logically formed on an information delivery server. Thereby, contents are transmitted and received between the information delivery server and user communication terminals, and among the user communication terminals as if the contents were transmitted and received between a presentity indicating a channel and a presentity indicating a user. During contents transmission and reception, the need to exchange address information among users is eliminated, making it possible to prevent leaks of personal information.
1. An information delivery method for delivering prescribed contents to users registered in advance on a network, the network comprising: a first terminal; a presence server that manages presence information of a user of the first terminal; an information delivery server that stores contents to be delivered to the first terminal; a communication network that establishes connection among the first terminal, the presence server, and the information delivery server to enable communication,
forming a first presentity on the network sensed by the presence server, the presentity being an account necessary for the first terminal to enjoy presence service;
providing the first presentity with a first identifier for uniquely identifying the presentity;
forming an n-th presentity, which is an account necessary for the information delivery server to enjoy presence service; and
providing the n-th presentity with an n-th identifier,
wherein the information delivery server acquires presence information of the first user from the presence server through the n-th presentity, and when the acquired presence information matches delivery conditions of the stored contents, delivers the contents to the first user, with a delivery source of the contents as the n-th identifier.
2. The information delivery method according to claim 1, a second terminal associated with the n-th presentity being connected to the communication network,
forming a second presentity on the network sensed by the presence server, the presentity being an account necessary for the second terminal to enjoy presence service;
providing the second presentity with a second identifier; and
transmitting contents data and account information on the second presentity from the second terminal to the n-th presentity of the information delivery server,
wherein the information delivery server associates the transmitted contents data with account information and registers the contents.
3. The information delivery method according to claim 1, a second terminal associated with the n-th presentity being connected to the communication network,
the information delivery method comprising the steps of:
forming a second presentity on the network sensed by the presence server, the presentity being an account necessary for the second terminal to enjoy presence service; and
providing the second presentity with a second identifier,
wherein the first terminal transmits prescribed contents to the n-th presentity of the information delivery server, with a transmission source being set to the first identifier,
wherein the information delivery server registers the transmitted contents, and when the presence information acquired from the presence server matches delivery conditions of the stored contents, delivers the contents to the second user, with a delivery source of the contents as the n-th identifier.
4. The information delivery method according to claim 1, disclosing the n-th presentity to other terminal users connected to the communication network as a channel for delivering contents.
wherein a channel search server for searching for the channel is connected to the communication network.
6. The information delivery method according to claim 5,
wherein the channel search server holds information necessary to search for n-th identifier and contents belonging to the n-th presentity the information delivery server has,
the information delivery method comprising the step of:
7. An information delivery server that, on a network through which presence service to store and deliver presence information is provided, delivers prescribed contents to user terminals that registered a specific channel,
a delivery contents table for storing contents and their delivery conditions;
wherein the processor acquires a change in presence information of the registered user terminals, and when the acquired presence information matches delivery conditions of the contents, delivers the contents to the user terminals, with an identifier given to the channel as a delivery source of the contents.
8. An information delivery server that, on a network through which presence service to store and deliver presence information is provided, delivers prescribed contents to plural user terminals registered in advance,
wherein the information delivery server includes a number of virtual channel communication terminals for delivering contents to the registered users, equal to the number of channels the users subscribe to.
The present application claims priority from Japanese application JP 2004-136989 filed on May 6, 2004, the contents of which is hereby incorporated by reference into this application.
The present invention relates to a push-type information delivery method and an information delivery system using terminal apparatuses that can use presence service, and the terminal apparatuses.
Recently, with the widespread use of wireless information terminals such as cellular phones, and the development of position information acquisition technology by wireless technology and GPS (Global Positioning System), information delivery service combined with position information has been brought into operation. Users transmit position information to carriers or service providers tying up with the carriers, thereby enjoying service of delivery of information and contents in accordance with the position information. The information and contents in accordance with position information are, for example, a map, a weather forecast, and traffic information in the vicinity of a current position.
The following poses problems with position information service, particularly push-type information delivery service using position information.
FIG. 1 is a drawing showing a physical configuration of a network assumed in a first embodiment;
Hereinafter, using a sequence diagram shown in FIG. 10, and FIGS. 4 to 9, a description will be made of how the information delivery server 4 operates during contents delivery. In the description below, the presentity identifier of a user who desires contents delivery is charlie@example.co.jp, a nickname of the user is “Charlie”, and the presentity identifier of a channel desired by the user is cake@example.co.jp, and a channel name is “cake from sky”.
When the information delivery server 4 receives a notification packet of presence information (S1002), the packet is analyzed with the IF 41 of FIG. 5, and presence information stored in the header part or payload part is extracted. In the description below, operations such as “notification” and “request” are all transmitted and received in the form of a packet or message corresponding to a communication protocol used. In this embodiment, user's presence information including user's presentity identifier “charlie@example.co.jp”, user's nickname “Charlie”, status information “present”, and user's position information is notified to a channel of presentity identifier “cake@example.co.jp”. The notification is sent to the presence protocol transmitting/receiving part 431 through the IF 41. The presence protocol transmitting/receiving part 431 transfers it to the presence information management part 433 (S1003). This notification may be received by either the subscribe method or the fetch method.
Next, the presence information management part 433 determines whether the presence information notified from the presence server 3 has changed in comparison with the presence information cached to the user information table 451. If the user information has changed, the user information table 451 is updated with new contents (S1006). Finally, the presence information management part 433 determines whether a status included in the user information indicates a contents receivable state such as “presence”, and if the user is contents-receivable, notifies the contents transmission control part 434 of the updating of the presence information and its contents (S1007). In this embodiment, since Charlie's status information is “present”, the presence information management part 433 determines that the user can receive contents, and executes the operation of step 1007. If a change of presence information is received for a contents-unreceivable user, for example, if a change of presence information on Bob of FIG. 7 is received, the presence information management part 433 determines that the user cannot receive contents, and terminates the processing.
Upon receipt of the presence information in step 1007, the contents transmission control part 434 refers to the delivery contents table 453, and acquires delivery contents corresponding to a destination channel and reference information for determining whether contents should be delivered (S1008). In step 1008 of this embodiment, for example, contents “Recommendable items of cake shop A . . . ” and “Term limited . . . ” corresponding to channel number 1, whose delivery is requested from user 1, are acquired by the contents transmission control part 434. After termination of step 1008, the contents transmission control part 434 selects the contents to be delivered, based on the user's presence information and past delivery records included in the user information. As delivery conditions stored in the delivery contents table 453, a function for judging contents delivery may be used. By passing user's presence information and the like to the stored function as arguments, deliverable contents are identified.
Contents whose delivery count is one and which has already been delivered to the user (contained in past delivery records) are excluded from the above identification. Based on the above processing, the contents transmission control part 434 can determine whether delivery contents to be transmitted to the user exist. In this embodiment, comparison is made using information stored in a delivery count field and a validity term field corresponding to the contents “Recommendable items of cake shop A . . . ” and “Term limited . . . ” acquired from the delivery contents table, and information stored in a contents No. field and a past delivery time field corresponding to “Charlie” of FIG. 7. As a result, the contents “Recommendable items of cake shop A” not delivered previously are selected. If contents to be delivered exist, the contents transmission control part 434 transfers all or part of the contents to the contents transmitting/receiving part 432 (S1009).
Next, using a sequence diagram shown in FIG. 11 and FIGS. 4 to 9, a description will be made of how the information delivery server 4 operates when transmitting transfer contents. In this embodiment, it is assumed that contents transmitted from a source user corresponding to a presentity identifier “bob@example.co.jp” shown in the transfer contents table of FIG. 9 to a destination user corresponding to a presentity identifier “alice@example.co.jp” couldn't be delivered in real time because the destination user was absent, and the contents was stored in the transfer contents table.
Presence information of a destination user “Alice” has changed from “absent” to “present”, and the change is notified from the user communication terminal to the presence server 3 (S1101). In this embodiment, user's presence information including user's presentity identifier “alice@example.co.jp”, user's nickname “Alice”, status information “present”, and user's position information is notified to a channel of presentity identifier “cake@example.co.jp”. The operations from step 1102 to step 1107 are omitted because they are the same as those from steps 1002 to 1007 described in FIG. 10. Operations in and after step 1108 will be described below.
Since it is determined that contents can be delivered to “Alice” who has been notified of change in presence information, the contents transmission control part 434 refers to the transfer contents table 454, and acquires transfer contents that correspond to a destination channel of the presence information and of which source user of the presence information is a destination user (S1108). Since it has been recognized that the presentity identifier of user “Alice” notified from the presence server 3 is alice@example.co.jp as a result of the operations from steps 1103 to 1107, the contents transmission control part 434 can acquire transfer contents “The indicated new product . . . ” of which a source user of the presence information is a destination user, from the transfer contents table of FIG. 9. If relevant contents do not exist in the transfer contents table, the contents transmission control part 434 terminates the contents transfer processing. In this embodiment, since transfer contents exist, all or part of them are transferred to the contents transmitting/receiving part 432 (S1109). The contents transmitting/receiving part 432 transmits the transfer contents to the user through the IF 41 (S1110). It deletes the transfer contents having been transmitted from the transfer contents table 454 (S1111).
The above description has been made of a method of contents delivery and transfer to users who have already made registration to channels. Users who desire contents delivery from new channels must make registration to the channels. A method of channel registration by users is described below. In the description below, a presentity identifier of the user is bob@example.co.jp, the nickname of the user is “Bob”, the presentity identifier of a channel to which the user desires to subscribe is cake@example.co.jp, and a channel name is “cake from sky”.
FIG. 12 is a sequence diagram showing an example of the operations of the information delivery server 4 when a subscription to the channel is filed from the user. When the presentity 14 of a channel has been added to a buddy list owned by the user communication terminal 2, it issues a request to subscribe to the presentity 14 of the channel to the presence server 3 (S1201). During the subscription, a packet in which at least the presentity identifier “cake@example.co.jp” of a channel to subscribe to and the user's presentity identifier “bob@example.co.jp” are stored is transmitted from the user communication terminal 2 to the presence server 3. Upon receipt of the request, the presence server 3 notifies the information delivery server 4 of the subscribe request from the user, or the presence server 3 issues the subscribe request in place of the user (S1202). This request is sent to the presence protocol transmitting/receiving part 431 through the IF 41 of the information delivery server 4. The presence protocol transmitting/receiving part 431 issues the subscribe request to the presence information management part 433 (S1203).
When the user approves the subscribe request, the fact is notified to the presence server 3 (S1209), which in turn notifies the information delivery server 4 of the fact (S1210) This notification is transferred to the presence protocol transmitting/receiving part 431 through the IF 41 of the information delivery server 4. The presence protocol transmitting/receiving part 431 notifies the presence information management part 433 of the completion of the subscribe (S1211), and the presence information management part 433 adds a line indicating user's information (authority is “General”) to the user information table 451 (S1212). Finally, the presence information management part 433 approves a user's subscribe request having been first sent. Subsequent processing is the same as when the user has approved the subscribe request (Sl213, S1214, S1215). Thereafter, the channel on the information delivery server 4 acquires user's presence information through the presentity 12, and can transmit and receive contents to and from the user communication terminal 2 through communication means included in presence information.
FIG. 13 shows an example of a message transmission window screen of a user communication terminal when delivery contents are transmitted using an instant messenger. This assumes a registration operation screen of delivery contents. The first characters “/regist” of a first line of a message are a command indicating that the message is a registration of delivery contents. The command is followed by characters indicating the delivery condition of “within 20 m from a location of latitude 35.4211 and longitude 139.2827”. Text on and after the second line is actual delivery contents. A delivery condition may be specified using presence information of a channel administrator. For example, only “within a radius of 20 m” may be inputted instead of “within 20 m from a location of latitude 35.4211 and longitude 139.2827” by in advance setting “within 20 m from a location of the channel administrator at the time of registration” for input in the form. By this arrangement, the user is relieved of efforts to input deliver conditions.
When delivery contents are to be transmitted to users satisfying delivery conditions without waiting for the notification of presence information from the users, the contents registration part 435 requests the presence information management part 433 to acquire presence information of users subscribing to the channel (S1406). At this time, presence information may be requested only for contents-receivable users with a status of “present” in the user information table 451. If delivery contents have been successfully registered, the channel administrator may be notified of successful registration of delivery contents through the contents transmitting/receiving part 432 and the IF 41 (S1407, S1408).
If the source user is a channel administrator or a channel subscriber and the contents are transfer contents, user information of respective destinations is acquired from the user information table 451 (Sl510 S1511). The status of destination user is checked (S1512), and if the destination user's status is contents-receivable, the contents are transmitted through the contents transmitting/receiving part 432 (S1513). If the destination user's status is not contents-receivable, transfer contents are registered in the transfer contents table 454 (S1514). The contents transmitting/receiving part 432 transmits the transfer contents to the user communication terminal 2 through the IF 41.
The information delivery server 4 receives a channel preparation request from a user by some means. The means include offline documents, electronic mail, input to Web site forms, instant messages, and the like. The following are included in the channel preparation request: a user's presentity identifier, a first-choice channel presentity identifier, a channel name, an introduction phrase, and the like. In the description below, a user's presentity identifier is alice@example.co.jp, a user's nickname is “Alice”, and the presentity identifier of a channel desired by the user is cake@example.co.jp, and a channel name is “cake from sky”.
Upon receiving the request, the management entity uses means provided as part of presence service to newly add a presentity identifier “alice@example.co.jp” specified by the user to the presence server. If the presentity identifier has already been used by other users, the addition fails and the presence server 3 notifies the information delivery server 4 of the fact. In this case, information about usable presentity identifiers may be transmitted to the information delivery server 4 so that it is transferred to the user through the information delivery server 4. In this example, it is assumed that the presentity identifier has been added as desired by the user.
Next, channel information is registered in a table within the DB apparatus 45. First, a line indicating information about a new channel is added to the channel information table 452. Next, to register the user having made request as a channel administrator, a line indicating information about the channel administrator (authority is “administrator”) is added to the user information table 451.
FIGS. 16 and 17 show examples of terminal screens displayed in a terminal of the channel administrator “Alice” and a terminal of the user “Bob” subscribing to the channel “cake from air” managed by Alice. FIG. 16 shows a screen displaying a message (contents) sent to the channel “cake from air” from Bob, and FIG. 17 shows a screen displaying a message Alice received from the channel “cake from sky”. It is understood from FIG. 16 that Bob transmitted the contents not directly to Alice (e.g., to an address of Alice) but to the channel. In the Alice's terminal screen of FIG. 17, only the nickname of the channel subscriber Bob is displayed, and other personal information (address, presentity identifier, etc.) is not displayed at all. Contents transmitted to the channel from users who are neither a channel subscriber nor a channel administrator are ignored by the information delivery server 4. In other words, the system operates like ordinary presence clients which shut out contents from other than presentities registered in a channel buddy list.
Furthermore, dynamically changing information other than presence information of channel subscribers may be included in delivery conditions of delivery contents. An example of this sort of delivery condition is “Deliver delivery contents on umbrella shops only when the weather at a user's current position is rainy”. The information delivery server may acquire the dynamically changing information (weather information of a specific area in this example) from the presence service, or by other means.
The first embodiment assumes that users know in advance contents to be obtained, in other words, channels to be subscribed to. However, generally, the users do not know such information. It is natural that users (administrators) having registered contents wish as many users as possible would browse the registered contents. Accordingly, in this embodiment, a channel searching server for searching for channels will be described.
Next, the operations of the channel search server 5 will be described with reference to the sequence diagram of FIG. 22, the functional block diagram of FIG. 19, and the channel information table of FIG. 6. A description below assumes that a user “Bob” corresponding to a presentity identifier “bob@example.co.jp” attempts to search for contents on “recommendable cakes” receivable at a current position. Also, it is assumed that a presence client provided in a Bob's terminal already knows the presentity search@example.co.jp of the channel search server.
A search request including a search keyword and the like is transmitted from a Bob's user communication terminal 2 to the channel search server 5 (S2201). This embodiment assumes that a channel search request packet transmitted from the user “Bob” includes a search keyword “cake” and a user's nickname “Bob”. The received search request packet is analyzed by the IF 51, and the nickname “Bob” and the search key word “cake” are extracted. The extracted information is transferred to the contents transmitting/receiving part 532, which requests the search control part 534 to search for the channel (S2202).
The search control part 534 uses the user's presentity identifier as a key to refer to the presence information table 551, and acquires presence information of the user transmitting the search request such as user's position information (S2203) Next, the search control part 534 refers to the search index table 553. It acquires the search contents numbers 1, 6, 7, and 15 of search contents including the user-specified search key “cake” (S2204). Upon acquiring the search contents numbers, the search control part 534 refers to the search contents table to acquire information of lines corresponding to the acquired search contents numbers. The search control part 534 further compares information stored in the delivery condition field of the acquired contents and the user's presence information, and sorts out proper contents (S2205). Plural contents may be sorted out or no contents may be sorted out.
In this embodiment, another configuration of the channel search server will be described using two examples. The channel search server 5, without internally having information necessary for channel search, may issue a search request to the information delivery server 4 for each search request from users. FIG. 23 is a block diagram showing functional expansion of the internal configuration of the channel search server 5. This drawing is the same as FIG. 5, except for the memory 53 and the DB apparatus 55. The channel search server 5 of this embodiment does not have information necessary for channel search (channel information table 552, search index table 553, and search contents table 554) in the DB apparatus 55. Instead, it has a search protocol transmitting/receiving part 535 for requesting a search to the information delivery server 4. In this case, it is necessary that a specific protocol for channel search is defined between the channel search server 5 and the information delivery server 4, and the information delivery server 4 has information necessary for channel search in the DB apparatus 45.
There have been one presence server 3 and one information delivery server 4 in the networks described in the first to third embodiments. However, plural presence servers and plural information delivery servers may be connected to the communication network 1. By increasing the number of the information delivery servers 4, the number of channels a push-type information delivery system 1 can accommodate can be increased. Since the present invention does not request specific modifications to the presence server 3, by thus increasing the number of the presence servers 3, the number of accommodable presentities of the presence service can be increased. This is not influenced by the number of the channel search servers and the information delivery servers.
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International Classification G06F15/16, G06F15/00, H04L12/00, H04L29/08
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:YOSHIZAWA, MASAHIRO;KASUGA, KENJI;REEL/FRAME:015781/0064