Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2009529159A/en
Timestamp: 2019-12-08 10:44:43
Document Index: 413626409

Matched Legal Cases: ['Application No. 60', 'Application No. 60', 'Application No. 11', 'Application No. 11', 'Application No. 11', 'Application No. 11', 'Application No. 60']

JP2009529159A - Location toolbar for Internet search and communication - Google Patents
JP2009529159A
JP2009529159A JP2008542461A JP2008542461A JP2009529159A JP 2009529159 A JP2009529159 A JP 2009529159A JP 2008542461 A JP2008542461 A JP 2008542461A JP 2008542461 A JP2008542461 A JP 2008542461A JP 2009529159 A JP2009529159 A JP 2009529159A
JP2008542461A
シーン，マイケル，ジョージ
2006-11-22 Application filed by スカイフック ワイヤレス，インク． filed Critical スカイフック ワイヤレス，インク．
2009-08-13 Publication of JP2009529159A publication Critical patent/JP2009529159A/en
Utilities and methods are provided for performing Internet searches and communications based on an estimated user geographic location.
An Internet search and communication location toolbar 109 includes a geographic location estimation engine that periodically estimates a user's geographic location in a first predetermined location information format and a website stored on an electronically readable medium. Each input specifies a network address of the web service and identifies a corresponding format that the web service expects when receiving location information as a web service parameter. The utility also has logic that detects the activation of the web service, accesses the database 112 that identifies the predicted format of the invoked web service, and triggers the conversion logic. The conversion logic converts the position information in the first predetermined format to the position information encoded in the specified format for the activated web service. The utility has logic to issue web service activation with location information in the converted format.
The present invention relates generally to location-based services and location-based Internet searches, and more particularly to methods and systems that use the calculated location of a device to optimize information retrieval and online communication.
LocateMe released in May 2005 is a feature of the Virtual Earth product (currently renamed Microsoft Live Local). LocateMe downloads the client application to a Windows® XP machine that uses an 802.11 adapter to scan for nearby wireless signals. These signals are then sent over the Internet to the Virtual Earth server. The Virtual Earth server includes the collection of war driving data that has received a Microsoft license from the community war driving group. If the user is in the range of an access point in the database, LocateMe calculates the user position and indicates that position on the Virtual Earth map in coordinates.
Placelab google map mashup:
Researchers from the previous Intel Placelab group (www.placelab.org) have integrated Placelab positioning technology into a Java® applet that can run within the computer's Internet browser. The applet scans for wireless signals and uses Wiggle. The signal is compared against the war driving database maintained by net.
Open Mobile Agreement-Secure User Plane Location (SUPL) standard:
The SUPL standard has been adopted by wireless service providers as a mechanism for sharing location information across wireless networks. This standard defines the systems and services that should exist in the infrastructure operated by the operator to provide location services. Further details can be found at http: // www. opembobial alliance. org / release_program / supl_vl_0. htm. Is available at
The present invention provides utilities and methods for performing Internet searches and communications based on estimated user geographic locations.
This application is based on US Patent Act No. 119 (e), US Provisional Patent Application No. 60 / 738,853 filed November 23, 2005, “Online Location Toolbar for HTML Browser” and August 2006. Claimed the benefit of "WLAN positioning system user position pulling mode used in client-server system" of US Provisional Patent Application No. 60 / 821,479 filed on the 4th, these applications are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety. Incorporate in the description.
According to another aspect of the invention, the utility invokes a web service having information identifying the user's estimated geographic location. The utility includes a geographic location estimation engine that periodically estimates a user's geographic location in a first predetermined location information format, and a database of website inputs stored on an electronically readable medium; Each input specifies the network address of the web service and identifies the corresponding format that the web service expects when receiving location information as a web service parameter. The utility also has logic that detects the activation of the web service, accesses a database that identifies the predicted format of the invoked web service, and causes conversion logic. The conversion logic converts the position information in the first predetermined format to the position information encoded in the specified format for the activated web service. The utility has logic to issue web service activation with location information in the converted format.
According to another aspect of the invention, the logic to detect the activation of a web service is triggered in response to a user web browser operation.
According to another aspect of the invention, the logic to detect the activation of a web service is triggered in response to program code included on the website.
According to another aspect of the invention, the geographic location estimation engine estimates a user's geographic location based on received messages from Wi-Fi access points within range of the user's Wi-Fi enabled equipment.
According to another aspect of the invention, location information encoded in a specified format includes latitude, longitude, street address, city, state, county, zip code, census tract, region, country, and time zone. At least one of them.
The embodiments of the invention described in this document provide a system and utility that calculates a user's location and then integrates that location into the user's internet blanging and online communication history. One embodiment is referred to as a location toolbar.
As wireless devices have sufficiently mature performance and wireless systems have become popular, mobility is becoming increasingly realistic for computer systems. This new mobility not only provides freedom of movement, but a new set of applications and services are being created that take advantage of the dynamic nature of mobile users. One type of application utilizes the known physical location of the device and coordinates the information retrieval and communication history around that location.
These new uses of mobile devices are to detect shops, products, and people near the user's current location. Commercial travelers may be looking for nearby coffee shops. They can stop others and ask for directions to the nearest store, or call the phone operator for help.
But with this new location technology, an individual can use a laptop or phone to quickly find, for example, all coffee shops within half a mile and get navigation from their current location. Other location services include finding friends, emergency response, and virtual tour guides.
One of the reasons why it took time to get up to these services until recently is that the location of the mobile device is unknown and difficult to obtain. In recent years, cell phone manufacturers have begun adding GPS chips to devices to provide this automatic location function. However, this does not include hundreds of millions of other mobile devices such as laptops and personal digital assistants. In addition to this hardware issue, there are no industry standards for sharing location information.
Telecommunication providers have developed several standards for sharing location information across the network, but these standards do not include systems outside the network or content website. Thus, even if the device has an automatic location function, few applications or websites are prepared to accept this information seamlessly. Each website or communication means (location channel) describes the location in a different way. Some websites ask the user for a zip code, while others ask for the complete street address. For an automatic location system to work seamlessly, it needs the ability to provide location information in all these formats.
The location toolbar embodiment of the present invention addresses all of these issues by incorporating directly into common user applications such as Internet browsers and email clients. The location toolbar extends the functionality of the Internet browser by adding automatic locations and converting the user's current location into any format approved by the website. Thus, the location toolbar simplifies the process of determining the location of the device and coordinating all Internet searches and communications based on that location. The location toolbar utilizes a Wi-Fi positioning system to determine the location of the device and map that location to an online communication such as a local search web query or email.
Embodiments of the present invention are described in US Patent Application No. 11 / 261,848, “Location Beacon Database”, US Patent Application No. 11 / 261,898, “Location Beacon Database Update Server”, US Patent Application No. 11 / 261,987 “Location Beacon Database Construction Method and System” and US Patent Application No. 11 / 261,988 “Select Location Algorithm Based on Number of Access Points Detected within User Equipment” Based on techniques, systems, and methods disclosed in previously filed applications, including but not limited to “location-based services”, all of which were filed on October 28, 2005, Are incorporated herein in their entirety. These applications teach specific methods of collecting high-quality location data for Wi-Fi access points and use the data in location-based services to estimate the location of system users. The geographical location of Wi-Fi enabled devices that utilize data and services and technologies can be determined. However, the technology is not limited to the systems and methods disclosed in the incorporated patent applications. Thus, while the above system and application references are useful, they do not appear necessary to understand the embodiments of the present invention.
FIG. 1 is a system diagram illustrating the architecture of a particular embodiment. The location toolbar (109) is a software application that runs on the mobile device (102) and is installed as an add-on application in an Internet browser, such as Firefox, Mozilla, or Internet Explorer (106). All major browsers thus provide the ability to install additional features from other software developers. The mobile device (102) typically includes a radio (104) configured to communicate using the IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) standard.
In the example scenario, the user chooses to search for information on the web content site (101) regarding stores near the current location. The user selects the location function of the toolbar (109) that initiates the process. The location function can include, for example, a toolbar button or a drop-down menu item. The toolbar (109) calls the location interface of the WPS (Wi-Fi positioning system) client (103) and requests the position of the device.
The WPS client (103) communicates with the 802.11 radio (104) and tells the radio to scan for radio signals. The radio (104) sends an active survey request to all nearby access points (105). Each access point (105) that is within range and has received the survey request responds to the request with a survey reply that includes the name of the access point and a unique identifier (MAC address). The WPS client (103) collects these answers and creates a location query to the WPS server (110) over the Internet.
The WPS server (110) calculates the exact position of the mobile device (102) based on the observed readings and determines the exact latitude and longitude coordinates of the position. Other positioning systems such as GPS, mobile phone tower triangulation, and even TV tower triangulation can be used to determine position. The latitude and longitude output from the WPS server (110) are sent to the geocoder (111) used for mapping the location coordinate position and the street address position.
Reverse geocoding is the process of taking the latitude and longitude as inputs and calculating the nearest physical street address. The geocoder (111) uses city map data (113) such as the US government TIGER database to calculate the physical address closest to the latitude / longitude location coordinate position. In one embodiment, the geocoder (111) performs a reverse geocoding calculation based on the latitude and longitude received from the WPS server (110) and allows the WPS server (110) to complete the entire location dictionary for a particular location. Returns the address. The WPS server (110) then returns the entire location dictionary for the current location of the device (102) to the WPS client (103). The location dictionary contains a number of indications of the current location, including elements such as street address, city, state, zip code, etc. regarding the exact location. An example of a location dictionary is shown in Table 1.
The location dictionary is passed to the location mapper (108) of the location toolbar (109) via the WPS client (103). The location mapper (108) accesses a channel database (112) of location content and channels that the toolbar currently supports. The channel database (112) tells the location mapper (108) the location elements necessary to perform the requested function and how to construct a content request or communication message in the proper syntax and format to complete the transaction. .
For example, some websites include a user's location in a URL request for content, which takes the form of a zip code. A set of default location channels can be included in the channel database (112) when the toolbar (109) is installed on the mobile device (102). Other channels can be downloaded and installed from online channel galleries on the Internet. These new channels are added to the channel database (112) seamlessly and are available to the user. The location mapper (108) converts the current location into an appropriate message format and returns it to the browser (106). The request is processed by the browser (106) that calls http to the web content site (101) that responds with location specific content.
FIG. 2 shows in more detail the elements of the location dictionary and location mapper described above. The location mapper (206) serves as a global conversion function of location information. The location toolbar (201) receives local content requests from users or websites. The toolbar (201) invokes the WPS system (202) which returns a location dictionary (203) containing all the individual location elements (207) at that particular location (as described above). Location information can be expressed in various formats because there is no global standard for Internet content search.
In the global positioning system of Global Information System (GIS), the position is shown in the form of latitude and longitude, which are components of a spherical coordinate system used to map all positions on the earth. There are many cases. However, there are several formats for representing the proper latitude and longitude positions. In some situations, the location is expressed as a street address, and in other situations, the data is collected in a standard census area to collect data for records such as artificial statistics and census. All local content websites on the Internet need to provide a location in a format that may be different and may require only a zip code or may require latitude / longitude.
The location toolbar must be able to speak all of their languages and formats while hiding complexity from the user. Location Dictionary (203) is a complete display of your current location, not just latitude and longitude, but also street address, city, state / province, county, census tract, zip code, country, time zone, and other related Contains additional address information such as location information. The location toolbar (201) can then determine which location elements (207) in the location dictionary (203) are required to perform the local content request.
At the same time that the location toolbar (201) obtains the location dictionary (203), the toolbar (201) also searches the channel database (204) for the content channel requested by the user (eg, weather.com or Google maps). Each channel has a specific channel format (205) that describes how the website or communication channel predicts location information. The format can be in the form of URL, form post, XML scheme or the like. Once the toolbar (201) has the two needed, it combines the location variable (203) and channel format (205) to replace the location variable and their location element (207) (eg zip code = 02494). Call the mapper (206). Once the content request is constructed, the toolbar (201) sends the request to the browser (208), which then processes the request and contacts the content website (209) with a specific location query.
For example, a web user may wish to identify all coffee shops near the current location. To perform this search, the user enters the search text “coffee shop” into his favorite local search channel in the location toolbar (201), in this case Yahoo! Enter in Local. The location toolbar (201) requests a user position from the WPS system (202) and receives a location dictionary (203) for the current position. An example of the location dictionary (203) is presented in Table 2.
Next, the toolbar (201) checks the channel database (204) in the location mapper (206) and Yahoo! Search the location element (207), location means, and format of the local search channel. Examples of required location elements and location channel format (205) are shown in Table 3.
The location mapper (206) replaces the variable name in the channel format (205) with the actual value from the location dictionary (203). With that information, the toolbar (201) searches the location dictionary (203) to find a coffee shop within a certain range of Yahoo! Translate to the appropriate http request required by Local. An example of a formatted request is shown in Table 4.
The toolbar (201) builds the request, and the browser (208) passes the request to Yahoo! After sending to Local (content site (209)), the content is returned to the browser and displayed for the user.
This process is executed for each user request. A location channel can be associated with online content or communication. The location toolbar is designed to be extensible so that the user can add new channels of any format at any time. Examples of content channels are local news, weather, merchants & promotions, social networking, travel & directions, events, culture, tourism, and keyword-based local search channels. Embodiments of the invention include formatted location information in an email sent to another person, a text message sent to another mobile user, or a post on a location sharing network (LSN). Furthermore, the present embodiment can format location requests for various structures such as, for example, HTTP URL GET, HTTP FORM POST, email, and XML.
Embodiments of the present invention can operate in two illustrative modes of operation: a location push model and a location pull model. FIG. 3 is a flow diagram of the location push model. In the location push model, the user (301) uses the location toolbar (302) to make a location request or communication by making a request to push the current location to the web or another user via email / SMS / instant messenger. To start. An example of a push request is a user searching for a nearby Mexican restaurant for dinner.
The user enters a search keyword (“Mexican restaurant”), CitySearch. Enter into your favorite search channel in the location toolbar (302) such as com. The location toolbar (302) requests the current location of the device from the WPS location client (303) and scans for all nearby access points (304). All access points (304) within range of the device respond. A set of access points (304) is collected by the WPS client (303) and sent to the WPS server (305) to calculate the latitude and longitude of the device. After completion of the calculation, WPS server (305) uses geocoder (306) to complete the location dictionary that is sent back to WPS client (303) and toolbar (302). The toolbar uses the location mapper (307) to construct the necessary HTTP POST (for example) requests that CitySearch will predict and send to the browser (308) for processing. After delivering the request to the CitySearch content site (309), the site processes the user's location and sends all nearby Mexican restaurants in the directory back to the browser.
FIG. 4 is a flow diagram of the location pull model. In the location pull model, the content site (409) itself includes a script written to initiate the interaction and interact with the toolbar (402). As described in US Provisional Patent Application No. 60 / 821,479 incorporated above, the content site (409) may include a script in HTML code that initiates a location query using a toolbar. When a user visits a particular website, the browser (408) downloads location scripts and processes them. If the location toolbar (402) is installed, the browser (408) uses a script to initiate a location lookup using the location toolbar (402). The location toolbar (402) requests the current location of the device from the WPS location client (403) and scans all nearby access points (404). All access points (404) within range of the device react. A set of access points (404) is returned to the WPS client (403) and sent to the WPS server (405) to calculate the latitude and longitude of the device. After completion of the calculation, WPS server (405) uses geocoder (406) to complete the location dictionary, which is then sent back to WPS client (403) and toolbar (402).
The mapper (407) then constructs a location message using the location dictionary as requested by the content site (409) in the script. The browser (408) sends the location element to the content site (409) for processing in a specific format.
For example, the tool bar user may use starbucks. com to find the closest Starbucks store. The user is www. starbucks. com into the browser and the browser makes a request. starbucks. The com server returns the HTML code to the browser and renders the Starbucks home page. Within HTML is location Java script code that gets the user's location and tells the browser to format it with a street address and postal code. The browser uses the location toolbar to get the position and format the location elements appropriately, as described above, and then the browser converts them to Starbucks. com server. The server receives the location information and customizes the home page to include a map to the nearest store along with store-specific and region-specific promotions.
In addition to providing uninterrupted access to local content and local communications, the toolbar also serves as a local advertising platform. The user's location can be utilized by web content sites to display local advertisements as well as related local content. In addition, the toolbar itself can be used for advertising. Local advertisements can be placed on the toolbar itself by the merchant. These advertisements can be targeted to the user based on the current location. For example, the toolbar can be configured to put a message on the user's device such as “Are you tired? Starbucks are just 300 feet away” when the user detects that they are near Starbucks. In another example, the buttons on the toolbar change based on the user's location and the user's proximity to the associated retail store.
As will be realized, the invention is capable of various other embodiments, and its details can be variously modified without departing from the invention as set forth in the appended claims. . For example, the geocoder and map data can be placed on a mobile device and the WPS client can be designed to perform the functions of a WPS server as described above. In the above embodiment, the mobile device does not need to make a request outside the mobile device to generate a location dictionary for the user's current location. Accordingly, the drawings and specification are to be regarded as illustrative in nature and not as restrictive within the scope of the application as claimed.
It is a schematic diagram of a system. Figure 6 illustrates the location mapping process. It is a flowchart of a location push. It is a flowchart of a location pull.
A utility for invoking a web service having information identifying a user's estimated geographical location,
A geographic location estimation engine for periodically estimating a user's geographic location in a first predetermined location information format;
A database of website inputs stored on an electronically readable medium, each input specifying a network address of the web service and a corresponding format predicted by the web service when receiving location information as a web service parameter A database that identifies
Logic to detect the activation of the web service, access a database that identifies the expected format for the invoked web service, and trigger conversion logic;
Conversion logic for converting position information of a first predetermined format with respect to the activated web service into position information encoded in a specified format;
Logic to issue web service invocation with location information in the converted format;
A location toolbar for Internet search and communication characterized by comprising:
The Internet search and communication location toolbar of claim 1, wherein logic for detecting activation of a web service is triggered in response to a user's web browser activity.
2. The Internet search and communication location toolbar of claim 1, wherein logic for detecting the activation of a web service is triggered in response to a program code contained on the website.
2. The Internet search and claim 1, wherein the geographic location estimation engine estimates a user's geographic location based on a received message from a WiFi access point within range of the user's WiFi-enabled device. Communication location toolbar.
Location information encoded in the specified format can be at least one of latitude, longitude, street address, city, state, province, county, postal code, census tract, region, country, and time zone. The location toolbar for Internet search and communication according to claim 1, characterized in that it includes:
JP2008542461A 2005-11-23 2006-11-22 Location toolbar for Internet search and communication Pending JP2009529159A (en)
JP2009529159A true JP2009529159A (en) 2009-08-13
JP2008542461A Pending JP2009529159A (en) 2005-11-23 2006-11-22 Location toolbar for Internet search and communication
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