Patent ID: 8581997

Claim:
A computing device comprising: a processor; a network communication port configured to facilitate communication between the processor and a plurality of portable communication devices; a computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions executable by the processor to cause the computer to perform functions comprising: receiving location data from any of the plurality of portable communication devices, wherein the location data is indicative of one or more capture locations, and wherein each of the capture locations represents a geographic location at which one of the plurality of portable communication devices captured a digital photograph; storing the capture locations indicated by the received location data and, for each capture location, at least one of an associated capture date or an associated upload date; determining a prior date range; identifying a subset of the stored capture locations, wherein, for each of the capture locations in the subset of the stored capture locations, at least one of the associated capture date or the associated upload date is within the prior date range; determining a regional count representing a number of the subset of the stored capture locations within a regional radius of a potential hotspot location; determining a hotspot count representing a number of the subset of the stored capture locations that are within a hotspot radius from the potential hotspot location, wherein the hotspot radius is smaller than the regional radius; and identifying a hotspot location based on a comparison of the regional count and the hotspot count for the potential hotspot location.