Patent ID: 6925458

Claim:
An information processing system for centralizing and managing media schedule data and providing the media schedule data in response to a search query entered via a graphical user interface accessible by a plurality of users and received by said system via a network connection from a remote computer terminal corresponding to one of the plurality of users, said information processing system comprising: a server connected to a network via the network connection for receiving the search query; a media schedule database containing media schedule data comprising a plurality of records, each record of the plurality of records including at least a name of a person and at least a time and/or place description of the occurrence of at least one media activity of said person, wherein said at least one media activity is selected from the group consisting essentially of broadcast events, such as radio, television and web broadcast events, and non-broadcast events, such as a live appearance at a particular venue, wherein at least one media activity of said at least one media activity is scheduled to take place in a future time, wherein at least two non-related media activities of said at least one media activity can overlap in time such that said person is scheduled to appear simultaneously in two different venues of a plurality of venues during the time overlap, such as a television program and a particular location, and wherein one of the two different venues can be a particular venue for the live appearance; and a database query search engine configured for receiving the search query from the server and for searching the media schedule database for obtaining at least one record of the plurality of records approximately satisfying the search query.