Patent ID: 7707239

Claim:
A system for providing location information for digital images using one or more wireless networks that broadcast network IDs that are detectable through a wireless protocol, the system having a network-based service that maintains a database of the wireless networks, the network IDs, a location tag of each wireless network describing a location of the corresponding wireless network, and a plurality of reference images of items in view of one or more wireless networks, and for each reference image: storing the reference image in association with a corresponding network ID of a wireless network from the one or more wireless networks in which the reference image is in view of and a description tag indicating the content of the image, the system comprising: a mobile device configured to detect the wireless networks and the network IDs, the mobile device further configured to capture digital images and to associate the captured images with a network ID detected at the time of image capture; means for transmitting the captured images and the network IDs associated with each of the captured images to the network-based service for retrieval of the corresponding location tags for the captured images each location tag describing the location without using global positioning system coordinates; and for each uploaded digital image: means for receiving a corresponding description tag of a matching reference image from the network-based service if the server finds a matching reference image among reference images associated with a same network ID as the network ID; means for receiving the retrieved location tags from the network-based service and for associating the location tags with the captured images if the server does not find a matching reference image; and means for displaying the captured images and for each captured image: one of a corresponding location tag and a corresponding description tag; wherein at least one of the means includes at least one electronic hardware component.