Patent ID: 8180289

Claim:
A method for making content elements available for use at a public computing kiosk operated by a first-party operator, comprising: receiving at the public computing kiosk a wireless communication from a hand-held device utilized by a second-party end user located in close physical proximity to the public computing kiosk, wherein: the public computing kiosk includes a kiosk CPU and a kiosk memory and a kiosk display; the wireless communication includes information identifying a third-party provider of the hand-held device; and the third-party provider of the hand-held device and the first-party operator of the public computing kiosk are different entities; authenticating the information identifying the third-party provider of the hand-held device; transmitting from the public computing kiosk to a computing system a request including at least a portion of the information identifying the third-party provider of the hand-held device; receiving at the public computing kiosk a transmission from the computing system in response to the request, wherein: the transmission includes a set of content descriptors wherein at least one content descriptor corresponds to at least one content element; and the set of content descriptors corresponding to the at least one content element are based on the information identifying the third-party provider; displaying on the public computing kiosk the set of content descriptors to the second-party end user; accepting as input to the public computing kiosk selection of at least one content descriptor from the set of content descriptors by the second-party end user; executing at the public computing kiosk the at least one content element corresponding to the at least one content descriptor selected by the second-party end user; and displaying a result of the execution of the at least one content element to the second-party end user.