Patent ID: 7962579

Claim:
A kiosk system for distributing electronic services to wireless devices in a wireless personal area network (PAN) comprising: a publicly located and fixed positioned kiosk retrofitted with a host computing device for selectively retrieving electronic services from remote servers over an existing physical communications link to an existing communications network and a short-range frequency communications system for delivering selected electronic services over a short-range frequency communications link to wireless devices in a personal area network (PAN), said kiosk maintaining a list of available electronic services including data and applications; wherein a portion of the available electronic services are stored locally within the kiosk, and wherein a different portion of the available electronic services are retrievable by the kiosk from servers of the existing communications network via the physical communications link; and wherein the kiosk, in response to subscriber queries received from the wireless devices, generates subscriber-specific lists of available services by selecting among a list of all available services, each of the selections being based upon at least one of a subscriber prioritization, a predetermined value assigned to the subscriber, advertising revenues associated with each available service, and communication resources of the wireless devices; wherein the kiosk conveys the subscriber-specific lists to the wireless devices for presentment to subscribers and receives a request for at least one of the available electronic services included in the subscriber-specific list from the wireless device; wherein the kiosk determines if the requested electronic services wholly reside in the kiosk and if components of the requested electronic services reside in the kiosk; wherein if it is determined that the requested electronic services wholly reside in the kiosk, the kiosk delivers the requested electronic services to the wireless device in the PAN without retrieving the requested electronic services over the existing physical communications link; wherein if it is determined that certain components of the requested electronic services reside in the kiosk, the kiosk delivers the certain components to the wireless device while retrieving remaining components of requested electronic services over the existing physical communications link; and wherein if it is determined that none of the requested electronic services resides in the kiosk, the kiosk retrieves the requested electronic services over the existing physical communications link and delivers the retrieved electronic services to the wireless device in the PAN.