Patent ID: 7606580

Claim:
A method of providing information about a location of a user, the method comprising: receiving, at a mobile device, signals from one or more external devices, each signal including information related to a location of the external device that provided the signal; calculating a geographic location of the mobile device using at least some of the information contained in the received signals; accessing a computer memory storage system that stores associations between geographic locations and descriptors; as a consequence of accessing the computer memory storage system, determining that the calculated geographic location of the mobile device is associated with a descriptor; providing an indication of the descriptor associated with the calculated geographic location of the mobile device to a user of the mobile device; enabling a control on the mobile device for confirming that the descriptor associated with the calculated geographic location of the mobile device is correct; receiving an indication of an affirmative activation by the user of the mobile device of the control confirming that the descriptor associated with the calculated geographic location of the mobile device is correct; enabling a control on the mobile device for triggering the updating of an electronic message that provides information describing the user of the mobile device to other users of an electronic communications system; receiving an indication of an affirmative activation by the user of the mobile device of the control triggering the updating of the electronic message that provides information describing the user of the mobile device to other users of the electronic communications system; in response to receiving the indication of the affirmative activation of the control triggering the updating of the electronic message and based on receiving the indication of the affirmative activation of the control confirming that the descriptor associated the calculated geographic location of the mobile device is correct: including the descriptor associated with the geographic location within the electronic message that provides information describing the user of the mobile device to other users of an electronic communications system, and transmitting the electronic message including the descriptor to another device to provide an indication of the location of the user of the mobile device to one of the other users of the electronic communications system.