U.S. patent application number 13/239945 was filed with the patent office on 2012-05-31 for apparatuses, methods and systems for information querying and serving on the internet based on profiles.
Invention is credited to Dudley Fitzpatrick, Jason Alan Snyder.
Application Number | 20120136856 13/239945 |
Document ID | / |
Family ID | 39231022 |
Filed Date | 2012-05-31 |
United States Patent
Application |
20120136856 |
Kind Code |
A1 |
Fitzpatrick; Dudley ; et
al. |
May 31, 2012 |
Apparatuses, Methods and Systems for Information Querying and
Serving on the Internet Based on Profiles
Abstract
Apparatuses, methods, and systems for information querying and
serving on the internet based on profiles. Information and/or
advertisement providers may use a code triggered information server
to serve context, demographic, and behavior targeted information to
users on the internet. Users trigger the provision of information
by scanning or observing codes or information, or by selecting web
links. The triggers, together with geographic, temporal, and
user-specific information, are obtained by the server that
receives, processes, and records the message. Based on these
messages and a user profile the server selects information to serve
to a user on the internet from an information base. In one
embodiment, information may also be served to users without any
initiating trigger. This is based on user trajectories or
web-surfing habits deduced from the accumulated history of
triggers.
Inventors: |
Fitzpatrick; Dudley;
(Pennington, NJ) ; Snyder; Jason Alan;
(Philadelphia, PA) |
Family ID: |
39231022 |
Appl. No.: |
13/239945 |
Filed: |
September 22, 2011 |
Related U.S. Patent Documents
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Application
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Patent Number |
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11864814 |
Sep 28, 2007 |
8069169 |
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13239945 |
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60827381 |
Sep 28, 2006 |
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60828959 |
Oct 10, 2006 |
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60828962 |
Oct 10, 2006 |
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60828970 |
Oct 10, 2006 |
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60828969 |
Oct 10, 2006 |
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60828967 |
Oct 10, 2006 |
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60828968 |
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60828965 |
Oct 10, 2006 |
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Current U.S.
Class: |
707/728 ;
707/732; 707/769; 707/E17.005; 707/E17.014 |
Current CPC
Class: |
G06Q 10/063114 20130101;
G06Q 30/06 20130101; G06Q 10/06398 20130101; G06Q 30/02 20130101;
G06Q 10/06311 20130101; G06F 16/9535 20190101 |
Class at
Publication: |
707/728 ;
707/769; 707/732; 707/E17.005; 707/E17.014 |
International
Class: |
G06F 17/30 20060101
G06F017/30 |
Claims
1. A processor-implemented method embodiment for serving ambient
condition sensitive information to a mobile user, comprising:
accumulating user activity interest information; accumulating user
situational information; associating the user activity interest
information and user situational information with a user profile;
updating the user profile with the associated information in a
database; analyzing accumulated information associated with the
user profile; querying an information database based on the
analysis of the user profile; selecting information based on the
user profile and ambient conditions at a user location to include
in a message; and sending the message to a user.
2. The method of embodiment 1, wherein the information included in
the message sent to the user is selected based on a ranking.
3. The method of embodiment 1, further comprising receiving a
relevance rating of the message sent to the user.
4. The method of embodiment 1, further comprising updating an Ad
profile based on the user activity interest information and user
situational information.
5. The method of embodiment 1, further, comprising: determining
information to include in a message based on the querying of the
information database.
6. The method of embodiment 1, wherein the user situational
information includes geographic location.
7. The method of embodiment 7, wherein the user situational
information includes geographic location at a given time.
8. The method of embodiment 1, wherein the user situational
information includes a context of a scanned code.
9. The method of embodiment 1, wherein the user situational
information is continuously updated.
10. The method of embodiment 1, wherein the accumulated user
activity interest information comprises a record of user
behavior.
11. The method of embodiment 1, wherein the user activity interest
information is comprised of a code scanned by a mobile device.
12. The method of embodiment 11, wherein the code is a matrix code
and the scanned by a mobile device comprises taking a picture of
the matrix code with a mobile device camera.
13. The method of embodiment 11, further comprising: receiving an
image of the scanned code at a server; and wherein analyzing
accumulated information associated with the user profile comprises
matching the code image to a code image database.
14. The method of embodiment 13, wherein the image of the scanned
code was sent via MMS.
15. The method of embodiment 14, wherein the message sent to the
user is sent via MMS.
16. The method of embodiment 14, wherein the image of the scanned
code was sent to a short code address.
17. The method of embodiment 13, further comprising: performing an
image enhancement on the image of the scanned code prior to
matching the code image to a code image database.
18. The method of embodiment 1, wherein the message sent to the
user is sent to a mobile device.
19. The method of embodiment 1, wherein the ambient conditions are
measured by a user mobile device.
20. The method of embodiment 1, wherein the ambient conditions are
retrieved from an ambient condition data feed.
21. The method of embodiment 1, wherein the ambient conditions
comprise weather information.
22. The method of embodiment 1, wherein the ambient conditions
comprise news information.
23. The method of embodiment 1, further comprising: querying a
marketer rule database to extract a marketer rule; and wherein the
selecting information is further based on implementation of the
marketer rule.
24. The method of embodiment 1, further comprising: querying a
third party customer database to extract a customer record; and
wherein the selecting information is further based on the customer
record.
5. A processor-implemented method embodiment for serving ambient
condition sensitive information to a mobile user, comprising:
receiving at a server messages from a user comprised of user
identification, mobile device identification, a code image scanned
by the mobile device, time of the scan, and user geographic
location at the time of the scan, wherein the messages were sent to
a short code address via MMS; associating the user identification
with a user profile in a database; updating the user profile with
the received messages; enhancing the code image scanned by the
mobile device; analyzing the accumulated messages in the user
profile; determining proper information to serve to the user based
on the received message, the user profile, and ambient conditions
at a user location; selecting the information to serve to the user
from a database; incorporating the selected information into a
reply message; and sending the reply message to the user's mobile
device via MMS.
26. A processor-implemented method embodiment for receiving ambient
condition sensitive information, comprising: accumulating user
activity interest information; accumulating user situational
information, including ambient conditions at a user location;
incorporating user activity interest information in an interest
message; incorporating user situational information in a
situational message; sending the interest message to a server;
sending the situational message to the server; and receiving a
reply based on the interest message, the situational message, and a
user profile.
27. The method of embodiment 26, wherein the interest message and
situational message are bundled into a single message.
28. The method of embodiment 26, further comprising responding to
the reply with a relevance rating.
29. The method of embodiment 26, wherein the reply is received on a
mobile device.
30. The method of embodiment 26, wherein the interest message and
situational message are sent from a mobile device.
31. The method of embodiment 26, wherein the user activity interest
information is comprised of a code scanned by a mobile device.
32. The method of embodiment 26, wherein the user situational
information includes geographic location at a given time.
33. A processor-implemented method embodiment of serving ambient
condition sensitive information, comprising: accumulating user
activity interest information; accumulating user situational
information; analyzing the user activity interest information and
user situational information; predicting expected user interest and
situational information from the analysis; determining serving
information to serve to a user based on expected user interest
information, expected user situational information, and ambient
conditions at a user location; selecting the information to serve
from a database; incorporating the selected information into a
message; determining a target time and place to send a message;
incorporating serving information and target time and place into a
message; and sending the message for distribution.
34. The method of embodiment 33, further, comprising: querying and
selecting the information to serve from a database.
35. The method of embodiment 34, further, comprising: incorporating
the selected information into a message.
36. The method of embodiment 33, further comprising receiving a
relevance rating of the distributed message.
37. The method of embodiment 33, wherein the message is sent to a
user.
38. The method of embodiment 33, wherein the proper place is an
advertising system.
39. The method of embodiment 38, further, comprising: querying and
selecting the information to serve from a database.
40. The method of embodiment 39, further, comprising: incorporating
the selected information into a message.
41. The method of embodiment 40, wherein the message includes the
target place and time.
42. The method of embodiment 41, wherein the message includes the
determined serving information.
43. The method of embodiment 42, wherein the advertising system may
use the target place and time information to place advertising for
a user to observe.
44. The method of embodiment 41, further, comprising: querying and
selecting the information to serve from a database.
45. The method of embodiment 44, further, comprising: incorporating
the selected information into a placement message.
46. The method of embodiment 45, wherein the advertising system may
use the target place and time information and placement message to
place advertising for a user to observe.
47. The method of embodiment 33, wherein the user situational
information is comprised of user space-time trajectories.
48. The method of embodiment 33, wherein the user situational
information is comprised of user web-surfing habits.
49. The method of embodiment 33, wherein the user situational
information is comprised of user trajectories in a virtual
world.
50. The method of embodiment 33, wherein the information served to
the user is sent to a mobile device.
51. The method of embodiment 33, wherein the information served to
the user is served on a website.
52. The method of embodiment 33, wherein the information served to
the user is served in a virtual world.
53. The method of embodiment 33, wherein the information served to
the user is based on the user's geographic position.
54. The method of embodiment 33, wherein the information served to
the user is based on the time.
55. A processor-implemented method embodiment for accumulating user
information and delivering targeted content based thereon,
comprising: accumulating user activity interest information;
accumulating user situational information; associating the user
activity interest information and user situational information with
a user profile; updating the user profile with the associated
information in a database; analyzing accumulated information
associated with the user profile; querying an information database
based on the analysis of the user profile; selecting information
based on the user profile to include in a message; and sending the
message to a user.
56. The method of embodiment 55, wherein the information included
in the message sent to the user is selected based on a ranking.
57. The method of embodiment 55, further comprising receiving a
relevance rating of the message sent to the user.
58. The method of embodiment 55, further comprising updating an Ad
profile based on the user activity interest information and user
situational information.
59. The method of embodiment 55, further, comprising: determining
information to include in a message based on the querying of the
information database.
60. The method of embodiment 55, wherein the user situational
information includes geographic location.
61. The method of embodiment 60, wherein the user situational
information includes geographic location at a given time.
62. The method of embodiment 55, wherein the user situational
information includes a context of a scanned code.
63. The method of embodiment 55, wherein the user situational
information is continuously updated.
64. The method of embodiment 55, wherein the accumulated user
activity interest information comprises a record of user
behavior.
65. The method of embodiment 55, wherein the user activity interest
information is comprised of a code scanned by a mobile device.
66. The method of embodiment 65, wherein the code is a matrix code
and the scanned by a mobile device comprises taking a picture of
the matrix code with a mobile device camera.
67. The method of embodiment 65, further comprising: receiving an
image of the scanned code at a server; and wherein analyzing
accumulated information associated with the user profile comprises
matching the code image to a code image database.
68. The method of embodiment 67, wherein the image of the scanned
code was sent via MMS.
69. The method of embodiment 68, wherein the message sent to the
user is sent via MMS.
70. The method of embodiment 69, wherein the image of the scanned
code was sent to a short code address.
71. The method of embodiment 70, further comprising: performing an
image enhancement on the image of the scanned code prior to
matching the code image to a code image database.
72. The method of embodiment 55, wherein the message sent to the
user is sent to a mobile device.
73. The method of embodiment 55, wherein the message sent to the
user is served on a website.
74. The method of embodiment 55, further comprising: querying a
marketer rule database to extract a marketer rule; and wherein the
selecting information is further based on implementation of the
marketer rule.
75. The method of embodiment 55, further comprising: querying a
third party customer database to extract a customer record; and
wherein the selecting information is further based on the customer
record.
76. A processor-implemented method embodiment for accumulating
mobile device code scan information from a user and delivering
content based thereon, comprising: receiving at a server messages
from a user comprised of user identification, mobile device
identification, a code image scanned by the mobile device, time of
the scan, and user geographic location at the time of the scan,
wherein the messages were sent to a shortcode address via MMS;
associating the user identification with a user profile in a
database; updating the user profile with the received messages;
enhancing the code image scanned by the mobile device; analyzing
the accumulated messages in the user profile; determining proper
information to serve to the user based on the received message and
the user profile; selecting the information to serve to the user
from a database; incorporating the selected information into a
reply message; and sending the reply message to the user's mobile
device via MMS.
77. A processor-implemented method embodiment for receiving
information based on accumulated user activity and situational
information, comprising: accumulating user activity interest
information; accumulating user situational information;
incorporating user activity interest information in an interest
message; incorporating user situational information in a
situational message; sending the interest message to a server;
sending the situational message to the server; and receiving a
reply based on the interest message, the situational message, and a
user profile.
78. The method of embodiment 77, wherein the interest message and
situational message are bundled into a single message.
79. The method of embodiment 77, further comprising responding to
the reply with a relevance rating.
80. The method of embodiment 77, wherein the reply is received on a
mobile device.
81. The method of embodiment 77, wherein the interest message and
situational message are sent from a mobile device.
82. The method of embodiment 77, wherein the user activity interest
information is comprised of a code scanned by a mobile device.
83. The method of embodiment 77, wherein the user situational
information includes geographic location at a given time.
84. A processor-implemented method embodiment of selecting data
from a database based on user activity interest information,
comprising: filtering data in the database by activity subject
tags; determining which remaining data match: user demographic
category tags; user geographic location tags; user temporal tags;
selecting the data with the greatest number of matches; and
choosing a single datum from the remaining data.
85. The method of embodiment 84, wherein the data filtered by
activity subject tags are further matched to user subject interest
tags.
86. The method of embodiment 84, wherein the data filtered by
activity subject tags are further matched to user hardware
identification tags.
87. The method of embodiment 84, wherein the data are ads.
88. A processor-implemented method embodiment for predicting user
interest and situations and supplying information to the user based
thereon, comprising: accumulating user activity interest
information; accumulating user situational information; analyzing
the user activity interest information and user situational
information; predicting expected user interest and situational
information from the analysis; determining serving information to
serve to a user based on expected user interest and situational
information; selecting the information to serve from a database;
incorporating the selected information into a message; determining
a target time and place to send a message; incorporating serving
information and target time and place into a message; and sending
the message for distribution.
89. The method of embodiment 88, further, comprising: querying and
selecting the information to serve from a database.
90. The method of embodiment 89, further, comprising: incorporating
the selected information into a message.
91. The method of embodiment 88, further comprising receiving a
relevance rating of the distributed message.
92. The method of embodiment 88, wherein the message is sent to a
user.
93. The method of embodiment 88, wherein the proper place is an
advertising system.
94. The method of embodiment 93, further, comprising: querying and
selecting the information to serve from a database.
95. The method of embodiment 94, further, comprising: incorporating
the selected information into a message.
96. The method of embodiment 95, wherein the message includes the
target place and time.
97. The method of embodiment 96, wherein the message includes the
determined serving information.
98. The method of embodiment 97, wherein the advertising system may
use the target place and time information to place advertising for
a user to observe.
99. The method of embodiment 96, further, comprising: querying and
selecting the information to serve from a database.
100. The method of embodiment 99, further, comprising:
incorporating the selected information into a placement
message.
101. The method of embodiment 100, wherein the advertising system
may use the target place and time information and placement message
to place advertising for a user to observe.
102. The method of embodiment 88, wherein the user situational
information is comprised of user space-time trajectories.
103. The method of embodiment 88, wherein the user activity
interest information is comprised of a code scanned by a mobile
device.
104. The method of embodiment 103, wherein the code is a matrix
code and the scanned by a mobile device comprises taking a picture
of the matrix code with a mobile device camera.
105. The method of embodiment 104, further comprising: receiving an
image of the scanned code at a server; and wherein analyzing
accumulated information associated with the user profile comprises
matching the code image to a code image database.
106. The method of embodiment 105, wherein the image of the scanned
code was sent via MMS.
107. The method of embodiment 106, wherein the message sent to the
user is sent via MMS.
108. The method of embodiment 106 wherein the image of the scanned
code was sent to a short code address.
109. The method of embodiment 105 urther comprising: performing an
image enhancement on the image of the scanned code prior to
matching the code image to a code image database.
110. The method of embodiment 88, wherein the information served to
the user is sent to a mobile device.
111. The method of embodiment 88, wherein the information served to
the user is based on the user's geographic position.
112. A processor-implemented method embodiment for predicting user
interest and situations and supplying information to the user based
thereon, comprising: accumulating at a server a plurality of code
images scanned by a user's mobile device and sent to a short code
address via MMS; accumulating user situational information;
analyzing the user activity interest information and user
situational information; predicting expected user interest and
situational information from the analysis; determining serving
information to serve to a user based on expected user interest and
situational information; selecting the information to serve from a
database; incorporating the selected information into a message;
determining a target time and place to send a message;
incorporating serving information and target time and place into a
message; and sending the message for distribution via MMS.
113. A processor-implemented method embodiment for scoring data
based on a user profile and situational information and selecting
data from a database, comprising: assigning the same initial score
to every datum; multiplying each datum's score by a subject
coefficient for every match between the datum's subject tag and
subject tags in a user profile; multiplying each datum's score by a
temporal coefficient for a match between the datum's temporal tag
and a temporal tag in a user profile; multiplying each datum's
score by a demographic coefficient for a match between the datum's
demographic tags and demographic tags in a user profile; selecting
the highest scoring data; and selecting a single datum from the
remaining data.
114. The method of embodiment 113, wherein each datum's score is
further multiplied by a geographic coefficient for every match
between the datum's geographic tags and the geographic tags in a
user profile.
115. The method of embodiment 113, wherein each datum's score is
further multiplied by a hardware coefficient for every match
between the datum's hardware identification tags and the hardware
identification tags in a user profile.
116. The method of embodiment 113 wherein the data are ads.
117. A processor-implemented method embodiment for coordinating
personnel based on delivered personnel directives, comprising:
accumulating user activity information; accumulating user
situational information; associating the user activity interest
information and user situational information with a user profile;
updating the user profile with the associated information in a
database; analyzing accumulated information associated with the
user profile; querying an information database based on the
analysis of the user profile; selecting information based on the
user profile to include in a personnel directive; and sending the
personnel directive to a user.
118. The method of embodiment 117, wherein the information included
in the personnel directive sent to the user is selected based on a
ranking.
119. The method of embodiment 118, wherein the ranking is based on
the user's employment status.
120. The method of embodiment 118, wherein the ranking is based on
the user's progress in accomplishing a series of tasks.
121. The method of embodiment 117, further comprising receiving a
relevance rating of the personnel directive sent to the user.
122. The method of embodiment 117, further comprising updating an
Ad profile based on the user activity interest information and user
situational information.
123. The method of embodiment 117, wherein the information included
in the personnel directive sent to the user is selected based on
ambient conditions.
124. The method of embodiment 117, further, comprising: determining
information to include in a personnel directive based on the
querying of the information database.
125. The method of embodiment 117, wherein the user situational
information includes geographic location.
126. The method of embodiment 125, wherein the user situational
information includes geographic location at a given time.
127. The method of embodiment 117, wherein the user activity
information is comprised of a code scanned by a mobile device.
128. The method of embodiment 127, wherein the code is a matrix
code and the scanned by a mobile device comprises taking a picture
of the matrix code with a mobile device camera.
129. The method of embodiment 128 further comprising: receiving an
image of the scanned code at a server; and wherein analyzing
accumulated information associated with the user profile comprises
matching the code image to a code image database.
130. The method of embodiment 129, wherein the image of the scanned
code was sent via MMS.
131. The method of embodiment 130, wherein the message sent to the
user is sent via MMS.
132. The method of embodiment 130, wherein the image of the scanned
code was sent to a short code address.
133. The method of embodiment 129, further comprising: performing
an image enhancement on the image of the scanned code prior to
matching the code image to a code image database.
134. The method of embodiment 117, wherein the user activity
information is comprised of an internet link chosen by the
user.
135. The method of embodiment 117, wherein the user activity
information is comprised of user decisions within a virtual
world.
136. The method of embodiment 117, wherein the personnel directive
sent to the user is sent to a mobile device.
137. The method of embodiment 117, wherein the personnel directive
sent to the user is served on a website.
138. The method of embodiment 117, wherein the personnel directive
sent to the user is served within a virtual world.
139. A processor-implemented method embodiment for coordinating
personnel by serving personnel directives to a mobile device,
comprising: receiving at a server messages from a user comprised of
user identification, mobile device identification, a code image
scanned by the mobile device, time of the scan, and user geographic
location at the time of the scan, wherein the messages are sent to
a short code address via MMS; associating the user identification
with a user profile in a database; updating the user profile with
the received messages; enhancing the code image scanned by the
mobile device; analyzing the accumulated messages in the user
profile; determining proper information to serve to the user based
on the received message and the user profile; selecting the
information to serve to the user from a database; incorporating the
selected information into a personnel directive; and sending the
personnel directive to the user's mobile device via MMS.
140. A processor-implemented method embodiment for receiving
personnel directives, comprising: accumulating user activity
information; accumulating user situational information;
incorporating user activity information in an activity message;
incorporating user situational information in a situational
message; sending the activity message to a server; sending the
situational message to the server; and receiving a personnel
directive based on the activity message, the situational message,
and a user profile.
141. The method of embodiment 140, wherein the activity message and
situational message are bundled into a single message.
142. The method of embodiment 140, further comprising responding to
the personnel directive with a relevance rating.
143. The method of embodiment 140, wherein the personnel directive
is received on a mobile device.
144. The method of embodiment 140, wherein the activity message and
situational message are sent from a mobile device.
145. The method of embodiment 140, wherein the user activity
information is comprised of a code scanned by a mobile device.
146. The method of embodiment 140, wherein the user activity
information is comprised of an internet link chosen by a user.
147. The method of embodiment 140, wherein the user activity
information is comprised of user decisions within a virtual
world.
148. The method of embodiment 140, wherein the user situational
information includes geographic location at a given time.
149. A processor-implemented method embodiment for coordinating
personnel based on delivered personnel directives, comprising:
accumulating user activity information; accumulating user
situational information; analyzing the user activity interest
information and user situational information; predicting expected
user activity and situational information from the analysis;
determining serving information to serve to a user based on
expected user activity and situational information; selecting the
information to serve from a database; incorporating the selected
information into a personnel directive; determining a target time
and place to send the personnel directive; incorporating the
personnel directive and target time and place into a message; and
sending the message for distribution.
150. The method of embodiment 149, further, comprising: querying
and selecting the personnel directive from a database.
151. The method of embodiment 150, further, comprising:
incorporating the selected personnel directive into a message.
152. The method of embodiment 149, wherein the expected situational
information includes ambient conditions.
153. The method of embodiment 149, further comprising receiving a
relevance rating of the distributed message.
154. The method of embodiment 149, wherein the message is sent to a
user.
155. The method of embodiment 149, wherein the message is sent to a
distribution system.
156. The method of embodiment 155, further, comprising: querying
and selecting the personnel directive to serve from a database.
157. The method of embodiment 156, further, comprising:
incorporating the selected personnel directive into a message.
158. The method of embodiment 157, wherein the message includes the
target place and time.
159. The method of embodiment 158, wherein the message includes the
determined serving information.
160. The method of embodiment 159, wherein the distribution system
may use the target place and time information to place a personnel
directive for a user to observe.
161. The method of embodiment 158, further, comprising: querying
and selecting the personnel directive to serve from a database.
162. The method of embodiment 161, further, comprising:
incorporating the selected personnel directive into a placement
message.
163. The method of embodiment 162, wherein the distribution system
may use the target place and time information and placement message
to place personnel directives for a user to observe.
164. The method of embodiment 149, wherein the user situational
information is comprised of user space-time trajectories.
165. The method of embodiment 149, wherein the user situational
information is comprised of user web-surfing habits.
166. The method of embodiment 149, wherein the user situational
information is comprised of user trajectories in a virtual
world.
167. The method of embodiment 149, wherein the personnel directive
served to the user is sent to a mobile device.
168. The method of embodiment 149, wherein the personnel directive
served to the user is served on a website.
169. The method of embodiment 149, wherein the personnel directive
served to the user is served in a virtual world.
170. The method of embodiment 149, wherein the personnel directive
served to the user is based on the user's geographic position.
171. The method of embodiment 149, wherein the personnel directive
served to the user is based on the time.
172. The method of embodiment 149, wherein the personnel directive
is based on the user's employment status.
173. The method of embodiment 149, wherein the personnel directive
is based on the user's progress in accomplishing a series of
tasks.
174. A processor-implemented method embodiment for selecting data
from a database based on user activity information and employment
status, comprising: filtering data in the database by user
employment status tags; filtering data in the database by activity
subject tags; determining which remaining data match: user
geographic location tags; user temporal tags; selecting the data
with the greatest number of matches; and choosing a single datum
from the remaining data.
175. The method of embodiment 174, wherein the data filtered by
activity subject tags are further matched to user subject interest
tags.
176. The method of embodiment 174, wherein the data filtered by
activity subject tags are further matched to user demographic
tags.
177. The method of embodiment 174, wherein the data filtered by
activity subject tags are further matched to user hardware
identification tags.
178. The method of embodiment 174, wherein the data are personnel
directives.
179. A processor-implemented method embodiment for selecting data
from a database based on employment status, subject, and time,
comprising: assigning the same initial score to every datum;
multiplying each datum's score by a status coefficient for every
match between the datum's employment status tag and employment
status tag in a user profile; multiplying each datum's score by a
subject coefficient for every match between the datum's subject tag
and subject tags in a user profile; multiplying each datum's score
by a temporal coefficient for a match between the datum's temporal
tag and a temporal tag in a user profile; selecting the highest
scoring data; and selecting a single datum from the remaining
data.
180. The method of embodiment 179, wherein each datum's score is
further multiplied by a demographic coefficient for a match between
the datum's demographic tags and demographic tags in a user
profile.
181. The method of embodiment 179, wherein each datum's score is
further multiplied by a geographic coefficient for a match between
the datum's geographic tags and the geographic tags in a user
profile.
182. The method of embodiment 179, wherein each datum's score is
further multiplied by a hardware coefficient for a match between
the datum's hardware identification tags and the hardware
identification tags in a user profile.
183. The method of embodiment 179 wherein the data are personnel
directives.
184. A processor-implemented method embodiment for generating
proximity notifications indicating proximities between users,
comprising: accumulating user situational information; accumulating
user association information; analyzing the user situational
information; predicting expected user interest and situational
information from the analysis; determining if a user is in
proximity with other users contained in the user association
information; and notifying a user of the proximity.
185. The method of embodiment 184, wherein the user situational
information is comprised of user space-time trajectories.
186. The method of embodiment 184, wherein the user situational
information is comprised of user web surfing habits.
187. The method of embodiment 184, wherein the user situational
information is comprised of user trajectories in a virtual
world.
188. The method of embodiment 184, further comprising notifying any
of the other users of the proximity.
189. The method of embodiment 184, wherein the notification of
proximity is further based on user profiles.
190. The method of embodiment 184, wherein the user situational
information is comprised of a location corresponding to a code
scanned by a mobile device.
191. The method of embodiment 190, wherein the code is a matrix
code and the scanned by a mobile device comprises taking a picture
of the matrix code with a mobile device camera.
192. The method of embodiment 191 further comprising: receiving an
image of the scanned code at a server.
193. The method of embodiment 192, wherein the image of the scanned
code was sent via MMS.
194. The method of embodiment 193, wherein the message sent to the
user is sent via MMS.
195. The method of embodiment 193, wherein the image of the scanned
code was sent to a short code address.
196. The method of embodiment 192, further comprising: performing
an image enhancement on the image of the scanned code.
197. A processor-implemented method embodiment for serving
information to users within a virtual world based on accumulated
user information, comprising: accumulating user activity interest
information; accumulating user situational information; associating
the user activity interest information and user situational
information with a user profile; updating the user profile with the
associated information in a database; analyzing accumulated
information associated with the user profile; querying an
information database based on the analysis of the user profile;
selecting information based on the user profile to include in a
message; and serving the message in a virtual world.
198. The method of embodiment 197, wherein the information included
in the message sent to the user is selected based on a ranking.
199. The method of embodiment 197, further comprising receiving a
relevance rating of the message sent to the user.
200. The method of embodiment 197, further comprising updating an
Ad profile based on the user activity interest information and user
situational information.
201. The method of embodiment 197, wherein the information included
in the message sent to the user is selected based on ambient
conditions within the virtual world.
202. The method of embodiment 197, further, comprising: determining
information to include in a message based on the querying of the
information database.
203. The method of embodiment 197, wherein the user situational
information includes geographic location.
204. The method of embodiment 203, wherein the user situational
information includes geographic location at a given time.
205. The method of embodiment 197, wherein the user situational
information includes location within a virtual world.
206. The method of embodiment 205, wherein the user situational
information includes location within a virtual world at a given
time.
207. The method of embodiment 197, wherein the user activity
interest information is comprised of a code scanned by a mobile
device.
208. The method of embodiment 197, wherein the user activity
interest information is comprised of an internet link chosen by the
user.
209. The method of embodiment 197, wherein the user activity
interest information is comprised of a user decision within a
virtual world.
210. The method of embodiment 197, wherein the message sent to the
user is sent to a mobile device.
211. A processor-implemented method embodiment for serving
information in a virtual world based on accumulated user
information, comprising: receiving messages from a user comprised
of user identification, a user decision within a virtual world,
time of the decision, and user location within the virtual world at
the time of the decision; associating the user identification with
a user profile in a database; updating the user profile with the
received messages; analyzing the accumulated messages in the user
profile; determining proper information to serve to the user based
on the received message and the user profile; selecting the
information to serve to the user from a database; incorporating the
selected information into a reply message; and serving the reply
message within the virtual world.
212. A processor-implemented method embodiment for receiving
information within a virtual world, comprising: accumulating user
activity interest information; accumulating user situational
information; incorporating user activity interest information in an
interest message; incorporating user situational information in a
situational message; sending the interest message to a server;
sending the situational message to the server; and receiving a
reply that is displayed within a virtual world based on the
interest message, the situational message, and a user profile.
213. The method of embodiment 212, wherein the interest message and
situational message are bundled into a single message.
214. The method of embodiment 212, further comprising responding to
the reply with a relevance rating.
215. The method of embodiment 212, wherein the reply is received on
a mobile device.
216. The method of embodiment 212, wherein the interest message and
situational message are sent from a mobile device.
217. The method of embodiment 212, wherein the user activity
interest information is comprised of a code scanned by a mobile
device.
218. The method of embodiment 212, wherein the user activity
interest information is comprised of a user decision within a
virtual world.
219. The method of embodiment 212, wherein the user situational
information includes geographic location at a given time.
220. The method of embodiment 212, wherein the user situational
information includes location within a virtual world at a given
time.
221. A processor-implemented method embodiment for serving
information within a virtual world based on accumulated user
information, comprising: accumulating user activity interest
information; accumulating user situational information; analyzing
the user activity interest information and user situational
information; predicting expected user interest and situational
information from the analysis; determining serving information to
serve to a user based on expected user interest and situational
information; selecting the information to serve from a database;
incorporating the selected information into a message; determining
a target time and place to send a message; incorporating serving
information and target time and place into a message; and sending
the message for distribution within a virtual world.
222. The method of embodiment 221, further, comprising: querying
and selecting the information to serve from a database.
223. The method of embodiment 222, further, comprising:
incorporating the selected information into a message.
224. The method of embodiment 221, wherein the expected situational
information includes ambient conditions within a virtual world.
225. The method of embodiment 221, further comprising receiving a
relevance rating of the distributed message.
226. The method of embodiment 221, wherein the message is served to
a user.
227. The method of embodiment 221, wherein the message is sent to
an advertising system.
228. The method of embodiment 227, further, comprising: querying
and selecting the information to serve from a database.
229. The method of embodiment 228, further, comprising:
incorporating the selected information into a message.
230. The method of embodiment 229, wherein the message includes the
target location within a virtual world and time.
231. The method of embodiment 230, wherein the message includes the
determined serving information.
232. The method of embodiment 231, wherein the advertising system
may use the target location within a virtual world and time
information to place advertising for a user to observe.
233. The method of embodiment 230, further, comprising: querying
and selecting the information to serve from a database.
234. The method of embodiment 233, further, comprising:
incorporating the selected information into a placement
message.
235. The method of embodiment 234, wherein the advertising system
may use the target location within a virtual world and time
information and placement message to place advertising for a user
to observe.
236. The method of embodiment 221, wherein the user situational
information is comprised of user space-time trajectories.
237. The method of embodiment 221, wherein the user situational
information is comprised of user trajectories within a virtual
world.
238. The method of embodiment 221, wherein the information served
to the user is sent to a mobile device.
239. The method of embodiment 221, wherein the information served
to the user is based on the user's geographic position.
240. The method of embodiment 221, wherein the information served
to the user is based on the user's position within a virtual
world.
241. The method of embodiment 221, wherein the information served
to the user is based on the time.
242. A processor-implemented method embodiment for selecting data
from a database based on user virtual world activity interest and
situational information, comprising: filtering data in the database
by virtual world decision subject tags; determining which remaining
data match: user demographic category tags; user virtual world
location tags; user temporal tags; selecting the data with the
greatest number of matches; and choosing a single datum from the
remaining data.
243. The method of embodiment 242, wherein the data filtered by
website subject tags are further matched to user subject interest
tags.
244. The method of embodiment 242, wherein the data are ads.
245. A processor-implemented method embodiment for selecting data
from a database based on a virtual world location, comprising:
assigning the same initial score to every datum; multiplying each
datum's score by a subject coefficient for every match between the
datum's subject tag and subject tags in a user profile; multiplying
each datum's score by a temporal coefficient for a match between
the datum's temporal tag and a temporal tag in a user profile;
multiplying each datum's score by a demographic coefficient for a
match between the datum's demographic tags and demographic tags in
a user profile; multiplying each datum's score by a virtual world
location coefficient for every match between the datum's virtual
world location tags and the virtual world location tags in the user
profile; selecting the highest scoring data; and selecting a single
datum from the remaining data.
246. The method of embodiment 245 wherein the data are ads.
247. A processor-implemented method embodiment for tracking user
information on the internet and serving information to users based
thereon, comprising: accumulating user activity interest
information; accumulating user situational information; associating
the user activity interest information and user situational
information with a user profile; updating the user profile with the
associated information in a database; analyzing accumulated
information associated with the user profile; querying an
information database based on the analysis of the user profile;
selecting information based on the user profile to include in a
message; and serving the message on a website.
248. The method of embodiment 247, wherein the information included
in the message sent to the user is selected based on a ranking.
249. The method of embodiment 247, further comprising receiving a
relevance rating of the message sent to the user.
250. The method of embodiment 247, further comprising updating an
Ad profile based on the user activity interest information and user
situational information.
251. The method of embodiment 247, wherein the information included
in the message sent to the user is selected based on ambient
conditions.
252. The method of embodiment 247, further, comprising: determining
information to include in a message based on the querying of the
information database.
253. The method of embodiment 247, wherein the user situational
information includes geographic location.
254. The method of embodiment 253, wherein the user situational
information includes geographic location at a given time.
255. The method of embodiment 247, wherein the user activity
interest information is comprised of a code scanned by a mobile
device.
256. The method of embodiment 247, wherein the user activity
interest information is comprised of an internet link chosen by the
user.
257. The method of embodiment 247, wherein the message sent to the
user is sent to a mobile device.
258. A processor-implemented method embodiment for tracking user
information on the internet and serving information to a mobile
device based thereon, comprising: receiving messages from a user
comprised of user identification, mobile device identification, a
code scanned by the mobile device, time of the scan, and user
geographic location at the time of the scan; associating the user
identification with a user profile in a database; updating the user
profile with the received messages; analyzing the accumulated
messages in the user profile; determining proper information to
serve to the user based on the received message and the user
profile; selecting the information to serve to the user from a
database; incorporating the selected information into a reply
message; and serving the reply message on a website.
259. A processor-implemented method embodiment for receiving
information on the internet based on accumulated user information,
comprising: accumulating user activity interest information;
accumulating user situational information; incorporating user
activity interest information in an interest message; incorporating
user situational information in a situational message; sending the
interest message to a server; sending the situational message to
the server; and receiving a reply that is displayed on a website
based on the interest message, the situational message, and a user
profile.
260. The method of embodiment 259, wherein the interest message and
situational message are bundled into a single message.
261. The method of embodiment 259, further comprising responding to
the reply with a relevance rating.
262. The method of embodiment 259, wherein the reply is received on
a mobile device.
263. The method of embodiment 259, wherein the interest message and
situational message are sent from a mobile device.
264. The method of embodiment 259, wherein the user activity
interest information is comprised of a code scanned by a mobile
device.
265. The method of embodiment 259, wherein the user activity
interest information is comprised of an internet link chosen by a
user.
266. The method of embodiment 259, wherein the user situational
information includes geographic location at a given time.
267. A processor-implemented method embodiment for serving
information on a website based on accumulated user information,
comprising: accumulating user activity interest information;
accumulating user situational information; analyzing the user
activity interest information and user situational information;
predicting expected user interest and situational information from
the analysis; determining serving information to serve to a user
based on expected user interest and situational information;
selecting the information to serve from a database; incorporating
the selected information into a message; determining a target time
and place to send a message; incorporating serving information and
target time and place into a message; and sending the message for
distribution on a website.
268. The method of embodiment 267, further, comprising: querying
and selecting the information to serve from a database.
269. The method of embodiment 268, further, comprising:
incorporating the selected information into a message.
270. The method of embodiment 267, wherein the expected situational
information includes ambient conditions.
271. The method of embodiment 267, further comprising receiving a
relevance rating of the distributed message.
272. The method of embodiment 267, wherein the message is served to
a user.
273. The method of embodiment 267, wherein the message is sent to
an advertising system.
274. The method of embodiment 273, further, comprising: querying
and selecting the information to serve from a database.
275. The method of embodiment 274, further, comprising:
incorporating the selected information into a message.
276. The method of embodiment 275, wherein the message includes the
target place and time.
277. The method of embodiment 276, wherein the message includes the
determined serving information.
278. The method of embodiment 277, wherein the advertising system
may use the target place and time information to place advertising
for a user to observe.
279. The method of embodiment 276, further, comprising: querying
and selecting the information to serve from a database.
280. The method of embodiment 279, further, comprising:
incorporating the selected information into a placement
message.
281. The method of embodiment 280, wherein the advertising system
may use the target place and time information and placement message
to place advertising for a user to observe.
282. The method of embodiment 267, wherein the user situational
information is comprised of user space-time trajectories.
283. The method of embodiment 267, wherein the user situational
information is comprised of user web-surfing habits.
284. The method of embodiment 267, wherein the information served
to the user is sent to a mobile device.
285. The method of embodiment 267, wherein the information served
to the user is based on the user's geographic position.
286. The method of embodiment 267, wherein the information served
to the user is based on the time.
87. A processor-implemented method embodiment for selecting data
from a database based on user website interest information,
comprising: filtering data in the database by website subject tags;
determining which remaining data match: user demographic category
tags; user current website tags; user temporal tags; selecting the
data with the greatest number of matches; and choosing a single
datum from the remaining data.
288. The method of embodiment 287, wherein the data filtered by
website subject tags are further matched to user subject interest
tags.
289. The method of embodiment 287, wherein the data filtered by
website subject tags are further matched to user hardware
identification tags.
290. The method of embodiment 287, wherein the data are ads.
291. A processor-implemented method embodiment for selecting data
from a database based on correlations between a user profile and a
datum's website association, comprising: assigning the same initial
score to every datum; multiplying each datum's score by a subject
coefficient for every match between the datum's subject tag and
subject tags in a user profile; multiplying each datum's score by a
temporal coefficient for a match between the datum's temporal tag
and a temporal tag in a user profile; multiplying each datum's
score by a demographic coefficient for a match between the datum's
demographic tags and demographic tags in a user profile;
multiplying each datum's score by a website coefficient for every
match between the datum's website tags and the website tags in the
user profile; selecting the highest scoring data; and selecting a
single datum from the remaining data.
292. The method of embodiment 291, wherein each datum's score is
further multiplied by a hardware coefficient for every match
between the datum's hardware identification tags and the hardware
identification tags in a user profile.
293. The method of embodiment 291 wherein the data are ads.
294. A processor implemented method embodiment for processing and
responding to ambiguous content requests, comprising: receiving a
scanned code image and a user ID; analyzing the scanned code image
to determine if the information encoded therein is fully
accessible; selecting a scanned code disambiguation process to
apply to the scanned code images if the information encoded therein
is not fully accessible; applying the scanned code disambiguation
process to the scanned code image to determine a most likely code;
querying accumulated user information in a user profile associated
with the user ID; querying a content database to extract requested
content based on the most likely code and the accumulated user
information; and sending the requested content to a user.
295. The method of embodiment 294, wherein the received scanned
code image is sent via MMS.
296. The method of embodiment 295, wherein the received scan code
image is sent to a short code address.
297. The method of embodiment 296, wherein the requested content is
set to a user Via MMS.
298. The method of embodiment 294, wherein the scanned code
disambiguation process comprises: performing a partial decoding of
the scanned code image; querying a code database to select a
plurality of codes matching the partial decoding of the scanned
code image; and selecting a most likely code from the plurality of
codes based on ancillary scanned code information.
299. The method of embodiment 298, wherein the ancillary scanned
code information comprises the accumulated user information.
300. The method of embodiment 299, wherein the ancillary scanned
code information further comprises situational information
associated with the scanned code image.
301. The method of embodiment 298, wherein the ancillary scanned
code information comprises situational information associated with
the scanned code image.
302. The method of embodiment 301, wherein the situational
information comprises a context from which the scanned code image
was acquired.
303. The method of embodiment 301, wherein the situational
information comprises a location at which the scanned code image
was acquired.
304. The method of embodiment 294, wherein the scanned code
disambiguation process comprises a scanned code image
enhancement.
305. The method of embodiment 304, wherein the scanned code image
enhancement is configurable to perform downsizing, noise removal,
contrast adjustment, brightness adjustment, image tilting, image
rotating, focus adjustment, and edge recognition.
306. The method of embodiment 294, wherein the scanned code
disambiguation process is a server-side process.
307. The method of embodiment 294, wherein the scanned code
disambiguation process is a client-side process.
308. A processor implemented method embodiment for processing and
responding to ambiguous content requests, comprising: receiving a
scanned code image, a user ID, wherein the scanned code image is
sent to a short code address via MMS; analyzing the scaned code
image to determine if the information encoded therein is fully
accessible; selecting a server-side scanned code disambiguation
process to apply to the scanned code images if the information
encoded therein is not fully accessible, wherein the scanned code
disambiguation process comprises any combination of scanned code
image enhancement and partial decoding; applying the server-side
scanned code disambiguation process to the scanned code image to
determine a most likely code; querying accumulated user information
in a user profile associated with the user ID; querying a content
database to extract requested content based on the most likely code
and the accumulated user information; and sending the requested
content to a user via MMS.
309. An apparatus embodiment for serving ambient condition
sensitive information to a mobile user, comprising: a memory; a
processor disposed in communication with said memory, and
configured to issue a plurality of instructions stored in the
memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to: accumulate user
activity interest information; accumulate user situational
information; associate the user activity interest information and
user situational information with a user profile; update the user
profile with the associated information in a database; analyze
accumulated information associated with the user profile; query an
information database based on the analysis of the user profile;
select information based on the user profile and ambient conditions
at a user location to include in a message; and send the message to
a user.
310. An apparatus embodiment for serving ambient condition
sensitive information to a mobile user, comprising: a memory; a
processor disposed in communication with said memory, and
configured to issue a plurality of instructions stored in the
memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to: receive at a
server messages from a user comprised of user identification,
mobile device identification, a code image scanned by the mobile
device, time of the scan, and user geographic location at the time
of the scan, wherein the messages were sent to a short code address
via MMS; associate the user identification with a user profile in a
database; update the user profile with the received messages;
enhance the code image scanned by the mobile device; analyze the
accumulated messages in the user profile; determine proper
information to serve to the user based on the received message, the
user profile, and ambient conditions at a user location; select the
information to serve to the user from a database; incorporate the
selected information into a reply message; and send the reply
message to the user's mobile device via MMS.
311. An apparatus embodiment for receiving ambient condition
sensitive information, comprising: a memory; a processor disposed
in communication with said memory, and configured to issue a
plurality of instructions stored in the memory, wherein the
instructions are issuable to: accumulate user activity interest
information; accumulate user situational information, including
ambient conditions at a user location; incorporate user activity
interest information in an interest message; incorporate user
situational information in a situational message; sending the
interest message to a server; sending the situational message to
the server; and receive a reply based on the interest message, the
situational message, and a user profile.
312. An apparatus embodiment of serving ambient condition sensitive
information, comprising: a memory; a processor disposed in
communication with said memory, and configured to issue a plurality
of instructions stored in the memory, wherein the instructions are
issuable to: accumulate user activity interest information;
accumulate user situational information; analyze the user activity
interest information and user situational information; predict
expected user interest and situational information from the
analysis; determine serving information to serve to a user based on
expected user interest information, expected user situational
information, and ambient conditions at a user location; select the
information to serve from a database; incorporate the selected
information into a message; determine a target time and place to
send a message; incorporate serving information and target time and
place into a message; and send the message for distribution.
313. An apparatus embodiment for accumulating user information and
delivering targeted content based thereon, comprising: a memory; a
processor disposed in communication with said memory, and
configured to issue a plurality of instructions stored in the
memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to: accumulate user
activity interest information; accumulate user situational
information; associate the user activity interest information and
user situational information with a user profile; update the user
profile with the associated information in a database; analyze
accumulated information associated with the user profile; query an
information database based on the analysis of the user profile;
select information based on the user profile to include in a
message; and send the message to a user.
314. An apparatus embodiment for accumulating mobile device code
scan information from a user and delivering content based thereon,
comprising: a memory; a processor disposed in communication with
said memory, and configured to issue a plurality of instructions
stored in the memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to:
receive at a server messages from a user comprised of user
identification, mobile device identification, a code image scanned
by the mobile device, time of the scan, and user geographic
location at the time of the scan, wherein the messages were sent to
a shortcode address via MMS; associate the user identification with
a user profile in a database; update the user profile with the
received messages; enhance the code image scanned by the mobile
device; analyze the accumulated messages in the user profile;
determine proper information to serve to the user based on the
received message and the user profile; select the information to
serve to the user from a database; incorporate the selected
information into a reply message; and send the reply message to the
user's mobile device via MMS.
315. An apparatus embodiment for receiving information based on
accumulated user activity and situational information, comprising:
a memory; a processor disposed in communication with said memory,
and configured to issue a plurality of instructions stored in the
memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to: accumulate user
activity interest information; accumulate user situational
information; incorporate user activity interest information in an
interest message; incorporate user situational information in a
situational message; send the interest message to a server; send
the situational message to the server; and receive a reply based on
the interest message, the situational message, and a user
profile.
316. An apparatus embodiment of selecting data from a database
based on user activity interest information, comprising: a memory;
a processor disposed in communication with said memory, and
configured to issue a plurality of instructions stored in the
memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to: filter data in
the database by activity subject tags; determine which remaining
data match: user demographic category tags; user geographic
location tags; user temporal tags; select the data with the
greatest number of matches; and choose a single datum from the
remaining data.
317. An apparatus embodiment for predicting user interest and
situations and supplying information to the user based thereon,
comprising: a memory; a processor disposed in communication with
said memory, and configured to issue a plurality of instructions
stored in the memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to:
accumulate user activity interest information; accumulate user
situational information; analyze the user activity interest
information and user situational information; predict expected user
interest and situational information from the analysis; determine
serving information to serve to a user based on expected user
interest and situational information; select the information to
serve from a database; incorporate the selected information into a
message; determine a target time and place to send a message;
incorporate serving information and target time and place into a
message; and send the message for distribution.
318. An apparatus embodiment for predicting user interest and
situations and supplying information to the user based thereon,
comprising: a memory; a processor disposed in communication with
said memory, and configured to issue a plurality of instructions
stored in the memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to:
accumulate at a server a plurality of code images scanned by a
user's mobile device and sent to a short code address via MMS;
accumulate user situational information; analyze the user activity
interest information and user situational information; predict
expected user interest and situational information from the
analysis; determine serving information to serve to a user based on
expected user interest and situational information; select the
information to serve from a database; incorporate the selected
information into a message; determine a target time and place to
send a message; incorporate serving information and target time and
place into a message; and send the message for distribution via
MMS.
319. An apparatus embodiment for scoring data based on a user
profile and situational information and selecting data from a
database, comprising: a memory; a processor disposed in
communication with said memory, and configured to issue a plurality
of instructions stored in the memory, wherein the instructions are
issuable to: assign the same initial score to every datum; multiply
each datum's score by a subject coefficient for every match between
the datum's subject tag and subject tags in a user profile;
multiply each datum's score by a temporal coefficient for a match
between the datum's temporal tag and a temporal tag in a user
profile; multiply each datum's score by a demographic coefficient
for a match between the datum's demographic tags and demographic
tags in a user profile; select the highest scoring data; and select
a single datum from the remaining data.
320. An apparatus embodiment for coordinating personnel based on
delivered personnel directives, comprising: a memory; a processor
disposed in communication with said memory, and configured to issue
a plurality of instructions stored in the memory, wherein the
instructions are issuable to: accumulate user activity information;
accumulate user situational information; associate the user
activity interest information and user situational information with
a user profile; update the user profile with the associated
information in a database; analyze accumulated information
associated with the user profile; query an information database
based on the analysis of the user profile; select information based
on the user profile to include in a personnel directive; and send
the personnel directive to a user.
321. An apparatus embodiment for coordinating personnel by serving
personnel directives to a mobile device, comprising: a memory; a
processor disposed in communication with said memory, and
configured to issue a plurality of instructions stored in the
memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to: receive at a
server messages from a user comprised of user identification,
mobile device identification, a code image scanned by the mobile
device, time of the scan, and user geographic location at the time
of the scan, wherein the messages are sent to a short code address
via MMS; associate the user identification with a user profile in a
database; update the user profile with the received messages;
enhance the code image scanned by the mobile device; analyze the
accumulated messages in the user profile; determine proper
information to serve to the user based on the received message and
the user profile; select the information to serve to the user from
a database; incorporate the selected information into a personnel
directive; and send the personnel directive to the user's mobile
device via MMS.
322. An apparatus embodiment for receiving personnel directives,
comprising: a memory; a processor disposed in communication with
said memory, and configured to issue a plurality of instructions
stored in the memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to:
accumulate user activity information; accumulate user situational
information; incorporate user activity information in an activity
message; incorporate user situational information in a situational
message; send the activity message to a server; send the
situational message to the server; and receive a personnel
directive based on the activity message, the situational message,
and a user profile.
323. An apparatus embodiment for coordinating personnel based on
delivered personnel directives, comprising: a memory; a processor
disposed in communication with said memory, and configured to issue
a plurality of instructions stored in the memory, wherein the
instructions are issuable to: accumulate user activity information;
accumulate user situational information; analyze the user activity
interest information and user situational information; predict
expected user activity and situational information from the
analysis; determine serving information to serve to a user based on
expected user activity and situational information; select the
information to serve from a database; incorporate the selected
information into a personnel directive; determine a target time and
place to send the personnel directive; incorporate the personnel
directive and target time and place into a message; and send the
message for distribution.
324. An apparatus embodiment for selecting data from a database
based on user activity information and employment status,
comprising: a memory; a processor disposed in communication with
said memory, and configured to issue a plurality of instructions
stored in the memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to:
filter data in the database by user employment status tags; filter
data in the database by activity subject tags; determine which
remaining data match: user geographic location tags; user temporal
tags; select the data with the greatest number of matches; and
choose a single datum from the remaining data.
325. An apparatus embodiment for selecting data from a database
based on employment status, subject, and time, comprising: a
memory; a processor disposed in communication with said memory, and
configured to issue a plurality of instructions stored in the
memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to: assign the same
initial score to every datum; multiply each datum's score by a
status coefficient for every match between the datum's employment
status tag and employment status tag in a user profile; multiply
each datum's score by a subject coefficient for every match between
the datum's subject tag and subject tags in a user profile;
multiply each datum's score by a temporal coefficient for a match
between the datum's temporal tag and a temporal tag in a user
profile; select the highest scoring data; and select a single datum
from the remaining data.
326. An apparatus embodiment for generating proximity notifications
indicating proximities between users, comprising: a memory; a
processor disposed in communication with said memory, and
configured to issue a plurality of instructions stored in the
memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to: accumulate user
situational information; accumulate user association information;
analyze the user situational information; predict expected user
interest and situational information from the analysis; determine
if a user is in proximity with other users contained in the user
association information; and notify a user of the proximity.
327. An apparatus embodiment for serving information to users
within a virtual world based on accumulated user information,
comprising: a memory; a processor disposed in communication with
said memory, and configured to issue a plurality of instructions
stored in the memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to:
accumulate user activity interest information; accumulate user
situational information; associate the user activity interest
information and user situational information with a user profile;
update the user profile with the associated information in a
database; analyze accumulated information associated with the user
profile; query an information database based on the analysis of the
user profile; select information based on the user profile to
include in a message; and serve the message in a virtual world.
328. An apparatus embodiment for serving information in a virtual
world based on accumulated user information, comprising: a memory;
a processor disposed in communication with said memory, and
configured to issue a plurality of instructions stored in the
memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to: receive messages
from a user comprised of user identification, a user decision
within a virtual world, time of the decision, and user location
within the virtual world at the time of the decision; associate the
user identification with a user profile in a database; update the
user profile with the received messages; analyze the accumulated
messages in the user profile; determine proper information to serve
to the user based on the received message and the user profile;
select the information to serve to the user from a database;
incorporate the selected information into a reply message; and
serve the reply message within the virtual world.
329. An apparatus embodiment for receiving information within a
virtual world, comprising: a memory; a processor disposed in
communication with said memory, and configured to issue a plurality
of instructions stored in the memory, wherein the instructions are
issuable to: accumulate user activity interest information;
accumulate user situational information; incorporate user activity
interest information in an interest message; incorporate user
situational information in a situational message; send the interest
message to a server; send the situational message to the server;
and receive a reply that is displayed within a virtual world based
on the interest message, the situational message, and a user
profile.
330. An apparatus embodiment for serving information within a
virtual world based on accumulated user information, comprising: a
memory; a processor disposed in communication with said memory, and
configured to issue a plurality of instructions stored in the
memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to: accumulate user
activity interest information; accumulate user situational
information; analyze the user activity interest information and
user situational information; predict expected user interest and
situational information from the analysis; determine serving
information to serve to a user based on expected user interest and
situational information; select the information to serve from a
database; incorporate the selected information into a message;
determine a target time and place to send a message; incorporate
serving information and target time and place into a message; and
send the message for distribution within a virtual world.
331. An apparatus embodiment for selecting data from a database
based on user virtual world activity interest and situational
information, comprising: a memory; a processor disposed in
communication with said memory, and configured to issue a plurality
of instructions stored in the memory, wherein the instructions are
issuable to: filter data in the database by virtual world decision
subject tags; determine which remaining data match: user
demographic category tags; user virtual world location tags; user
temporal tags; select the data with the greatest number of matches;
and choose a single datum from the remaining data.
332. An apparatus embodiment for selecting data from a database
based on a virtual world location, comprising: a memory; a
processor disposed in communication with said memory, and
configured to issue a plurality of instructions stored in the
memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to: assign the same
initial score to every datum; multiply each datum's score by a
subject coefficient for every match between the datum's subject tag
and subject tags in a user profile; multiply each datum's score by
a temporal coefficient for a match between the datum's temporal tag
and a temporal tag in a user profile; multiply each datum's score
by a demographic coefficient for a match between the datum's
demographic tags and demographic tags in a user profile; multiply
each datum's score by a virtual world location coefficient for
every match between the datum's virtual world location tags and the
virtual world location tags in the user profile; select the highest
scoring data; and select a single datum from the remaining
data.
333. An apparatus embodiment for tracking user information on the
internet and serving information to users based thereon,
comprising: a memory; a processor disposed in communication with
said memory, and configured to issue a plurality of instructions
stored in the memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to:
accumulate user activity interest information; accumulate user
situational information; associate the user activity interest
information and user situational information with a user profile;
update the user profile with the associated information in a
database; analyze accumulated information associated with the user
profile; query an information database based on the analysis of the
user profile; select information based on the user profile to
include in a message; and serve the message on a website.
334. An apparatus embodiment for tracking user information on the
internet and serving information to a mobile device based thereon,
comprising: a memory; a processor disposed in communication with
said memory, and configured to issue a plurality of instructions
stored in the memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to:
receive messages from a user comprised of user identification,
mobile device identification, a code scanned by the mobile device,
time of the scan, and user geographic location at the time of the
scan; associate the user identification with a user profile in a
database; update the user profile with the received messages;
analyze the accumulated messages in the user profile; determine
proper information to serve to the user based on the received
message and the user profile; select the information to serve to
the user from a database; incorporate the selected information into
a reply message; and serve the reply message on a website.
335. An apparatus embodiment for receiving information on the
internet based on accumulated user information, comprising: a
memory; a processor disposed in communication with said memory, and
configured to issue a plurality of instructions stored in the
memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to: accumulate user
activity interest information; accumulate user situational
information; incorporate user activity interest information in an
interest message; incorporate user situational information in a
situational message; send the interest message to a server; send
the situational message to the server; and receive a reply that is
displayed on a website based on the interest message, the
situational message, and a user profile.
336. An apparatus embodiment for serving information on a website
based on accumulated user information, comprising: a memory; a
processor disposed in communication with said memory, and
configured to issue a plurality of instructions stored in the
memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to: accumulate user
activity interest information; accumulate user situational
information; analyze the user activity interest information and
user situational information; predict expected user interest and
situational information from the analysis; determine serving
information to serve to a user based on expected user interest and
situational information; select the information to serve from a
database; incorporate the selected information into a message;
determine a target time and place to send a message; incorporate
serving information and target time and place into a message; and
send the message for distribution on a website.
337. An apparatus embodiment for selecting data from a database
based on user website interest information, comprising: a memory; a
processor disposed in communication with said memory, and
configured to issue a plurality of instructions stored in the
memory, wherein the instructions are issuable to: filter data in
the database by website subject tags; determine which remaining
data match: user demographic category tags; user current website
tags; user temporal tags; select the data with the greatest number
of matches; and choose a single datum from the remaining data.
338. An apparatus embodiment for selecting data from a database
based on correlations between a user profile and a datum's website
association, comprising: a memory; a processor disposed in
communication with said memory, and configured to issue a plurality
of instructions stored in the memory, wherein the instructions are
issuable to: assign the same initial score to every datum; multiply
each datum's score by a subject coefficient for every match between
the datum's subject tag and subject tags in a user profile;
multiply each datum's score by a temporal coefficient for a match
between the datum's temporal tag and a temporal tag in a user
profile; multiply each datum's score by a demographic coefficient
for a match between the datum's demographic tags and demographic
tags in a user profile; multiply each datum's score by a website
coefficient for every match between the datum's website tags and
the website tags in the user profile; select the highest scoring
data; and select a single datum from the remaining data.
339. An apparatus embodiment for processing and responding to
ambiguous content requests, comprising: a memory; a processor
disposed in communication with said memory, and configured to issue
a plurality of instructions stored in the memory, wherein the
instructions are issuable to: receive a scanned code image and a
user ID; analyze the scanned code image to determine if the
information encoded therein is fully accessible; select a scanned
code disambiguation process to apply to the scanned code images if
the information encoded therein is not fully accessible; apply the
scanned code disambiguation process to the scanned code image to
determine a most likely code; query accumulated user information in
a user profile associated with the user ID; query a content
database to extract requested content based on the most likely code
and the accumulated user information; and send the requested
content to a user.
340. An apparatus embodiment for processing and responding to
ambiguous content requests, comprising: a memory; a processor
disposed in communication with said memory, and configured to issue
a plurality of instructions stored in the memory, wherein the
instructions are issuable to: receive a scanned code image, a user
ID, wherein the scanned code image is sent to a short code address
via MMS; analyze the scanned code image to determine if the
information encoded therein is fully accessible; select a
server-side scanned code disambiguation process to apply to the
scanned code images if the information encoded therein is not fully
accessible, wherein the scanned code disambiguation process
comprises any combination of scanned code image enhancement and
partial decoding; apply the server-side scanned code disambiguation
process to the scanned code image to determine a most likely code;
query accumulated user information in a user profile associated
with the user ID; query a content database to extract requested
content based on the most likely code and the accumulated user
information; and send the requested content to a user via MMS.
341. A system embodiment for serving ambient condition sensitive
information to a mobile user, comprising: means to accumulate user
activity interest information; means to accumulate user situational
information; means to associate the user activity interest
information and user situational information with a user profile;
means to update the user profile with the associated information in
a database; means to analyze accumulated information associated
with the user profile; means to query an information database based
on the analysis of the user profile; means to select information
based on the user profile and ambient conditions at a user location
to include in a message; and means to send the message to a
user.
342. A system embodiment for serving ambient condition sensitive
information to a mobile user, comprising: means to receive at a
server messages from a user comprised of user identification,
mobile device identification, a code image scanned by the mobile
device, time of the scan, and user geographic location at the time
of the scan, wherein the messages were sent to a short code address
via MMS; means to associate the user identification with a user
profile in a database; means to update the user profile with the
received messages; means to enhance the code image scanned by the
mobile device; means to analyze the accumulated messages in the
user profile; means to determine proper information to serve to the
user based on the received message, the user profile, and ambient
conditions at a user location; means to select the information to
serve to the user from a database; means to incorporate the
selected information into a reply message; and means to send the
reply message to the user's mobile device via MMS.
343. A system embodiment for receiving ambient condition sensitive
information, comprising: means to accumulate user activity interest
information; means to accumulate user situational information,
including ambient conditions at a user location; means to
incorporate user activity interest information in an interest
message; means to incorporate user situational information in a
situational message; means to sending the interest message to a
server; means to sending the situational message to the server; and
means to receive a reply based on the interest message, the
situational message, and a user profile.
344. A system embodiment of serving ambient condition sensitive
information, comprising: means to accumulate user activity interest
information; means to accumulate user situational information;
means to analyze the user activity interest information and user
situational information; means to predict expected user interest
and situational information from the analysis; means to determine
serving information to serve to a user based on expected user
interest information, expected user situational information, and
ambient conditions at a user location; means to select the
information to serve from a database; means to incorporate the
selected information into a message; means to determine a target
time and place to send a message; means to incorporate serving
information and target time and place into a message; and means to
send the message for distribution.
345. A system embodiment for accumulating user information and
delivering targeted content based thereon, comprising: means to
accumulate user activity interest information; means to accumulate
user situational information; means to associate the user activity
interest information and user situational information with a user
profile; means to update the user profile with the associated
information in a database; means to analyze accumulated information
associated with the user profile; means to query an information
database based on the analysis of the user profile; means to select
information based on the user profile to include in a message; and
means to send the message to a user.
346. A system embodiment for accumulating mobile device code scan
information from a user and delivering content based thereon,
comprising: means to receive at a server messages from a user
comprised of user identification, mobile device identification, a
code image scanned by the mobile device, time of the scan, and user
geographic location at the time of the scan, wherein the messages
were sent to a short code address via MMS; means to associate the
user identification with a user profile in a database; means to
update the user profile with the received messages; means to
enhance the code image scanned by the mobile device; means to
analyze the accumulated messages in the user profile; means to
determine proper information to serve to the user based on the
received message and the user profile; means to select the
information to serve to the user from a database; means to
incorporate the selected information into a reply message; and
means to send the reply message to the user's mobile device via
MMS.
347. A system embodiment for receiving information based on
accumulated user activity and situational information, comprising:
means to accumulate user activity interest information; means to
accumulate user situational information; means to incorporate user
activity interest information in an interest message; means to
incorporate user situational information in a situational message;
means to send the interest message to a server; means to send the
situational message to the server; and means to receive a reply
based on the interest message, the situational message, and a user
profile.
348. A system embodiment of selecting data from a database based on
user activity interest information, comprising: means to filter
data in the database by activity subject tags; means to determine
which remaining data match: user demographic category tags; user
geographic location tags; user temporal tags; means to select the
data with the greatest number of matches; and means to choose a
single datum from the remaining data.
349. A system embodiment for predicting user interest and
situations and supplying information to the user based thereon,
comprising: means to accumulate user activity interest information;
means to accumulate user situational information; means to analyze
the user activity interest information and user situational
information; means to predict expected user interest and
situational information from the analysis; means to determine
serving information to serve to a user based on expected user
interest and situational information; means to select the
information to serve from a database; means to incorporate the
selected information into a message; means to determine a target
time and place to send a message; means to incorporate serving
information and target time and place into a message; and means to
send the message for distribution.
350. A system embodiment for predicting user interest and
situations and supplying information to the user based thereon,
comprising: means to accumulate at a server a plurality of code
images scanned by a user's mobile device and sent to a short code
address via MMS; means to accumulate user situational information;
means to analyze the user activity interest information and user
situational information; means to predict expected user interest
and situational information from the analysis; means to determine
serving information to serve to a user based on expected user
interest and situational information; means to select the
information to serve from a database; means to incorporate the
selected information into a message; means to determine a target
time and place to send a message; means to incorporate serving
information and target time and place into a message; and means to
send the message for distribution via MMS.
351. A system embodiment for scoring data based on a user profile
and situational information and selecting data from a database,
comprising: means to assign the same initial score to every datum;
means to multiply each datum's score by a subject coefficient for
every match between the datum's subject tag and subject tags in a
user profile; means to multiply each datum's score by a temporal
coefficient for a match between the datum's temporal tag and a
temporal tag in a user profile; means to multiply each datum's
score by a demographic coefficient for a match between the datum's
demographic tags and demographic tags in a user profile; means to
select the highest scoring data; and means to select a single datum
from the remaining data.
352. A system embodiment for coordinating personnel based on
delivered personnel directives, comprising: means to accumulate
user activity information; means to accumulate user situational
information; means to associate the user activity interest
information and user situational information with a user profile;
means to update the user profile with the associated information in
a database; means to analyze accumulated information associated
with the user profile; means to query an information database based
on the analysis of the user profile; means to select information
based on the user profile to include in a personnel directive; and
means to send the personnel directive to a user.
353. A system embodiment for coordinating personnel by serving
personnel directives to a mobile device, comprising: means to
receive at a server messages from a user comprised of user
identification, mobile device identification, a code image scanned
by the mobile device, time of the scan, and user geographic
location at the time of the scan, wherein the messages are sent to
a short code address via MMS; means to associate the user
identification with a user profile in a database; means to update
the user profile with the received messages; means to enhance the
code image scanned by the mobile device; means to analyze the
accumulated messages in the user profile; means to determine proper
information to serve to the user based on the received message and
the user profile; means to select the information to serve to the
user from a database; means to incorporate the selected information
into a personnel directive; and means to send the personnel
directive to the user's mobile device via MMS.
354. A system embodiment for receiving personnel directives,
comprising: means to accumulate user activity information; means to
accumulate user situational information; means to incorporate user
activity information in an activity message; means to incorporate
user situational information in a situational message; means to
send the activity message to a server; means to send the
situational message to the server; and means to receive a personnel
directive based on the activity message, the situational message,
and a user profile.
355. A system embodiment for coordinating personnel based on
delivered personnel directives, comprising: means to accumulate
user activity information; means to accumulate user situational
information; means to analyze the user activity interest
information and user situational information; means to predict
expected user activity and situational information from the
analysis; means to determine serving information to serve to a user
based on expected user activity and situational information; means
to select the information to serve from a database; means to
incorporate the selected information into a personnel directive;
means to determine a target time and place to send the personnel
directive; means to incorporate the personnel directive and target
time and place into a message; and means to send the message for
distribution.
356. A system embodiment for selecting data from a database based
on user activity information and employment status, comprising:
means to filter data in the database by user employment status
tags; means to filter data in the database by activity subject
tags; means to determine which remaining data match: user
geographic location tags; user temporal tags; means to select the
data with the greatest number of matches; and means to choose a
single datum from the remaining data.
357. A system embodiment for selecting data from a database based
on employment status, subject, and time, comprising: means to
assign the same initial score to every datum; means to multiply
each datum's score by a status coefficient for every match between
the datum's employment status tag and employment status tag in a
user profile; means to multiply each datum's score by a subject
coefficient for every match between the datum's subject tag and
subject tags in a user profile; means to multiply each datum's
score by a temporal coefficient for a match between the datum's
temporal tag and a temporal tag in a user profile; means to select
the highest scoring data; and means to select a single datum from
the remaining data.
358. A system embodiment for generating proximity notifications
indicating proximities between users, comprising: means to
accumulate user situational information; means to accumulate user
association information; means to analyze the user situational
information; means to predict expected user interest and
situational information from the analysis; means to determine if a
user is in proximity with other users contained in the user
association information; and means to notify a user of the
proximity.
359. A system embodiment for serving information to users within a
virtual world based on accumulated user information, comprising:
means to accumulate user activity interest information; means to
accumulate user situational information; means to associate the
user activity interest information and user situational information
with a user profile; means to update the user profile with the
associated information in a database; means to analyze accumulated
information associated with the user profile; means to query an
information database based on the analysis of the user profile;
means to select information based on the user profile to include in
a message; and means to serve the message in a virtual world.
360. A system embodiment for serving information in a virtual world
based on accumulated user information, comprising: means to receive
messages from a user comprised of user identification, a user
decision within a virtual world, time of the decision, and user
location within the virtual world at the time of the decision;
means to associate the user identification with a user profile in a
database; means to update the user profile with the received
messages; means to analyze the accumulated messages in the user
profile; means to determine proper information to serve to the user
based on the received message and the user profile; means to select
the information to serve to the user from a database; means to
incorporate the selected information into a reply message; and
means to serve the reply message within the virtual world.
361. A system embodiment for receiving information within a virtual
world, comprising: means to accumulate user activity interest
information; means to accumulate user situational information;
means to incorporate user activity interest information in an
interest message; means to incorporate user situational information
in a situational message; means to send the interest message to a
server; means to send the situational message to the server; and
means to receive a reply that is displayed within a virtual world
based on the interest message, the situational message, and a user
profile.
362. A system embodiment for serving information within a virtual
world based on accumulated user information, comprising: means to
accumulate user activity interest information; means to accumulate
user situational information; means to analyze the user activity
interest information and user situational information; means to
predict expected user interest and situational information from the
analysis; means to determine serving information to serve to a user
based on expected user interest and situational information; means
to select the information to serve from a database; means to
incorporate the selected information into a message; means to
determine a target time and place to send a message; means to
incorporate serving information and target time and place into a
message; and means to send the message for distribution within a
virtual world.
363. A system embodiment for selecting data from a database based
on user virtual world activity interest and situational
information, comprising: means to filter data in the database by
virtual world decision subject tags; means to determine which
remaining data match: user demographic category tags; user virtual
world location tags; user temporal tags; means to select the data
with the greatest number of matches; and means to choose a single
datum from the remaining data.
364. A system embodiment for selecting data from a database based
on a virtual world location, comprising: means to assign the same
initial score to every datum; means to multiply each datum's score
by a subject coefficient for every match between the datum's
subject tag and subject tags in a user profile; means to multiply
each datum's score by a temporal coefficient for a match between
the datum's temporal tag and a temporal tag in a user profile;
means to multiply each datum's score by a demographic coefficient
for a match between the datum's demographic tags and demographic
tags in a user profile; means to multiply each datum's score by a
virtual world location coefficient for every match between the
datum's virtual world location tags and the virtual world location
tags in the user profile; means to select the highest scoring data;
and means to select a single datum from the remaining data.
365. A system embodiment for tracking user information on the
internet and serving information to users based thereon,
comprising: means to accumulate user activity interest information;
means to accumulate user situational information; means to
associate the user activity interest information and user
situational information with a user profile; means to update the
user profile with the associated information in a database; means
to analyze accumulated information associated with the user
profile; means to query an information database based on the
analysis of the user profile; means to select information based on
the user profile to include in a message; and means to serve the
message on a website.
366. A system embodiment for tracking user information on the
internet and serving information to a mobile device based thereon,
comprising: means to receive messages from a user comprised of user
identification, mobile device identification, a code scanned by the
mobile device, time of the scan, and user geographic location at
the time of the scan; means to associate the user identification
with a user profile in a database; update the user profile with the
received messages; means to analyze the accumulated messages in the
user profile; means to determine proper information to serve to the
user based on the received message and the user profile; means to
select the information to serve to the user from a database; means
to incorporate the selected information into a reply message; and
means to serve the reply message on a website.
367. A system embodiment for receiving information on the internet
based on accumulated user information, comprising: means to
accumulate user activity interest information; means to accumulate
user situational information; means to incorporate user activity
interest information in an interest message; means to incorporate
user situational information in a situational message; means to
send the interest message to a server; means to send the
situational message to the server; and means to receive a reply
that is displayed on a website based on the interest message, the
situational message, and a user profile.
368. A system embodiment for serving information on a website based
on accumulated user information, comprising: means to accumulate
user activity interest information; means to accumulate user
situational information; means to analyze the user activity
interest information and user situational information; means to
predict expected user interest and situational information from the
analysis; means to determine serving information to serve to a user
based on expected user interest and situational information; means
to select the information to serve from a database; means to
incorporate the selected information into a message; means to
determine a target time and place to send a message; means to
incorporate serving information and target time and place into a
message; and means to send the message for distribution on a
website.
369. A system embodiment for selecting data from a database based
on user website interest information, comprising: means to filter
data in the database by website subject tags; means to determine
which remaining data match: user demographic category tags; user
current website tags; user temporal tags; means to select the data
with the greatest number of matches; and means to choose a single
datum from the remaining data.
370. A system embodiment for selecting data from a database based
on correlations between a user profile and a datum's website
association, comprising: means to assign the same initial score to
every datum; means to multiply each datum's score by a subject
coefficient for every match between the datum's subject tag and
subject tags in a user profile; means to multiply each datum's
score by a temporal coefficient for a match between the datum's
temporal tag and a temporal tag in a user profile; means to
multiply each datum's score by a demographic coefficient for a
match between the datum's demographic tags and demographic tags in
a user profile; means to multiply each datum's score by a website
coefficient for every match between the datum's website tags and
the website tags in the user profile; means to select the highest
scoring data; and means to select a single datum from the remaining
data.
371. A system embodiment for processing and responding to ambiguous
content requests, comprising: means to receive a scanned code image
and a user ID; means to analyze the scanned code image to determine
if the information encoded therein is fully accessible; means to
select a scanned code disambiguation process to apply to the
scanned code images if the information encoded therein is not fully
accessible; means to apply the scanned code disambiguation process
to the scanned code image to determine a most likely code; means to
query accumulated user information in a user profile associated
with the user ID; means to query a content database to extract
requested content based on the most likely code and the accumulated
user information; and means to send the requested content to a
user.
372. An system for processing and responding to ambiguous content
requests, comprising: means to receive a scanned code image, a user
ID, wherein the scanned code image is sent to a short code address
via MMS; means to analyze the scanned code image to determine if
the information encoded therein is fully accessible; means to
select a server-side scanned code disambiguation process to apply
to the scanned code images if the information encoded therein is
not fully accessible, wherein the scanned code disambiguation
process comprises any combination of scanned code image enhancement
and partial decoding; means to apply the server-side scanned code
disambiguation process to the scanned code image to determine a
most likely code; means to query accumulated user information in a
user profile associated with the user ID; means to query a content
database to extract requested content based on the most likely code
and the accumulated user information; and means to send the
requested content to a user via MMS.
373. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for serving ambient
condition sensitive information to a mobile user, comprising:
processor readable instructions stored in the processor-accessible
medium, wherein the processor readable instructions are issuable by
the processor to: accumulate user activity interest information;
accumulate user situational information; associate the user
activity interest information and user situational information with
a user profile; update the user profile with the associated
information in a database; analyze accumulated information
associated with the user profile; query an information database
based on the analysis of the user profile; select information based
on the user profile and ambient conditions at a user location to
include in a message; and send the message to a user.
374. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for serving ambient
condition sensitive information to a mobile user, comprising:
processor readable instructions stored in the processor-accessible
medium, wherein the processor readable instructions are issuable by
the processor to: receive at a server messages from a user
comprised of user identification, mobile device identification, a
code image scanned by the mobile device, time of the scan, and user
geographic location at the time of the scan, wherein the messages
were sent to a short code address via MMS; associate the user
identification with a user profile in a database; update the user
profile with the received messages; enhance the code image scanned
by the mobile device; analyze the accumulated messages in the user
profile; determine proper information to serve to the user based on
the received message, the user profile, and ambient conditions at a
user location; select the information to serve to the user from a
database; incorporate the selected information into a reply
message; and send the reply message to the user's mobile device via
MMS.
375. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for receiving ambient
condition sensitive information, comprising: processor readable
instructions stored in the processor-accessible medium, wherein the
processor readable instructions are issuable by the processor to:
accumulate user activity interest information; accumulate user
situational information, including ambient conditions at a user
location; incorporate user activity interest information in an
interest message; incorporate user situational information in a
situational message; sending the interest message to a server;
sending the situational message to the server; and receive a reply
based on the interest message, the situational message, and a user
profile.
376. A processor-accessible medium embodiment of serving ambient
condition sensitive information, comprising: processor readable
instructions stored in the processor-accessible medium, wherein the
processor readable instructions are issuable by the processor to:
accumulate user activity interest information; accumulate user
situational information; analyze the user activity interest
information and user situational information; predict expected user
interest and situational information from the analysis; determine
serving information to serve to a user based on expected user
interest information, expected user situational information, and
ambient conditions at a user location; select the information to
serve from a database; incorporate the selected information into a
message; determine a target time and place to send a message;
incorporate serving information and target time and place into a
message; and send the message for distribution.
377. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for accumulating user
information and delivering targeted content based thereon,
comprising: processor readable instructions stored in the
processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor readable
instructions are issuable by the processor to: accumulate user
activity interest information; accumulate user situational
information; associate the user activity interest information and
user situational information with a user profile; update the user
profile with the associated information in a database; analyze
accumulated information associated with the user profile; query an
information database based on the analysis of the user profile;
select information based on the user profile to include in a
message; and send the message to a user.
378. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for accumulating
mobile device code scan information from a user and delivering
content based thereon, comprising: processor readable instructions
stored in the processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor
readable instructions are issuable by the processor to: receive at
a server messages from a user comprised of user identification,
mobile device identification, a code image scanned by the mobile
device, time of the scan, and user geographic location at the time
of the scan, wherein the messages were sent to a shortcode address
via MMS; associate the user identification with a user profile in a
database; update the user profile with the received messages;
enhance the code image scanned by the mobile device; analyze the
accumulated messages in the user profile; determine proper
information to serve to the user based on the received message and
the user profile; select the information to serve to the user from
a database; incorporate the selected information into a reply
message; and send the reply message to the user's mobile device via
MMS.
379. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for receiving
information based on accumulated user activity and situational
information, comprising: processor readable instructions stored in
the processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor readable
instructions are issuable by the processor to: accumulate user
activity interest information; accumulate user situational
information; incorporate user activity interest information in an
interest message; incorporate user situational information in a
situational message; send the interest message to a server; send
the situational message to the server; and receive a reply based on
the interest message, the situational message, and a user
profile.
380. A processor-accessible medium embodiment of selecting data
from a database based on user activity interest information,
comprising: processor readable instructions stored in the
processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor readable
instructions are issuable by the processor to: filter data in the
database by activity subject tags; determine which remaining data
match: user demographic category tags; user geographic location
tags; user temporal tags; select the data with the greatest number
of matches; and choose a single datum from the remaining data.
381. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for predicting user
interest and situations and supplying information to the user based
thereon, comprising: processor readable instructions stored in the
processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor readable
instructions are issuable by the processor to: accumulate user
activity interest information; accumulate user situational
information; analyze the user activity interest information and
user situational information; predict expected user interest and
situational information from the analysis; determine serving
information to serve to a user based on expected user interest and
situational information; select the information to serve from a
database; incorporate the selected information into a message;
determine a target time and place to send a message; incorporate
serving information and target time and place into a message; and
send the message for distribution.
382. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for predicting user
interest and situations and supplying information to the user based
thereon, comprising: processor readable instructions stored in the
processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor readable
instructions are issuable by the processor to: accumulate at a
server a plurality of code images scanned by a user's mobile device
and sent to a short code address via MMS; accumulate user
situational information; analyze the user activity interest
information and user situational information; predict expected user
interest and situational information from the analysis; determine
serving information to serve to a user based on expected user
interest and situational information; select the information to
serve from a database; incorporate the selected information into a
message; determine a target time and place to send a message;
incorporate serving information and target time and place into a
message; and send the message for distribution via MMS.
383. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for scoring data
based on a user profile and situational information and selecting
data from a database, comprising: processor readable instructions
stored in the processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor
readable instructions are issuable by the processor to: assign the
same initial score to every datum; multiply each datum's score by a
subject coefficient for every match between the datum's subject tag
and subject tags in a user profile; multiply each datum's score by
a temporal coefficient for a match between the datum's temporal tag
and a temporal tag in a user profile; multiply each datum's score
by a demographic coefficient for a match between the datum's
demographic tags and demographic tags in a user profile; select the
highest scoring data; and select a single datum from the remaining
data.
384. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for coordinating
personnel based on delivered personnel directives, comprising:
processor readable instructions stored in the processor-accessible
medium, wherein the processor readable instructions are issuable by
the processor to: accumulate user activity information; accumulate
user situational information; associate the user activity interest
information and user situational information with a user profile;
update the user profile with the associated information in a
database; analyze accumulated information associated with the user
profile; query an information database based on the analysis of the
user profile; select information based on the user profile to
include in a personnel directive; and send the personnel directive
to a user.
385. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for coordinating
personnel by serving personnel directives to a mobile device,
comprising: processor readable instructions stored in the
processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor readable
instructions are issuable by the processor to: receive at a server
messages from a user comprised of user identification, mobile
device identification, a code image scanned by the mobile device,
time of the scan, and user geographic location at the time of the
scan, wherein the messages are sent to a short code address via
MMS; associate the user identification with a user profile in a
database; update the user profile with the received messages;
enhance the code image scanned by the mobile device; analyze the
accumulated messages in the user profile; determine proper
information to serve to the user based on the received message and
the user profile; select the information to serve to the user from
a database; incorporate the selected information into a personnel
directive; and send the personnel directive to the user's mobile
device via MMS.
386. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for receiving
personnel directives, comprising: processor readable instructions
stored in the processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor
readable instructions are issuable by the processor to: accumulate
user activity information; accumulate user situational information;
incorporate user activity information in an activity message;
incorporate user situational information in a situational message;
send the activity message to a server; send the situational message
to the server; and receive a personnel directive based on the
activity message, the situational message, and a user profile.
387. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for coordinating
personnel based on delivered personnel directives, comprising:
processor readable instructions stored in the processor-accessible
medium, wherein the processor readable instructions are issuable by
the processor to: accumulate user activity information; accumulate
user situational information; analyze the user activity interest
information and user situational information; predict expected user
activity and situational information from the analysis; determine
serving information to serve to a user based on expected user
activity and situational information; select the information to
serve from a database; incorporate the selected information into a
personnel directive; determine a target time and place to send the
personnel directive; incorporate the personnel directive and target
time and place into a message; and send the message for
distribution.
388. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for selecting data
from a database based on user activity information and employment
status, comprising: processor readable instructions stored in the
processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor readable
instructions are issuable by the processor to: filter data in the
database by user employment status tags; filter data in the
database by activity subject tags; determine which remaining data
match: user geographic location tags; user temporal tags; select
the data with the greatest number of matches; and choose a single
datum from the remaining data.
389. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for selecting data
from a database based on employment status, subject, and time,
comprising: processor readable instructions stored in the
processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor readable
instructions are issuable by the processor to: assign the same
initial score to every datum; multiply each datum's score by a
status coefficient for every match between the datum's employment
status tag and employment status tag in a user profile; multiply
each datum's score by a subject coefficient for every match between
the datum's subject tag and subject tags in a user profile;
multiply each datum's score by a temporal coefficient for a match
between the datum's temporal tag and a temporal tag in a user
profile; select the highest scoring data; and select a single datum
from the remaining data.
390. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for generating
proximity notifications indicating proximities between users,
comprising: processor readable instructions stored in the
processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor readable
instructions are issuable by the processor to: accumulate user
situational information; accumulate user association information;
analyze the user situational information; predict expected user
interest and situational information from the analysis; determine
if a user is in proximity with other users contained in the user
association information; and notify a user of the proximity.
391. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for serving
information to users within a virtual world based on accumulated
user information, comprising: processor readable instructions
stored in the processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor
readable instructions are issuable by the processor to: accumulate
user activity interest information; accumulate user situational
information; associate the user activity interest information and
user situational information with a user profile; update the user
profile with the associated information in a database; analyze
accumulated information associated with the user profile; query an
information database based on the analysis of the user profile;
select information based on the user profile to include in a
message; and serve the message in a virtual world.
392. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for serving
information in a virtual world based on accumulated user
information, comprising: processor readable instructions stored in
the processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor readable
instructions are issuable by the processor to: receive messages
from a user comprised of user identification, a user decision
within a virtual world, time of the decision, and user location
within the virtual world at the time of the decision; associate the
user identification with a user profile in a database; update the
user profile with the received messages; analyze the accumulated
messages in the user profile; determine proper information to serve
to the user based on the received message and the user profile;
select the information to serve to the user from a database;
incorporate the selected information into a reply message; and
serve the reply message within the virtual world.
393. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for receiving
information within a virtual world, comprising: processor readable
instructions stored in the processor-accessible medium, wherein the
processor readable instructions are issuable by the processor to:
accumulate user activity interest information; accumulate user
situational information; incorporate user activity interest
information in an interest message; incorporate user situational
information in a situational message; send the interest message to
a server; send the situational message to the server; and receive a
reply that is displayed within a virtual world based on the
interest message, the situational message, and a user profile.
394. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for serving
information within a virtual world based on accumulated user
information, comprising: processor readable instructions stored in
the processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor readable
instructions are issuable by the processor to: accumulate user
activity interest information; accumulate user situational
information; analyze the user activity interest information and
user situational information; predict expected user interest and
situational information from the analysis; determine serving
information to serve to a user based on expected user interest and
situational information; select the information to serve from a
database; incorporate the selected information into a message;
determine a target time and place to send a message; incorporate
serving information and target time and place into a message; and
send the message for distribution within a virtual world.
395. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for selecting data
from a database based on user virtual world activity interest and
situational information, comprising: processor readable
instructions stored in the processor-accessible medium, wherein the
processor readable instructions are issuable by the processor to:
filter data in the database by virtual world decision subject tags;
determine which remaining data match:\ user demographic category
tags; user virtual world location tags; user temporal tags; select
the data with the greatest number of matches; and choose a single
datum from the remaining data.
396. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for selecting data
from a database based on a virtual world location, comprising:
processor readable instructions stored in the processor-accessible
medium, wherein the processor readable instructions are issuable by
the processor to: assign the same initial score to every datum;
multiply each datum's score by a subject coefficient for every
match between the datum's subject tag and subject tags in a user
profile; multiply each datum's score by a temporal coefficient for
a match between the datum's temporal tag and a temporal tag in a
user profile; multiply each datum's score by a demographic
coefficient for a match between the datum's demographic tags and
demographic tags in a user profile; multiply each datum's score by
a virtual world location coefficient for every match between the
datum's virtual world location tags and the virtual world location
tags in the user profile; select the highest scoring data; and
select a single datum from the remaining data.
397. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for tracking user
information on the internet and serving information to users based
thereon, comprising: processor readable instructions stored in the
processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor readable
instructions are issuable by the processor to: accumulate user
activity interest information; accumulate user situational
information; associate the user activity interest information and
user situational information with a user profile; update the user
profile with the associated information in a database; analyze
accumulated information associated with the user profile; query an
information database based on the analysis of the user profile;
select information based on the user profile to include in a
message; and serve the message on a website.
398. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for tracking user
information on the internet and serving information to a mobile
device based thereon, comprising: processor readable instructions
stored in the processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor
readable instructions are issuable by the processor to: receive
messages from a user comprised of user identification, mobile
device identification, a code scanned by the mobile device, time of
the scan, and use geographic location at the time of the scan;
associate the user identification with a user profile in a
database; update the user profile with the received messages;
analyze the accumulated messages in the user profile; determine
proper information to serve to the user based on the received
message and the user profile; select the information to serve to
the user from a database; incorporate the selected information into
a reply message; and serve the reply message on a website.
399. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for receiving
information on the internet based on accumulated user information,
comprising: processor readable instructions stored in the
processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor readable
instructions are issuable by the processor to: accumulate user
activity interest information; accumulate user situational
information; incorporate user activity interest information in an
interest message; incorporate user situational information in a
situational message; send the interest message to a server; send
the situational message to the server; and receive a reply that is
displayed on a website based on the interest message, the
situational message, and a user profile.
400. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for serving
information on a website based on accumulated user information,
comprising: processor readable instructions stored in the
processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor readable
instructions are issuable by the processor to: accumulate user
activity interest information; accumulate user situational
information; analyze the user activity interest information and
user situational information; predict expected user interest and
situational information from the analysis; determine serving
information to serve to a user based on expected user interest and
situational information; select the information to serve from a
database; incorporate the selected information into a message;
determine a target time and place to send a message; incorporate
serving information and target time and place into a message; and
send the message for distribution on a website.
401. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for selecting data
from a database based on user website interest information,
comprising: processor readable instructions stored in the
processor-accessible medium, wherein the processor readable
instructions are issuable by the processor to: filter data in the
database by website subject tags; determine which remaining data
match: user demographic category tags; user current website tags;
user temporal tags; select the data with the greatest number of
matches; and choose a single datum from the remaining data.
402. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for selecting data
from a database based on correlations between a user profile and a
datum's website association, comprising: processor readable
instructions stored in the processor-accessible medium, wherein the
processor readable instructions are issuable by the processor to:
assign the same initial score to every datum; multiply each datum's
score by a subject coefficient for every match between the datum's
subject tag and subject tags in a user profile; multiply each
datum's score by a temporal coefficient for a match between the
datum's temporal tag and a temporal tag in a user profile; multiply
each datum's score by a demographic coefficient for a match between
the datum's demographic tags and demographic tags in a user
profile; multiply each datum's score by a website coefficient for
every match between the datum's website tags and the website tags
in the user profile; select the highest scoring data; and select a
single datum from the remaining data.
403. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for processing and
responding to ambiguous content requests, comprising: processor
readable instructions stored in the processor-accessible medium,
wherein the processor readable instructions are issuable by the
processor to: receive a scanned code image and a user ID; analyze
the scanned code image to determine if the information encoded
therein is fully accessible; select a scanned code disambiguation
process to apply to the scanned code images if the information
encoded therein is not fully accessible; apply the scanned code
disambiguation process to the scanned code image to determine a
most likely code; query accumulated user information in a user
profile associated with the user ID; query a content database to
extract requested content based on the most likely code and the
accumulated user information; and send the requested content to a
user.
404. A processor-accessible medium embodiment for processing and
responding to ambiguous content requests, comprising: processor
readable instructions stored in the processor-accessible medium,
wherein the processor readable instructions are issuable by the
processor to: receive a scanned code image, a user ID, wherein the
scanned code image is sent to a short code address via MMS; analyze
the scanned code image to determine if the information encoded
therein is fully accessible; select a server-side scanned code
disambiguation process to apply to the scanned code images if the
information encoded therein is not fully accessible, wherein the
scanned code disambiguation process comprises any combination of
scanned code image enhancement and partial decoding; apply the
server-side scanned code disambiguation process to the scanned code
image to determine a most likely code; query accumulated user
information in a user profile associated with the user ID; query a
content database to extract requested content based on the most
likely code and the accumulated user information; and send the
requested content to a user via MMS.
Description
PRIORITY CLAIMS AND RELATED APPLICATIONS
[0001] This disclosure describes inventive aspects of at least
eight distinct inventions, including:
[0002] information querying and serving on mobile devices based on
ambient conditions (with a suggested Class/Subclass of 707/10);
[0003] code-triggered information querying and serving on mobile
devices based on profiles (with a suggested Class/Subclass of
709/206);
[0004] anticipatory information querying and serving on mobile
devices based on profiles (with a suggested Class/Subclass of
709/217);
[0005] coordinating personnel based on profiles (with a suggested
Class/Subclass of 705/9);
[0006] determining and announcing proximity between trajectories
(with a suggested Class/Subclass of 701/302);
[0007] information querying and serving in a virtual world based on
profiles (with a suggested Class/Subclass of 463/42);
[0008] information querying and serving on the internet based on
profiles (with a suggested Class/Subclass of 705/14); and
[0009] ambiguous code-triggered information querying and serving on
mobile devices (with a suggested Class/Subclass of 235/494).
[0010] The instant application details matter directed to
information querying and serving on the internet based on profiles
(suggested class/subclass: 705/14). However, in order to develop a
reader's understanding of the invention(s), the descriptions of the
other invention(s) have been compiled into a single disclosure to
illustrate and clarify how aspects of these inventions operate
independently, interoperate as between individual inventions,
and/or cooperate collectively. The disclosure goes on to further
describe the interrelations and synergies as between any of the
various inventions within the context of an overarching inventive
system; all of which is to further ensure compliance with 35 U.S.C.
.sctn.112.
[0011] Applicants hereby claim priority under 35 USC .sctn.119 for
U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 60/827,381 filed Sep.
28, 2006, entitled "APPARATUSES, METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR CODE
TRIGGERED INFORMATION QUERYING AND SERVING," attorney docket no.
17896-004PV; U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No.
60/828,959 filed Oct. 10, 2006, entitled "METHOD FOR INFORMATION
QUERYING AND SERVING ON MOBILE DEVICES BASED ON AMBIENT
CONDITIONS," attorney docket no. 17896-004PVI; U.S. provisional
patent application Ser. No. 60/828,962 filed Oct. 10, 2006,
entitled "METHOD FOR CODE-TRIGGERED INFORMATION QUERYING AND
SERVING ON MOBILE DEVICES BASED ON PROFILES," attorney docket no.
17896-004PV2; U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No.
60/828,970 filed Oct. 10, 2006, entitled "METHOD FOR ANTICIPATORY
INFORMATION QUERYING AND SERVING ON MOBILE DEVICES BASED ON
PROFILES," attorney docket no. 17896-004PV3; U.S. provisional
patent application Ser. No. 60/828,969 filed Oct. 10, 2006,
entitled "METHOD FOR COORDINATING PERSONNEL BASED ON PROFILES,"
attorney docket no. 17896-004PV4; U.S. provisional patent
application Ser. No. 60/828,967 filed Oct. 10, 2006, entitled
"METHOD FOR DETERMINING AND ANNOUNCING PROXIMITY BETWEEN
TRAJECTORIES," attorney docket no. 17896-004PV5; U.S. provisional
patent application Ser. No. 60/828,968 filed Oct. 10, 2006,
entitled "METHOD FOR INFORMATION QUERYING AND SERVING IN A VIRTUAL
WORLD BASED ON PROFILES," attorney docket no. 17896-004PV6; and
U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 60/828,965 filed Oct.
10, 2006, entitled "METHOD FOR INFORMATION QUERYING AND SERVING ON
THE INTERNET BASED ON PROFILES," attorney docket no.
17896-004PV7.
[0012] This disclosure is also related to co-pending Patent
Cooperation Treaty patent application serial no. PCT/______, filed
Sep. 28, 2007, entitled "APPARATUS, METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR CODE
TRIGGERED INFORMATION QUERYING AND SERVING," attorney docket no.
17896-004PC; U.S. non-provisional patent application Ser. No.
______, filed Sep. 28, 2007, entitled "APPARATUSES, METHODS AND
SYSTEMS INFORMATION QUERYING AND SERVING BASED ON AMBIENT
CONDITIONS," attorney docket no. 17896-004US1; U.S. nonprovisional
patent application Ser. No. ______, filed Sep. 28, 2007, entitled
"APPARATUSES, METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR CODE-TRIGGERED INFORMATION
QUERYING AND SERVING ON MOBILE DEVICES BASED ON PROFILES," attorney
docket no. 17896-004US2; U.S. non-provisional patent application
Ser. No. ______, filed Sep. 28, 2007, entitled "APPARATUSES,
METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR ANTICIPATORY INFORMATION QUERYING AND
SERVING ON MOBILE DEVICES BASED ON PROFILES," attorney docket no.
17896-004US3; U.S. non-provisional patent application Ser. No.
______, filed Sep. 28, 2007, entitled "APPARATUSES, METHODS AND
SYSTEMS FOR COORDINATING PERSONNEL BASED ON PROFILES," attorney
docket no. 17896-004US4; U.S. non-provisional patent application
Ser. No. ______, filed Sep. 28, 2007, entitled "APPARATUSES,
METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR DETERMINING AND ANNOUNCING PROXIMITY
BETWEEN TRAJECTORIES," attorney docket no. 17896-004US5; U.S.
non-provisional patent application Ser. No. ______, filed Sep. 28,
2007, entitled "APPARATUSES, METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR INFORMATION
QUERYING AND SERVING IN A VIRTUAL WORLD BASED ON PROFILES,"
attorney docket no. 17896-004US6; and U.S. nonprovisional patent
application Ser. No. ______, filed Sep. 28, 2007, entitled
"APPARATUSES, METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR AMBIGUOUS CODE-TRIGGERED
INFORMATION QUERYING AND SERVING ON MOBILE DEVICES," attorney
docket no. 17896-004US8.
[0013] The entire contents of the aforementioned applications are
herein expressly incorporated by reference.
FIELD
[0014] The present disclosure is directed generally to apparatuses,
methods, and systems for marketing and information dissemination,
and more particularly, to apparatuses, methods and systems for
information querying and serving on the internet based on
profiles.
BACKGROUND
[0015] In recent years, the proliferation of mobile consumer
electronic and wireless networking technology has allowed the
development of a host of business methods that incorporate Global
Positioning System (GPS) location awareness for mobile devices. In
addition, various advertising systems, such as Google's AdSense,
allow advertisers to place advertisements in contexts with which
consumers are interested. Information encoding symbologies, such as
barcodes, data matrices, or Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)
tags, as well as the technology to decode them have come about.
SUMMARY
[0016] The present disclosure is directed to apparatuses, methods
and systems for information querying and serving on the internet
based on profiles. Existing advertising schemes fail to take full
advantage of the tracking and context targeting possibilities
enabled by the present disclosure. In particular, they do not allow
information and/or advertisement serving on the internet that is
targeted to the individual consumer's characteristic profile,
behavioral patterns, and present contextual surroundings either in
real space of cyberspace. For example, they cannot supply web-based
advertisements on an internet enabled mobile device for goods and
services located near a mobile user that are also chosen based on
the user's behavioral patterns and stated interests. As such, this
disclosure details a code triggered information server (CTIS) that
delivers information on the internet based on user activities, such
as may be registered by codes scanned by mobile devices or website
links selected on a computer, as well as user characteristics and
an accumulated history of user activities. In one embodiment, the
code triggered information server allows advertisers to supply
product information on websites to the consumers who would be most
interested in such ads; this may be achieved by the CTIS selecting
advertising content based on a combination of the context of the
code that the consumer scanned or the web link that the user
selected, the consumer's stated interests as recorded in his or her
user profile, the consumer's demographic profile, situational
information, and a record of scanned codes or web links; these
factors can be analyzed and employed by the CTIS for both user
tracking and behavioral profiling/targeting. For example, a user
with a stated interest in running and a recent pattern of scanning
codes related to shoes may be served a web-based advertisement on
his/her internet-enabled mobile device for a new running shoe being
sold at a nearby shoe store. In another example, a user profiled to
be a teenager and having a pattern of browsing websites related to
comic books may be served a web-based ad for the newest comic book
themed movie when he/she visits a movie-listings website.
[0017] As the first code-triggered system for serving Ads on the
internet with geographic, context, and behavioral specificity based
on user profiles, the CTIS is designed to deliver targeted Ads to
users on the internet while simultaneously providing detailed
customer tracking information to Ad providers. The CTIS moves
beyond contextual advertising schemes; it supplies Ad providers
with greater precision and focus to provide consumers with the
information that is most relevant to their interests, behavioral
patterns, and space-time and/or cyberspace-time trajectories to
maximize the possibility of consummating a transaction. In one
embodiment, the CTIS is designed to allow advertisers to place ads
on the internet at specific times of the day and/or to be triggered
at specific geographic locations such as to increase the likelihood
of garnering the attention of prospective customers. In another
embodiment the CTIS is designed to allow advertisers to obtain
better rates of customer acquisition by supplying Ads on the
internet for goods and services sold on websites that a prospective
customer is likely to visit next. In another embodiment, the CTIS
yields time and location resolved records of scans for the
determination of coded advertisement visibility. In another
embodiment, the CTIS provides rapid and evolving geographic and
historical statistical profiling of user interest, web-surfing
habits, and coded advertisement quality.
[0018] From the user point of view, the CTIS provides a mechanism
by which, in exchange for officially registering interest and
providing basic information, he/she can receive the most targeted
solicitations, enhanced content, sales offers/coupons, and/or the
like. User benefits include: relevant and targeted advertising;
mobile context specific information; contiguous location and/or
immediate event information; coupons and/or offers for many types
of goods and services; and/or the like.
[0019] At the same time, the system grants the advertiser a
powerful tracking tool, to monitor behavioral patterns of consumers
on individual, demographic, temporal, and geographic scales. This
allows, among other things, the deployment of anticipatory
advertising: serving advertisements to users in anticipation of
their locations and/or potential interests based on an accumulated
history of user tracking data. Other Ad provider benefits include:
compilation of highly specific customer tracking information,
including customer space-time trajectories; location and/or time
specific advertising; highly flexible coded advertising placement;
quick and updated determination of coded advertisement visibility;
and/or the like.
[0020] Of benefit to both users and Ad providers is the fact that
users improve the specificity of their Reply Messages with each
successive scan, since each scan further refines the contents of
the user profile. Users thus have a motivation to scan as many
codes as possible related to subjects of interest and will thereby
be exposed to more advertisements than in more traditional, passive
advertising and marketing schemes.
[0021] Ad providers participate by contributing content to an
Information Base that categorizes and labels that content under a
number of considerations, such as subject matter, geographic and
temporal identity, demographic specificity, and/or the like.
Elements of the Information Base can then be compared via these
labels with comparable labels found in a database of user profiles
in order to match content with users via subject, location, time,
demographic category, and/or the like. As such, the CTIS
efficiently facilitates commerce by providing advertising to
consumers with highly tailored specificity.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
[0022] The accompanying appendices and/or drawings illustrate
various non-limiting, example, inventive aspects in accordance with
the present disclosure:
[0023] FIGS. 1a-b show combined logic and data flow block diagram
illustrating a general overview of embodiments of the CTIS;
[0024] FIG. 2 shows a particular, exemplary embodiment of the ETIC,
wherein contextual information and advertising is served to the
user related to a news article in the business section of a media
publication;
[0025] FIG. 3 shows user trajectories through a network of Ad
provider zones;
[0026] FIG. 4 shows an embodiment of the web interface for user
registration;
[0027] FIGS. 5a-c show three types of 2D barcodes that may be
employed within the CTIS and logic flow for code enhancement in one
embodiment of CTIS operation;
[0028] FIG. 6 shows an illustration of one embodiment of the Scan
Message data structure;
[0029] FIG. 7 shows an illustration of one embodiment of the use
profile data structure;
[0030] FIG. 8 shows an illustration of one embodiment of the
Information Base (Ad) data structure;
[0031] FIG. 9 shows a logic flow diagram of one embodiment of the
user profile query heuristic;
[0032] FIG. 10 shows an exemplary histogram of Ad provider zone
breaches;
[0033] FIGS. 11a-d show some embodiments of systems for selecting
nontriggered information to serve to users;
[0034] FIGS. 12a-b show examples of coupons provided by the
CTIS;
[0035] FIG. 13 shows a combined logic and data flow block diagram
for an embodiment of the CTIS wherein contextual Ads are replaced
by Ads based on ambient conditions;
[0036] FIG. 14 shows a combined logic and data flow block diagram
for a particular exemplary embodiment of the CTIS in which allergy
medication Ads are served in response to a high pollen count;
[0037] FIG. 15 shows a combined logic and data flow block diagram
for a particular exemplary embodiment of the CTIS in which
sunscreen Ads are served in response to heat and high UV
levels;
[0038] FIG. 16 shows a combined logic and data flow block diagram
for an embodiment of the ens wherein the selection of contextual
Ads is influenced by ambient conditions;
[0039] FIG. 17 shows a combined logic and data flow block diagram
for a particular exemplary embodiment of the CTIS in which an Ad
for a luxury convertible is served based on warm weather
conditions, a scanned code, and the user profile;
[0040] FIG. 18 shows a combined logic and data flow block diagram
for a particular exemplary embodiment of the CTIS in which an Ad
for Florida travel is served based on cold/rainy weather
conditions, a scanned code, and the user profile;
[0041] FIG. 19 shows a combined logic and data flow block diagram
for a particular exemplary embodiment of the CTIS in which an Ad
for an ice cream shop is served based on warm weather conditions, a
scanned code, and the user profile;
[0042] FIG. 20 shows a combined logic and data flow block diagram
for a particular exemplary embodiment of the CTIS in which an Ad
for ponchos and umbrellas is served based on rainy weather
conditions, a scanned code, and the user profile;
[0043] FIG. 21 shows a combined logic and data flow block diagram
for an embodiment of the CTIS wherein Ads are served to a User
Agent device;
[0044] FIG. 22 shows a combined logic and data flow block diagram
for a particular exemplary embodiment of the CTIS in which an Ad
for a sports team's season tickets is served along with a
pay-per-view event supplied directly to a user's cable box;
[0045] FIG. 23 shows a combined logic and data flow block diagram
for a particular exemplary embodiment of the CTIS in which an Ad
for virus scan subscription software is served; and
[0046] FIG. 24 shows a computer systemization of the CTIS.
[0047] The leading number of each reference number within the
drawings indicates the figure in which that reference number is
introduced and/or detailed. As such, a detailed discussion of
reference number 101 would be found and/or introduced in FIG. 1.
Reference number 201 is introduced in FIG. 2, etc.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
[0048] In one embodiment, the disclosed CTIS employs two basic
actors: (i) a user (100a) capable of registering interest in an
activity, transmitting and receiving data, and displaying
information; and (ii) a server (101) capable of communicating with
the user, storing/updating user profiles, and selecting information
to serve to the user. In addition to the two basic actors, the CTIS
enables the creation of two types of transactional articles: i)
Scan Messages (115) and ii) Reply Messages (145). The CTIS provides
context-specific Reply Messages in response to Scan Messages, which
are prepared in response to the registration of activity interest
by the user, in order to supply information and/or advertising to
the user. The CTIS generates Reply Messages by processing Scan
Message content with user profile information, containing basic
profiling data as well as a history of Scan Messages supplied by a
given user. As such, Reply Messages are transactional articles that
heighten a provider's opportunity to supply relevant and targeted
information and/or advertising to the user that is both context and
user specific. Without loss of generality, we will heretofore refer
to the information and/or advertising content of Reply Messages as
"Ads". The CTIS may also elect to send context and user-specific
Reply Messages based solely on the user profile, without the user
having recently registered activity interest, if it is determined
from the user's profile, particularly the history of Scan Messages,
that a particular Ad is appropriate.
[0049] In one embodiment, users of the CTIS scan codes to register
interest and the CTIS acts as a portal for consumers to access
information supplemental to the context in which the codes are
found. Users may scan codes found in media publications, on
billboards or signs, on consumer products or packages, on websites
or television screens, and/or the like. In doing so, the users may
identify themselves via an identification code specific to the
mobile device and service account with which the scan is made. At
the same time, the scanned code can be recorded, as well as the
time of day and user location; such information may form the basis
of consumer profiles that may be saved by the CTIS. As these scans
are indicative of interest in various subjects, goods, and/or
services, they may serve as a basis for an individual customer
tracking system. As such, advertisers can finely tune and
efficiently tailor their efforts towards achieving maximum return
on the advertising expenditure.
Code Triggered Information Server Basic Overview
[0050] FIG. 1a shows a combined logic and data flow block diagram
illustrating a general overview of the CTIS in one embodiment. The
CTIS may be configured so that a user (100a) may scan a digital
code (105) with a scanning device (100b), as for example by using a
cell phone camera to scan and/or take a picture of a barcode, 2d
code, matrix code, data matrix, QR code, or other such symbology.
An example of a mobile device and software capable of such code
capture is the Nokia 6600 cellular telephone equipped with ConnexTo
software. Alternatively, the CTIS may be triggered by the user
selecting an internet link (such as on an internet enabled mobile
device), by making decisions within a virtual world (such as a
massively multiplayer online game), and/or the like. Without loss
of generality, all such forms of interest-registering CTIS
triggering will be referred to as "code scanning". The time and
location (as determined by GPS, GPRS, or other such geopositioning
technologies) of the mobile device are determined (110), and a Scan
Message (115) is generated containing a user identification (ID), a
hardware ID that identifies the type of mobile device being used, a
geocode (location of the device), a timestamp, and the scanned code
(see. FIG. 4 and discussion of Scan Message below). Additional
user-input information may also be supplied at this point. The Scan
Message is packaged and sent (120) to a server (101) that receives
and recognizes it (125). The user's profile, specific to the
supplied user ID, is updated with the new Scan Message (i.e., it is
added as a transaction to their profile transaction history) and
queried (130) for information to use in the preparation of a Reply
Message (140) that is also based on the content of the current Scan
Message. The server selects (135) the Ad content (see FIG. 7) of
the Reply Message (145) from an Information Base and sends it to
the user's mobile display device, which displays the pertinent
content to the user (150).
[0051] In one implementation, the Scan Message and/or scanned code
may be sent to the server (101) by a Multimedia Messaging Service
(MMS) protocol. In other implementations, a wide variety of other
communication protocols may be employed, including but not limited
to: Short Messaging Service (SMS), instant messaging, web browser
based messaging, email, Enhanced Messaging System (EMS), TCP/IP,
WAP, and/or the like.
[0052] In one implementation, the server (101) may be addressed by
a short code, short numbers, Common Short Code (CSC), and/or the
like for sending the Scan Message and/or scanned code. For example,
a short code may appear alongside a code in a print publication,
and a user may be informed that the scanned code should be sent to
the indicated short code number in order to retrieve a Reply
Message, advertisement, coupon, and/or the like. In other
implementations, other addressing means may be employed, such as an
ordinary telephone number, an email address, a universal resource
locater (URL), and/or the like. In another implementation, the
short code and/or other server address may be encoded within part
of the code itself. When the user scans the code with his or her
mobile device, the code may be partially decoded by the client
device to extract the address and automatically send the rest of
the code thereto.
[0053] FIG. 1b shows an implementation of combined logic and data
flow in another embodiment of CTIS operation. A code (155) is
scanned by a camera phone (156), and the resulting image content is
converted to an MMS format to be sent via short code (157) through
a gateway provider (158) to the CTIS (159) server. At the server,
the image information may be enhanced, manipulated, and/or
otherwise processed (160) so as to aid in determining the
appropriate content to serve in response. After enhancement, the
image content is read (161) and the content and format for the
appropriate response is determined (162) (see, e.g., FIGS. 9-11). A
response message is formed in MMS format (163) and is sent (164)
back to a gateway provider (158) to be served to the user's camera
phone (156).
[0054] In an alternative implementation, the scanned code may be
directly decoded on the client mobile device instead of on the
server. The decoded content may then be converted to MMS format and
sent via short code to the server in order to retrieve the
appropriate content associated with the code. That content may be
returned from the server to the client mobile device by means of an
MMS protocol as well.
[0055] For illustration, the CTIS is shown in FIG. 2 for a
particular, exemplary embodiment: providing targeted and contextual
information and advertising to the user related to a news article.
Here, a user employs a cell phone to scan a code associated with an
article in the Business section of a media publication (207), such
as by using the phone's built in camera to photograph a 2D matrix
code (e.g., QR code). The location of the scan (San Francisco,
Calif.) is determined by the phone's built in GPS receiver (212),
and this location is incorporated as a geocode, along with the user
ID, the hardware ID of the particular type of device (e.g., cell
phone) used, the time, and the code content, into a Scan Message.
This is sent to a server via the cell phone's data connection
(e.g., wireless internet systems such as IxEV-DO), and the server
queries a database of user profiles based on the supplied user ID
in order to update the appropriate user profile with the content of
the current Scan Message and to determine what, if any, information
in the user profile may be relevant to the preparation of the
current Reply Message. Here, the server recognizes that the user is
55 years of age and has recently been scanning articles and/or ads
related to investments and retirement planning (232). In one
embodiment, the user can supply a list of interests to be
considered in addition to those culled from their scan history. The
server selects the appropriate Ad content to include in the Reply
Message, comprised in this case of links to Finance headlines,
quick links to saved stock quotes (237), and a contextual brokerage
advertisement (238), including information on branch locations in
San Francisco (212) near the user. This reply is sent by the server
to the user's mobile device which displays the appropriate message
content.
[0056] In one embodiment, the CTIS can serve information to the
user based on the collected knowledge of user space-time
trajectories contained in the user profile, without the need for
any initiating code scan. This embodiment is best illustrated by
example, as drawn in FIG. 3. Here, a user rides a bus from home
(300) to work (310) on four of the last five days, and takes a
different bus to his doctor's office (330) on the remaining day.
The space-time trajectories for the four work trips (305) and the
one doctor trip (325) are determined by codes that the user scans
with his cell phone from a newspaper during the bus rides. In this
example, the user is assumed to scan a code every ten minutes
starting at 7:30 AM until the destination is reached, and the
geographic location of each scan is indicated by the position of
the timestamp along each trajectory. In one embodiment, tracking
occurs without scanning, simply by having the device send geocodes
and timestamps by itself. Along the way to his destinations, the
user passes a number of Ad providers (marked with X's) with Ad
content in the CTIS Information Base, with dotted circles
indicating the locus of points that are a distance of two miles
from each provider. One Ad provider in particular (315), a gourmet
coffee shop, is within two miles (320) of the user's space-time
trajectory at 7:50 AM in four of the last five days. The user's
profile also lists "coffee" as an interest, both based on user
specifications during registration and on the user's advertisement
and article scan record. Consequently, on the sixth day, the server
supplies the user with an advertisement for the coffee shop (315)
at 7:45 AM
Code Triggered Information Server Detailed Overview
[0057] User and Ad Provider Participation
[0058] The CTIS is enabled by the participation of Ad providers and
users. In one embodiment, Ad providers supply Ads for storage on
the CTIS server. In an alternative embodiment, the Ads are stored
on third party servers that are referenced by the CTIS server. The
user experience may be enhanced by the incorporation of personal
preferences and demographic information to optimize the targeting
of Ad content. Consequently, one embodiment would incorporate a
user registration procedure. Users may register for the CTIS via
the internet, telephone, postal mail, and/or the like. If a
particular embodiment of the CTIS requires client software for the
user to install, this could be supplied upon successful user
registration. FIG. 4 shows an exemplary embodiment of a user
registration interface 400, wherein a user can input Basic Info 405
(e.g., member ID, password, secret question/answer, e-mail address,
etc.), Device Info 410 (e.g., mobile phone carrier, phone
manufacturer & model, operating system, etc.), Demographics 415
(e.g., gender, year of birth, zip code, country of residence,
household income, job title, industry, etc.), and Content
Preferences 420 (e.g., interests, subscriptions, content delivery
options, personal history options, cache options, geo-tracking
options, ad delivery options, etc.) in a plurality of fields 425.
In an alternative embodiment, a basic user identification packet
(e.g., a "cookie") is sent with a user's first code scan, thus
establishing a basic user profile that can be filled in with
greater detail at a later time.
[0059] Code Capture (105)
[0060] Scannable codes within the CTIS may be found in a variety of
locations, including but not limited to newspaper and magazine
articles, signs and billboards, flyers, store locations and kiosks,
consumer products, packages, clothing, stickers, websites, software
displays, television broadcasts, virtual worlds, and/or the like.
The nature of the code and associated method with which the code
can be scanned will depend to some extent on where the code is
found, but among the possible types of codes are standard barcodes
(e.g., UPC, EAN, Code 128, etc.), 2D matrix codes (e.g., QR code,
Semacode, Data Glyphs, mCodes, etc.), user-input codes (e.g., text
messages), RFID tags, pure images (e.g., an image of a sign to be
analyzed by optical character recognition), website links, software
inputs, and/or the like. These codes may be located on any medium
(e.g., on newspapers, magazines, books, video content, computer
screens, embedded in objects (e.g., RFID tags on clothes, etc.),
and/or the like). One embodiment employs 2D matrix codes, examples
of which are provided in FIG. Sa, due to their large data capacity,
ease of scanning, and resilience to damage or error. These examples
include QR codes 500, Mcodes 505, Semacodes 510, and/or the
like.
[0061] In scanning a code, the code image may not always be
recorded faithfully and/or in an ideal and/or suitable condition
for decoding and/or matching to associated content. Consequently,
the CTIS may be configured to enhance and/or otherwise process a
code image in order to better recognize the code. FIGS. 5b-c show
implementations of logic flow for processing and/or managing
non-ideal code scans in embodiments of CTIS operation. In FIG. 5b,
a scanned code is received at the CTIS server (513) and a first
attempt is made to decode a received code scan (515). In one
implementation, a received code scan may take the form of a bitmap
image and/or a compressed bitmap image. If the decoding is
successful (520), then the code is matched to associated content
(525) that is ultimately destined to be served to a user.
Otherwise, a determination is made as to whether enhancement should
be applied to the scanned code (530). If not, then an error message
and/or suggestions on how to improve the quality of the scanned
code may be returned to the user (535). The CTIS may decide not to
apply enhancement, for example, if enhancement has already been
applied unsuccessfully to the same image before or if the quality
of the image is so poor as to be clearly beyond improvement. If
enhancement is to be applied, then the CTIS determines the
appropriate enhancement type (540) based, for example, on the
quality and character of the scanned code image and subsequently
applies the enhancement (545), after which a new attempt is made to
decode the scanned code.
[0062] In some implementations, multiple enhancement processes may
be applied against a scanned code and the results compared in order
to determine the encoded content. Prior to enhancement, the image
may be downsized if necessary for speed of processing in applying
multiple enhancement against the image. Image quality may also be
increased if necessary in order to more successfully apply
enhancements. For code images having extraneous information and/or
noise, an enhancement process may be applied to remove all
extraneous information, despeckle, and/or the like. For code images
having shades of gray and/or shadows obscuring the encoded content,
an enhancement process may be applied to manipulate the contrast
and/or brightness of the image in order to create a pure black and
white image for cleaner decoding. For code images that are tilted
and/or not taken flat in a plane, an enhancement process may be
applied to tilt the plane of the code to create a flat plane to aid
in successful decoding. For code images that are rotated or skewed,
an enhancement process may be applied to de-rotate, deskew, and/or
otherwise recreate proper rectangular pixel groupings that can be
decoded. For code images that are taken out of focus, an
enhancement process may be applied to sharpen the image into
recognizable pixel groupings. Additionally, the CTIS may apply edge
recognition processes to the code image to create a set of
potential code images that can be processed and compared to records
in a code database.
[0063] In some cases in which full decoding of a scanned code image
is impossible, a partial decoding may be accomplished and serving
of content achieved on that basis. A partial decoding may, for
example, result in a probabilistic code match without ever
successfully decoding the complete code. FIG. 5c shows an
implementation of logic flow for partial decoding in one embodiment
of CTIS operation. A scanned code image is received (548),
partially decoded (550), and the partially decoded content used to
query a code database to find matching codes (555). A determination
is made if any matches exist (560) and, if not, then the CTIS may
return an error message to the user and/or make suggestions about
how to improve the image of the scanned code (565). If a match is
found, however, then a determination is made as to whether there
are multiple matches (570). If so, then the CTIS may consider
ancillary factors (575) in attempting to isolate a single code as
the most likely match to the received code. Such ancillary factors
may include, but are not limited to: the incoming phone number, the
carrier, the time of day, current code traffic, the source of the
code, the context of the code, the user ID, the hardware ID, the
user behavioral history, the user location, and/or the like. In
considering ancillary factors, the CTIS is thus capable of
predicting the true code based on knowledge of the user scanning
the code, the context of the code, ambient factors, and/or the
like. Once a unique code has been identified, this is designated as
the matching code (580) and the CTIS proceeds with determining the
appropriate associated content to serve to the user.
[0064] In an illustrative example of partial decoding, a given
matrix code may encode the string ABC123. In multiple processes, it
may be determined that the code contains A.sub.--1.sub.--3 (where
the blanks represent unknown values), _C1_, and AB_. Through these
multiple processes, the CTIS system now knows that the code
contains ABC1.sub.--3 and may check this against codes in a code
database to determine how many matches exist. If it finds two
matching codes (e.g., ABC123 and ABC143), it may consider ancillary
factors. For example, ABC123 may correspond to an advertisement for
a new action movie while ABC143 corresponds to a coupon for women's
cosmetics. If the user supplying the code is determined, based on a
supplied user ID, to be a man with a history of scanning
movie-related codes, then the CTIS system may infer that ABC123 is
the matching code and serve the corresponding content. In one
implementation, the CTIS server may further supply a confirmation
request for partially matched codes, requesting the user to affirm
or deny that the supplied content is, in fact, the content that he
or she was seeking.
[0065] Scan Message Data Structure (115)
[0066] The Scan Message generated by the CTIS is, itself, a novel
data structure. In one embodiment that is illustrated in FIG. 6, it
contains an identification field (605) comprising a unique user ID
(605a) and a hardware ID (605b), both automatically supplied by the
device used to scan and transmit the scanned code; a coordinate
field (610) comprising the location geocode (610a) (e.g., GPS
coordinate, latitude and longitude, city and state, etc.) and
timestamp (610b) of the scan; and a code field (615) supplying the
specific content of the scanned code, which may include a subject
code (615a) for the code context, a source code (615b) indicating
where the code was located, and a content code (615c) indicating
the specific information, if any, to be supplied in response to a
scan of that code.
[0067] In one embodiment, the XML for the Scan Message takes the
following form:
TABLE-US-00001 <Scan_Message> <ID> <User ID>
012345 </User ID> <Hardware ID> Nokia 660 </Hardware
ID> </ID> <Coordinates> <Geocode> GPS 40
46.516 -7357.98 </Geocode> <Timestamp> 08/21/2006
13:45:28 </Timestamp> </Coordinates> <Code>
Subject> entertainment; movies; comedy </Subject>
<Source> New York Times </Source> <Content>
Showtimes for latest popular comedy movie </Content>
</Code> </Scan_Message>
[0068] Data Transmission (120, 125, 145, 150)
[0069] In one embodiment, sending and receiving the Scan Message
and Reply Message will employ standard data transmission techniques
to ensure successful transmission and to preserve data integrity
(e.g., TCP/IP, 1xEV-DO, etc.). This is relevant for the Scan
Message, which will contain the coded information scanned by the
user. Such techniques may include but are not limited to the use of
standard transmission protocols, "handshaking", data compression,
data encryption, and error correction.
[0070] User Profile Structure (130)
[0071] The content of the user profile generated by the CTIS is
itself a novel data structure. In one embodiment illustrated in
FIG. 7, the profile (700), which is uniquely specified by the user
ID, will contain a category of quasi-static user information (705)
that is generally fixed over time and one of dynamic user
information (730) that is updated with each successive Scan Message
that the user submits. The quasi-static info (the "quasi" qualifier
indicates that this information may be updated, for example if a
user changes their mobile device, however it does not change with
each successive code scan) may include a hardware ID (710);
"census" info (715) such as name, address, phone number, e-mail
address, age, sex, race, marital status, number and age of
children, job title, annual income, etc.; subjects of interest
specified by the user (720); and information regarding allowed
methods to contact the user (725). In one embodiment, this
information could be supplied by the user when registering for the
CTIS service as, for example, on a website. The dynamic info in the
profile may include a scan record (735), comprising the time (740),
location (745), and scan code (750) (including subject (750a),
source (750b) and content (750c)); and statistics related to the
scan history (755). Such statistics may include but are not limited
to the most popular scan subjects, most popular scan sources, user
space-time trajectories, etc. In one embodiment, the profile
contains a series of identifying codes distilled from the profile
content (e.g., demographic category code based on census info,
subject codes, source codes, etc.) that can be compared with
similar codes in the Scan Message to determine the appropriate Ad
content to include in the Reply Message. In an alternative
embodiment, the profile contains identifying keywords or "tags"
based on the profile content that can be compared with similar tags
in the Scan Message to determine the appropriate content to include
in the Reply Message. In both cases, the identifying labels for the
user profiles may be input by CTIS administrators or automatically
generated by an appropriate computer algorithm such as stripping
header labels from ad descriptions (e.g., for example, stripping
the header tags from an HTML ad).
[0072] In one embodiment, the XML for the User Profile may take the
following form:
TABLE-US-00002 <User> <Quasi-static info> <User
ID>123-45-6789</User ID> <Hardware ID> Nokia 660
</Hardware ID> <Census info> John Smith; 123 Maple Dr.,
Smalltown, CA 92676; (123)456-7890; jsmith@email.com; 55 years;
male; white; married; 2 children; etc. </Census info>
<Interests> camping; fishing; classic cars; movies; etc.
</Interests> <Contact restrictions> Weekdays 8 AM - 7
PM only </Contact restrictions> </Quasi-static info>
<Dynamic info> <Scan record> <Scan #1>
<Time> 08/21/2006 13:45:28 </Time> <Geocode> GPS
40 46.516 -73.57.98 </Geocode> <Code> <Subject>
entertainment; movies; comedy </Subject> <Source> New
York Times </Source> <Content> Showtimes for latest
popular comedy movie </Content> </Code>
</Scan_#1> <Scan_#2> etc ... </Scan_#2> etc ...
</Scan record> <Scan statistics> <Popular
subjects> entertainment; cars; travel; etc. </Popular
subjects> <Popular sources> New York Times; Car and
Driver; CNN.com; etc. <Popular sources> <Trajectories>
Data files listing time and geocode coordinates, computed average
trajectories, likelylocatons, etc. </Trajectories> etc ...
</Scan statistics> </Dynamic info> <Code>
<Subject> entertainment; movies; comedy </Subject>
<Source> New York Times </Source> <Content>
Showtimes for latest popular comedy movie </Content>
</Code> </User>
[0073] In one embodiment, data accumulated in a plurality of user
profiles may be analyzed to extract information about codes that
are scanned. For example, the frequency with which a particular
code is scanned may be extracted from user profiles and parsed by
geographic, temporal, and/or demographic criteria to yield code
profiling information. This information may be stored in a code
and/or Ad profile. In an alternative embodiment, the code/Ad
profile may be constructed and/or updated by the CTIS immediately
upon the receipt of a Scan Message rather than being extracted from
user profiles.
[0074] Information Base (135)
[0075] The Information Base contains the content that may be
included in the Reply Message sent to the user and may be stored on
the CTIS central server or on third party servers accessed by the
CTIS. In one embodiment, each Ad is associated with searchable
labels. The Ad content together with its labels, collectively
referred to here as an Ad, forms a novel data structure. In one
embodiment illustrated in FIG. 8, the Ad (800) is comprised of the
specific ad content (805) (e.g., text, images, video, etc.) and a
set of identifiers (810) including subject tags (815), information
characterizing the temporal character of the Ad based on which the
Ad may be triggered (820) (e.g., 6 to 10 AM for a breakfast Ad),
information characterizing the geographic specificity of the Ad
based on which the Ad may be triggered (825), demographic
specificity of the Ad (830) (e.g., an Ad for family vacations), and
the hardware requirements of the Ad (835) (e.g., hardware IDs of
devices capable of displaying the content of a particular Ad). In
one embodiment, the Ad would also contain information identifying
the source in which the Ad code is to appear. In another
embodiment, the Ad would also contain code/Ad profile data,
describing the history and/or statistics of scans related to the
Ad.
[0076] In one embodiment, the XML for an Ad may look like:
TABLE-US-00003 <Ad> <Ad ID>123</Ad ID> <Ad
content> textual movie showtime listings ( or images, audio,
video, URLs, etc.) </Ad content> <Identifiers>
<Subject> entertainment; movies; comedy </Subject>
<Temporal> 08/21/2006; 12:00:00 to 14:00:00 </Temporal>
<Geographic> Smalltown, CA 92676 </Geographic>
<Demographic> 17 years and older </Demographic>
<Hardware> any (text only) </Hardware>
</Identifiers> </Ad>
[0077] User Profile Query (130)
[0078] The CTIS queries the user profile to determine which Ads to
include from the Information Base in the Reply Message in order to
tailor those Ads to the user's profile characteristics, interests,
and trajectories. In one embodiment, a scanned code will yield two
components in the Reply Message content: i) static content that is
the same for every user who scans the code, and ii) dynamic content
that depends on the context of the user and the user profile. The
static content (i) is determined from the scan code, while the
dynamic content (ii) is determined by a combination of the scan
code and the user profile, requiring a dynamic content generation
heuristic to combine their respective influences. While a variety
of such heuristic are possible and contemplated as being within the
scope of this disclosure, and the specific heuristic employed in a
given realization will likely depend on the precise application and
intention, we discuss one embodiment of this heuristic here for
illustrative purposes with reference to FIG. 9. In one embodiment,
the scan code and user profile is labeled with keywords or "tags"
that identify the subject content of each. In an alternative
embodiment, the scan code, user profile, and Ads are labeled with
identifying codes. In either case, the heuristic exhibited in FIG.
9 first filters all Ads in the Information Base by the subject code
or tag of the scanned code (900). The Ads from 900 are filtered by
the hardware ID (905) to ensure that the Ad content can be
successfully acquired and displayed by the user. The Ads from 905
are filtered into separate categories by scan location (910a1),
user address (910a2), user specified subject interests (910b1),
user scan subject history (910b2), scan time (910c), or user
demographic category (910d). Ads in each of these filtered
categories are compared to determine which occur most commonly
across 910a, b, c, and d (915). The server determines if 915 has
yielded a single Ad (920), and if so, it incorporates the Ad's
content into the Reply Message (930). Otherwise, it chooses one Ad
at random from the remaining Ads (925) for incorporation. It must
be emphasized again that this is but a single, specific embodiment
of the user profile query heuristic intended for illustrative
purposes. The heuristic is highly flexible and can be finely tuned
for the specific application at hand. Some other possible methods
may include alternative ordering of filters, addition or removal of
filters, weighted filtering, complex conditional trees, and/or the
like.
[0079] As an exemplary implementation of this embodiment of the Ad
filtering heuristic, we consider the situation discussed above with
reference to FIG. 2. Here, the user scans a code from an article on
finance and investment in the business section of a media
publication. Keywords associated with this code may include
Business, Finance, Investment, etc. Consequently, only those Ads
possessing these identifying keywords are passed at 800. In an
alternative embodiment, the keywords may be ranked in order or
relevance and the Ads filtered accordingly. The Ads from 900 are
filtered by Hardware ID; we presently assume that the user's mobile
device is equipped with advanced capabilities (text, image, audio,
video, internet, etc.), so that all Ads are passed at 905. In an
alternative embodiment, the Ad filter may preferentially choose
those Ads that take fullest advantage of the user device's display
capabilities. Of the remaining Ads, there is one for a brokerage
firm that is tagged with a location code corresponding to the
user's address (San Francisco, Calif.), the user's specified
subject interests (investing, retirement), and a portion of the
user's demographic profile (age 55 or older). The three tag matches
(location, subject, and demographic) distinguish this Ad from the
others in the Information Base, which, in this example, all have
two or fewer tag matches; so this unique Ad, a brokerage firm
located in San Francisco, Calif. with retirement services, is
chosen to be served to the user's mobile device.
[0080] In one embodiment, the user may respond to the Reply Message
with a relevance rating. This rating may then be stored in the user
profile and/or employed to refine the criteria for tailoring future
Reply Messages to that user.
[0081] In one embodiment, the Ads would not be filtered by hardware
ID at 905. Rather, when a final Ad has been selected for inclusion
in the Reply Message following filtration under the other relevant
criteria, the server will determine whether that Ad is properly
formatted for the device specified by the hardware ID. If so, then
the Ad will be included in the Reply Message as is. Otherwise, it
will be converted into the required format appropriate to the
user's mobile device. For example, if the selected Ad contains
color Images but the server determines that the user's hardware
device is an early model BlackBerry that only accommodates
monochromatic text, the server will implement a peripheral
application to strip the text content from the Ad and incorporate
only that in the Reply Message.
[0082] Non-Triggered Ad Serving
[0083] Though Ads served by the CTIS are determined by codes
scanned at some time in the past, it is possible for the CTIS to
serve Ads without any immediately contiguous, causal code scan. A
general illustration of this capability was given above in FIG. 3,
where each Ad provider has specific geographic locations of
operation. These are assumed to be stores/restaurants for the
present purposes of illustration in this disclosure, but they may
have different character for different embodiments and
applications, including but not limited to kiosks, signs and
billboards, offices, hospitals, real estate, shelters, emergency
service providers, traffic monitors, individuals, websites, virtual
world locations, and/or the like. A chosen distance surrounding
each Ad provider location defines a "provider zone", where the
metric by which "distance" is gauged may be generalized in the case
of cyberspace/virtual world locations. A provider zone breach
occurs when a user scans a code within a provider zone. This may be
regardless of the content of the scanned code, for in this example
the goal is to record the user's space-time position. In an
alternative embodiment, a provider zone breach can be registered
even if a user does not scan a code within the provider zone, if
the CTIS can infer a breach from two or more code scans outside the
provider zone through interpolation. When such a provider zone
breach occurs, a special note may be incorporated into the user
profile, such as in the Scan statistics module (755), indicating
the time and the particular Ad provider.
[0084] In an alternative implementation, the CTIS may be configured
to automatically query a user position without scanned codes. For
example, a user's mobile device may be configured to periodically
register it's GPS location with the CTIS system. In another
implementation, the CTIS may be able to continuously monitor the
position of a client mobile device based on the cell site or tower
to which the device is communicatively coupled. Cell site based
user location may also be registered when a user scans a code.
[0085] From an accumulated record of these breaches, data of the
form of FIG. 10 can be determined. FIG. 10 shows a histogram (1000)
of provider zone breaches in 20 minute intervals for a particular
user over a chosen time scale, which we will take to be two months
in this example. In one embodiment, such histograms will correspond
to breaches of specific Ad provider locations; while in an
alternative embodiment, they will correspond to breaches of any of
a plurality of locations corresponding to a specific Ad provider;
while in still another embodiment, they will correspond to breaches
of different locations of related but different Ad providers,
chosen to target a specific collective user demographic. In this
exemplary histogram, the significant provider zone breaches (those
exceeding the threshold) are clustered around two times: one
approximately centered at 9 AM (1005), and the other at 6 PM
(1010). This may represent, for example, a user scanning codes as
he passes the same Ad provider location while riding a bus to and
from work. In one embodiment, a threshold breach level (1015),
indicated in FIG. 10 by a horizontal dotted line, is specified such
that all breaches below this threshold number are ignored. This
threshold level should be specified with respect to the time scale
of the histogram; in the present example, the threshold is 3
breaches per two month period. The average peak times (1020, 1025)
of the breach clusters that exceed this threshold are computed
(marked by X's in FIG. 9), and a time is chosen prior to those
averages (1030, 1035) to serve an appropriate Ad to the user. In
one embodiment, provider zone breaches could be sorted by scan
subject, so that a histogram of the form of FIG. 10 could be
constructed for a specific category of scans in order to further
tailor the supplied Ad content.
[0086] In another embodiment, the system may be generalized to
analyze trajectories in "cyberspace-time". In this embodiment, a
record of trajectories is kept of the user's activity on the world
wide web as browsed, for example, on the user's internet enabled
mobile device. A generalized concept of "distance" may be
incorporated, for example reflecting an average number of links
needed to get from one website to another. Provider locations
become websites in this embodiment, and a zone breach may be
registered when the user is a specified number of links away from
the provider's website. Then, just as before, the CTIS can
anticipate user cyberspace-time trajectories and supply Ads,
coupons, pop-ups, etc. related to websites that the user is
approaching. For example, the CTIS may track that a user visits web
site A at 9:00 AM and web site B at 9:20 AM every day. The CTIS may
then provide ads to website A at 8:50 AM and to website B at 9:10
that are targeted to that user. In an alternative embodiment, the
CTIS may provide this targeting information to existing ad serving
systems, which in turn may use the targeting information for timely
placement of ads. The aggregation of such targeting information, in
particular, may be useful to advertisers and website owners. For
example, reports may be run on user profiles sorted by location
(e.g., web sites) and time of visit. This information may be
supplied, along with user profile IDs, which may then be used by
the advertising servers and/or websites to pre-cache ads that are
relevant to the users' interest just prior to their anticipated
visits to the website. As such, the CTIS works in conjunction with
certain websites to supply user-specific Ads on those sites. As a
result, the content of the user profile within the CTIS may be used
to select Ads that the user browses using their mobile device. In
an alternative embodiment, web-based Ads may be specific to the
trajectories of users in geographic space-time, since that
information is included in the user profile. For example, if a user
is known to be passing by a coffee shop at a specific location and
time every day (e.g., a coffee shop on 123 Main Street, N.Y., N.Y.
at 9:00 AM), and is also know to visit a specific website at that
time (e.g., at 9:00 AM the user visits website e reading the daily
news on their walk to work), then the system may provide the user
with Ads directly to their PDA or embedded in website e (because it
was pre-loaded as already discussed) for the coffee shop. As such,
the CTIS provides a mechanism to provide geographically relevant
ads to traditional websites. In yet another embodiment, the total
content of the websites browsed by a user on their mobile device
may be modified by the content of the user profile within the CTIS.
For example, a news website may select articles for a user that are
specific to the user profile, including their interests,
demographics, current time and location, etc.
[0087] In another embodiment, the CTIS may analyze the user
trajectories in "virtual worlds" or "synthetic realities" and serve
ads accordingly. An example of a virtual world is a massively
multiplayer online game, such as The Sims Online, EverQuest, World
of Warcraft, Second Life, and/or the like. In such a virtual
environment, a code scan may be comprised of a particular user
action or decision such as initiating or completing a game mission,
clicking on an icon, saving a game, etc. In such virtual worlds,
geographies and virtual locations may be used in employing
trajectories. The history of user activity within the virtual world
may then be incorporated into the user profile and used by the CTIS
to serve ads within the context of the virtual world or elsewhere.
For example, in games like Second Life, virtual televisions,
billboards, etc. may be used as advertising delivery
mechanisms.
[0088] Selecting the proper Ad to serve to the user in the
non-triggered Ad serving embodiment of the CTIS may be accomplished
using a variety of heuristics that are best tailored to suit the
specific use or application. Nevertheless, we present an example of
a specific embodiment in FIG. IIa for illustrative purposes. In
this embodiment, a weighting system may be employed to select among
the Ads of a specific Ad provider once it is established that an Ad
from this provider is to be served to the user based on the
analysis of FIG. 10. This weighting system begins by assigning a
score of 1 (1100) to all Ads in the Information Base corresponding
to the provider. This score is multiplied by a subject coefficient
(1105) for every match between the Ad subject and the user
specified subject interest or scan subject history. That
coefficient is 2 in the present example, so N matches would yield a
weighting factor of 2N. The Ad score may also be multiplied by a
time coefficient (1110) if the serving time (1030 or 1035) falls
within a time range specified for a particular Ad. In the present
example, the time coefficient is 4, expressing the greater
importance of this factor compared to a single subject match.
Finally, the Ad score may be multiplied by a demographic
coefficient (1115) for every match between the Ad demographic
category and that of the user. That coefficient is 1.5 in the
present example, reflecting the diminished importance of this
factor compared to the time and subject considerations. M
demographic category matches will yield a weighting factor of
1.5.sup.M. Once all of the Ad provider's Ads are scored in this
fashion, those Ads with the highest scores for that provider may be
selected over the rest (1120). Similarly, the highest scoring Ads
from other providers are selected and the highest scoring Ads over
all providers can be selected to serve for a particular time
interval (1125). Finally, the proper time to serve the Ad (e.g., 30
minutes prior to the expected average provider zone breach time) is
established (1130) and, if there is no further ambiguity (1135),
the proper Ad is served at that time (1145). Any residual ambiguity
may be resolved by selecting randomly from the remaining Ads.
[0089] As a specific example of how this might work, we assume that
the histogram (1000) of FIG. 10 represents provider zone breaches
for a fast-food restaurant that a user passes on his way to and
from work. An Ad in the restaurant's base of provided Ads matches
the user's stated interest in gourmet coffee, and this Ad is
further labeled by a time identifier indicating that it is best
served between 8 AM and 10 AM. Consequently, at 30 minutes before
the user's average breach time of the provider's zone, the server
supplies the Ad to the user's mobile device, touting this
restaurant's new line of gourmet coffee drinks. Alternatively, the
user's profile may specify that he is married with two children.
This matches the demographic category of an Ad in the provider's
base which is also labeled by a time identifier indicating that it
is best served between 5 PM and 8 PM. As a result, 30 minutes
before the user breaches the provider's zone on his way home from
work, the server supplies the Ad to the user's mobile device,
touting their family-pack of hamburgers.
[0090] In an alternative embodiment, the CTIS may be configured to
receive and implement marketer rules for serving Ads. FIG. 11b
shows a schematic illustration of data structures related to
establishment of a marketer rule for Ad serving in one embodiment
of CTIS operation. A user profile data sets (1147) may include a
variety of data fields related to user activities, interests,
characteristics, and/or the like, such as but not limited to:
geographic visits (1149), as may be recorded by code scans; time
(1151) associated with code scans; interest contacts (1153), such
as may be reflect the user's interests and may be based on the
context and/or associated content of scanned codes; gender, age,
demographic, and/or other personal information (1155); and/or the
like. Server data pulls (1157) may reference one or more data feeds
to which the CTIS server has access in order to draw information
that may be pertinent to marketer rules and/or Ad serving
procedures. A wide variety of different types of feeds may be
accessible, including but not limited to: global newsfeeds (1159),
such as associated press wire services, weather information, sports
scores, political and social events, financial market data, and/or
the like; category sector feeds (1161), such as more specific
and/or special interest news feeds; marketer specified feeds
(1163); and/or the like. A marketer rule (1165) may be established
by selecting one or more fields (1167) from the user profile data
sets (1147) and/or the server data pulls (1157) and supplying
associated parameters (1165) and/or parameter values associated
with those fields. In the illustrated implementation, the rule
associates a Petroleum Gazette field (1169) with a parameter
specifying more than three oil articles read per day (1175). In
addition, the rule associates a gas station visitation field (1171)
with a parameter specifying more than three visits per week (1177).
If both of these conditions are deemed true for a given CTIS user,
then the CTIS may serve one or more Ads selected for and/or
associated with the marketer rule. A price per-impression (1179)
may be charged for each time that the Ad is served to a user under
the circumstances specified by the rule. In one implementation, a
marketer may propose a price per-impression when he or she creates
the rule, which is then submitted to the CTIS and/or a CTIS
administrator for approval. In another implementation, the CTIS may
automatically generate a price-per-impression based on the rule
and/or the marketer. For example, a fixed charge may be applied for
each additional field and associated parameter added to the rule,
as this refines the specificity with which the associated Ads will
be served and increases the likelihood of transactional
consummation. Once a rule is complete, it may be entered for
storage and subsequent use in a marketer rules database (1181). It
should be understood that the functionality described for this
embodiment of the CTIS may be integrated or employed within any of
the other CTIS embodiments described herein.
[0091] In one embodiment, the XML for the above marketer rule may
take a form similar to the following:
TABLE-US-00004 <Rule> <Rule ID>123</Rule ID>
<Rule name> Oil Rule </Rule name> <Rule owner>
Ads R Us </Rule owner> <Condition1> <Field1>
Petroleum Gazette </Field1> <Parameter1> 4 or more oil
articles/day </Parameter1> </Condition1>
<Condition2> <Field2> Gas Station </Field2>
<Parameter2> 4 or more visits per week </Parameter2>
</Condition2> <Ad_database> Hybrid car Ads
</Ad_database> <Price> <Amount> $1.00
</Amount> <Contingency> Impression </Contingency>
</Price> </Rule>
[0092] In one implementation, the elements of FIG. 11b may form the
basis of a user interface for marketer rule generation. A marketer
and/or other CTIS user may be presented with lists of user profile
data sets (1147) and server data pulls (1157) that may be dragged
and dropped to the marketer rule box (1165) to generate a marketer
rule. When the parameter values have been specified and the rule is
complete, the user may click OK to submit the rule and/or drag and
drop the rule to a marketer rules database icon (1181).
[0093] FIG. 11c shows an implementation of logic flow for
generating a rule queue in one embodiment of CTIS operation. A rule
is instantiated (1182), and the CTIS server checks parameter quanta
associated with the rule (1183). A runtime quantum is discerned for
the rule (1184) to determine the timing for applying the rule. The
rule is subsequently parsed to generate the appropriate query
structure (1185), and the cron schedule for the rule is established
based on the runtime quantum (1186). The rule may then be pushed to
the cron schedule queue (1187), and a determination made as to
whether there are any additional new rules to process (1188).
[0094] FIG. 11d shows an implementation of logic flow for cron job
queue management in one embodiment of CTIS operation. The CTIS may
monitor the cron job queue and, for each queued cron job associated
with a rule that is next in the queue (1189), the CTIS may
determine whether or not it is time for that particular cronjob to
run (1190). If not, then the CTIS passes to the next cronjob in the
queue (1191). On the other hand, if it is time to run, then the
appropriate databases specified in the rule are queried, and the
particular cronjob is dequeued (1192). If the results of the
database query match the rule criteria so as to require serving an
Ad impression to a user, then that match indication may be passed
to Ad selection modules in order to choose an Ad to supply to the
user. In one implementation, the marketer rule itself may uniquely
determine an Ad to serve. In another implementation, the marketer
rule may determine a set or class of Ads to serve, from which a
unique Ad may then be randomly selected. In yet another
implementation, as Ad may be selected from the marketer rule
determined set or class of Ads based on a user profile.
[0095] It must be emphasized again that this is but a single,
specific embodiment of the non-triggered Ad serving procedure
intended for illustrative purposes. The procedure is highly
flexible and can be finely tuned for the specific application at
hand. Some other possible methods may include different relative
weighting factors, alternative weighting considerations,
categorical filtering, consideration of the number of provider zone
breaches above the threshold level, graduated consideration of the
distance from the provider location, modified provider zone shapes,
pattern recognition algorithms, artificial intelligence
facilitation, and/or the like.
VARIOUS APPLICATIONS
[0096] The CTIS provides a targeted information serving system that
may be applied to a wide variety of marketing and information
dispensation applications. In one embodiment, the CTIS creates
enhanced ads with content that cannot be included in a print ad.
For example, a user who scans a code related to an automobile ad is
provided additional content pertaining to the automobile such as
detailed images, video, audio, reviews, and links to additional
information. Based on the geocode provided in the Scan Message, the
CTIS may provide a list of local dealerships and pricing. Based on
the user profile, the CTIS may suggest other automobiles by the
same manufacturer that are popular with customers that share the
same income bracket, geographic address, number of children, etc.
as the user.
[0097] In another embodiment, the CTIS provides targeted coupons to
consumers. By scanning a code in an article or advertisement of
interest, a user may be provided with a coupon code for a store or
establishment near the location where the scan took place, thereby
increasing the likelihood that the coupon would be used. Choosing
the coupon based on the contents of the user profile may further
increase the likelihood of a consummated transaction. FIGS. 12a and
12b show two examples wherein the CTIS supplies coupons and/or
discount info to a user. FIG. 12a shows an advertisement 1205 for
hay fever medication that contains a can code. Upon scanning the
code, the user's cell phone is supplied with a coupon 1210 for 25%
off the advertised medication, along with a nearby store at which
to redeem the coupon. FIG. 12b shows an article related to events
and nightlife in New York City 1215 that contains a scan code. Upon
scanning the code to obtain additional content, the user may also
be provided with a contextual advertisement for a local bar 1220,
including an announcement of happy hour discount prices based on
the time of the scan. In an alternative embodiment, the coupon
could be provided to the user based on an anticipated provider zone
breach rather than a contiguous, causal code scan.
[0098] In another embodiment, the CTIS allows for reduced use of
printed space in media publications. For example, an ordinary
printed article or advertisement may be supplanted by a 2D matrix
code that supplies the content directly to the user's mobile
display device. Furthermore, the supplied content may be dressed
with additional content that is specifically chosen for the user
based on his/her profile or current location, thus increasing the
value and utility of the content while still utilizing
significantly reduced print space. This increased content value,
coupled with the reduction in print space, may translate to
significantly increased advertising revenue for media publications.
In another embodiment, scan codes may be placed in web-based ads so
that users may scan those ads with their mobile device. In another
embodiment, scan codes may be placed in television-based ads.
[0099] In another embodiment, the CTIS provides a means to supply
urgent or breaking information. For example, a breaking news story
that arrives too late to be included as a printed article can still
be incorporated into a publication via a 2D matrix code.
Publications could even have a permanent code in each issue that
users can scan in order to access timely breaking and/or
supplemental news for which there was a lack of space or time to
include in the printed publication.
[0100] In another embodiment, the CTIS provides a means of
disseminating targeted information over a large scale. For example,
during a widespread emergency, a single 2D matrix code could be
broadcast on television. When users scan the code, they are
supplied with regional information/instructions, shelter locations,
maps, etc. Certain users may be provided even more specific
instructions if, for example, their profile lists their occupation
as some form of emergency personnel. In an alternative embodiment,
the CTIS can provide targeted information to any or all users
expected to be in the vicinity of a particular area or event based
on their history of space-time trajectories. For example, if a
chemical spill occurs and users are projected to be in the vicinity
of it, a prior warning to avoid the area can be broadcast to the
users' mobile devices. In an alternative embodiment, traffic alerts
can be broadcast to the mobile devices of users projected to be in
the vicinity of a high-traffic area before they are stuck there.
The CTIS may supply targeted Ads, including coupons, for nearby
businesses, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. to these users for them
to solicit while they wait for traffic to disperse. In general,
just as the CTIS can provide information to users about where they
should go (e.g., Ad provider locations), it can also warn them to
stay out of areas that they should not go, all based on the
projected user trajectories.
[0101] In another embodiment, the CTIS may serve Ads based on
prevailing ambient conditions or climate at users' space-time
positions. For example, this may occur when the relevance score for
contextual Ads is low. An illustration of the logic and data flow
in this embodiment is provided in FIG. 13, wherein the contextual
Ads selected from the Information Base on the basis of code scan
and user profile are supplanted in favor of Ads chosen on the basis
of prevailing ambient conditions at 1340. Exemplary embodiments are
provided in FIGS. 14 and 15. In FIG. 14, an Ad for allergy
medication is provided 1447 in lieu of weak contextual ad options
1442 in response to a code scan from the weather section of a media
publication 1407 in conjunction with ambient weather information,
including pollen count, queried at the server 1412. In FIG. 15, an
Ad for sunscreen is provided 1547 in lieu of weak contextual Ad
options 1542 in response to a code scan from the front page section
of a media publication 1507 in conjunction with ambient weather
information, including humidity and UV index, queried directly by
the user's mobile device 1512. In various embodiments, certain
ambient conditions such as UV levels, humidity, download/upload
speeds, and/or the like may be detected by the user's mobile device
itself, while in other embodiments, ambient conditions are
separately supplied to a database used in conjunction with the
CTIS.
[0102] In another embodiment, the CTIS may serve contextual Ads
with content enhanced by reference to prevailing ambient
conditions. An illustration of the logic and data flow in this
embodiment is provided in FIG. 16 wherein the contextual Ads
selected from the information base at 1635 are further refined by
the ambient condition information at 1640. Exemplary embodiments
are provided in FIGS. 17-20. In FIG. 17, a code is scanned from the
Business section of a media publication 1707 and the CTIS selects
luxury car Ads for display 1739 based on the scanned code, user
location, and user profile 1732, and these Ads are further refined
based on the ambient weather conditions provided to the server at
1712. In this case, warm and sunny weather provides further context
to cause the CTIS to serve an Ad for a luxury convertible 1747. In
FIG. 18, a code is scanned from the Travel section of a media
publication 1807 and the CTIS selects travel Ads for display 1839
based on the scanned code and user profile 1832, which includes
recent scan code transactions pertaining to travel and Miami sports
scores. The CTIS consequently queries the prevailing ambient
weather conditions, comprised of cold and rainy weather, and
supplies an Ad for Miami travel opportunities. In FIG. 19, a code
is scanned from the Weekend section of a media publication 1907 and
the CTIS selects a contextual Ad for eating out 1939 from the
Information base 1935 to serve based on the scanned code and the
prevailing ambient weather conditions, which are hot and sunny
1912. This Ad is further refined by the user profile contents 1932
indicating a college student interested in comics and
entertainment, and an Ad for an ice cream shop is finally supplied
1947. In FIG. 20, a code is scanned from a baseball team schedule
within a media publication 2007. Based on the prevailing ambient
weather conditions, including scattered showers 2012, the scanned
code, and the recent activity in the user profile 2032, an Ad is
supplied for ponchos and golf umbrellas 2042.
[0103] In various embodiments, the CTIS may serve Ads based on a
wide variety of different ambient and/or situational conditions
that may be detected by the client mobile device, provided by
internal or third party databases or information feeds, and/or the
like. Some non-limiting examples of potential ambient and/or
situational conditions that may be considered and/or employed in
selecting information to serve are temperature, weather, light
levels, UV levels, pollen count, humidity, air quality, prices of
commodities and/or consumer goods, stock and/or financial index
prices, global and/or local news events, internet activities,
sports scores, entertainment news, security warnings, and/or the
like. Consideration of such factors, by themselves or in
conjunction with knowledge of a user such as may be gleaned from a
user profile, may form the basis of information serving rules that
have great specificity of targeting. For example, a marketer rule
within the CTIS may specify that an Ad for participating bars that
includes a coupon for a particular brand of beer be served to all
male users between the ages of 21 and 40 with a history of scanning
baseball-related codes within three hours of any time that the
local baseball team wins a game. In another example, a marketer
rule within the CTIS may specify that an Ad for hybrid vehicles be
served to all mothers with young children who have a history of
scanning codes in Time magazine whenever the local price of
gasoline is greater than $2.50/gallon and they scan a code in an
issue of Time that contains articles on both global warming and the
Iraq War. Such hypertargeted information serving, enabled by the
CTIS, may prove very valuable to marketers and, in fact, to a wide
variety of information dissemination applications. Advertisers may
be able to purchase Ad time and/or impressions that are conditional
on events, people, time, place, ambient conditions, and/or
combinations thereof, and/or the like. Consequently, a premium may
be charged to advertisers for each Ad served, and that premium may
increase with the number of factors considered in serving the Ad
(i.e., the degree to which the Ad serving is targeted). In another
implementation, a different price may be charged per impression
depending on the characteristics of the individual to which the Ad
is served. For example, the hybrid car Ad described above may cost
an advertiser $0.75 for an impression to a mom with adult children
but $1.00 for an impression to a mom with young children. Such
graded pricing schemes may be specified within a marketing rule
data structure.
[0104] In another embodiment, Ads may be served based on internet
"climate", such as serving Ads for virus detection software during
an outbreak or serving Ads for high-speed broadband internet
service on days of high internet traffic. Conditions for specific
websites (i.e., cyberspace-time positions) could even be taken into
account. For example, an Ad for high-speed broadband internet
service could be supplied to visitors of a website experiencing
particularly high traffic.
[0105] In another embodiment, the CTIS may interface with various
customer information databases, customer relationship management
databases, and/or any other third party data sources in order to
extract information that may be used to further target and/or
refine Ad selection for a given user. In one implementation, a
marketer may supply the CTIS with access to a given
marketer-specific database and/or data feed, in order to allow the
CTIS to access the information therein during Ad selection
processes. It should be understood that the functionality described
for this embodiment of the CTIS may be integrated or employed
within any of the other CTIS embodiments described herein.
[0106] In another embodiment, the CTIS can interface with and
optimize Ads for various User Agent devices, which may include PCs,
laptops, PDAs, DVRs, cable boxes, internet-coupled media devices,
and generally with programmable electronic devices possessing
external data transfer capabilities and/or the like. FIG. 21
provides an illustration of the logic and data flow in one
embodiment. At 2115, the Scan Message content further incorporates
an optional Send to Device info, which specifies the destination
User Agent device for a particular Ad. Then, at 2150, the Ad
content selected by the CTIS is configured and/or optimized for the
User Agent device. Exemplary embodiments are provided in FIGS. 22
and 23. In FIG. 22, a code from a sports publication is scanned by
a cell phone 2207, and a set-top-box/cable box/DVR User Agent
device is specified in the optional Send to Device information of
the Scan Message 2217. Consequently, in addition to contextual Ads
supplied to the user's cell phone containing article/video links
2237 and season ticket offers 2239, additional content is
configured and sent to the User Agent device, such as authorization
to descramble a pay-per-view sporting event. In one embodiment, the
user's mobile device would provide a signal to the User Agent
device to cause it to send a Request for Info to the CTIS. In
another embodiment, the CTIS could send an appropriately configured
signal to the User Agent device without the need for a Request for
Info signal. In FIG. 23, a code is scanned from the Tech section of
a media publication using a cell phone 2307, and the optional Send
to Device info in the Scan Message specifies to send to a PC laptop
2317. In accordance with the ambient conditions embodiment
discussed previously, the CTIS gauges the ambient conditions
associated with the device and determines that there has been a
recent outbreak of a particular computer virus over the internet
2322. Consequently, the CTIS supplies an offer for Virus Scan
software subscriptions 2344, and may send Virus Scan software
directly to the specified PC laptop based on user response.
[0107] In another embodiment, the CTIS provides a mechanism of
instituting plans for large-scale coordination of personnel using a
single coded broadcast. High-level officials could determine which
of a number of coordination plans to institute, each being
associated with a unique 2D matrix code. When a plan is decided
upon, the code is broadcast (such as over television or the
internet) and lower-level employees scan the code to obtain
instructions, diagrams, maps, etc. that are tailored to the
employees' specific profile contents (i.e., job, skills, location,
etc.). There may also be authorization information included in the
employee profiles that determines whether they are allowed to
decode the broadcast. As each employee progresses in their role
within the plan, additional codes could be provided to the employee
to scan, both to update their tasks and to track their progress,
space-time trajectories, etc.
[0108] In another embodiment, the CTIS provides a means of employee
tracking. For example, tasks are supplied to employees in the form
of 2D matrix codes. When a code is scanned by a given employee, the
scan is recorded in the employee's profile and the employee is
provided with instructions specific to that task and their position
within the organization. When the task is completed, the employee
is provided with a completion code that, when scanned, records the
employee's successful completion of that task and provides
instructions for the next task and/or reward information. In this
manner, a record of employee accomplishments is kept as well as
information regarding the time taken by the employee to accomplish
various tasks. A statistical record of an employee's experience by
subject matter may also be generated and included in his/her
profile using the CTIS.
[0109] In another embodiment, the CTIS can connect users based on
user profiles. For example, in analogy to the "provider zone"
breaches discussed above, the CTIS may also track the intersection
of user space-time trajectories. In particular, if one user is
within a specified distance of the projected space-time trajectory
of another user with whom the first user is associated, a message
may be sent to one or both users notifying them of their potential
proximity. Further consideration of user profiles may also be
utilized in such notifications.
[0110] In another embodiment, the CTIS can be used to provide
information regarding consumer products that cannot be included on
the product packaging. By scanning a code printed on a consumer
product CTIS package, the user could be provided with nutritional
information, ingredients, website links, coupons, etc. Additional
advertisements could also be served based on the nature of the
product scanned and the user profile. For example, a user who scans
a container of mustard and has "grilling" listed among his/her
interests may be served an advertisement and/or coupon for hot dogs
in addition to the mustard information.
[0111] In another embodiment, the CTIS provides an efficient
mechanism of serving real estate listings. For example, when a user
scans a code related to real estate listings, the CTIS supplies
him/her with advertisements and/or listings that are close to their
geographic location and appropriate to their demographic profile
(i.e., income, marital status, number of children, etc.). In
addition, the CTIS may provide additional listings to the user
based on projected breaches of zones corresponding to available
homes or apartments that suit the user's profile.
[0112] In another embodiment, the CTIS expedites software downloads
to a user's mobile device. For example, by scanning a 2D matrix
code in an ad for a cell phone ringtone version of a popular song,
the user can automatically download the ringtone to the cell phone
with which they scan the code. The transaction is recorded in the
user profile and may result in the display of an advertisement
related to the latest album by the artist who recorded the ringtone
song, or an album by a related artist, at some future time.
Code Triggered Information Server Controller
[0113] FIG. 24 of the present disclosure illustrates inventive
aspects of a code triggered information server controller 2401 in a
block diagram. In this embodiment, the code triggered information
server controller 2401 may serve to aggregate, process, store,
search, serve, identify, instruct, generate, match, and/or update
Scan Messages, Reply Messages, Ads, user profiles, and/or other
related data.
[0114] Typically, users, which may be people and/or other systems,
engage information technology systems (e.g., commonly computers) to
facilitate information processing. In turn, computers employ
processors to process information; such processors are often
referred to as central processing units (CPU). A common form of
processor is referred to as a microprocessor. CPUs use
communicative signals to enable various operations. Such
communicative signals may be stored and/or transmitted in batches
as program and/or data components facilitate desired operations.
These stored instruction code signals may engage the CPU circuit
components to perform desired operations. A common type of program
is a computer operating system, which, commonly, is executed by CPU
on a computer; the operating system enables and facilitates users
to access and operate computer information technology and
resources. Common resources employed in information technology
systems include: input and output mechanisms through which data may
pass into and out of a computer; memory storage into which data may
be saved; and processors by which information may be processed.
Often information technology systems are used to collect data for
later retrieval, analysis, and manipulation, commonly, which is
facilitated through a database program. Information technology
systems provide interfaces that allow users to access and operate
various system components.
[0115] In one embodiment, the code triggered information server
controller 2401 may be connected to and/or communicate with
entities such as, but not limited to: one or more users from user
input devices 2411; peripheral devices 2412; a cryptographic
processor device 2428; and/or a communications network 2413.
[0116] Networks are commonly thought to comprise the
interconnection and interoperation of clients, servers, and
intermediary nodes in a graph topology. It should be noted that the
term "server" as used throughout this disclosure refers generally
to a computer, other device, program, or combination thereof that
processes and responds to the requests of remote users across a
communications network. Servers serve their information to
requesting "clients." The term "client" as used herein refers
generally to a computer, other device, program, or combination
thereof that is capable of processing and making requests and
obtaining and processing any responses from servers across a
communications network. A computer, other device, program, or
combination thereof that facilitates, processes information and
requests, and/or furthers the passage of information from a source
user to a destination user is commonly referred to as a "node."
Networks are generally thought to facilitate the transfer of
information from source points to destinations. A node specifically
tasked with furthering the passage of information from a source to
a destination is commonly called a "router." There are many forms
of networks such as Local Area Networks (LANs), Pico networks, Wide
Area Networks (WANs), Wireless Networks (WLANs), etc. For example,
the Internet is generally accepted as being an interconnection of a
multitude of networks whereby remote clients and servers may access
and interoperate with one another.
[0117] The code triggered information server controller 2401 may be
based on common computer systems that may comprise, but are not
limited to, components such as: a computer systemization 2402
connected to memory 2429.
[0118] Computer Systemization
[0119] A computer systemization 2402 may comprise a clock 2430,
central processing unit (CPU) 2403, a read only memory (ROM) 2406,
a random access memory (RAM) 2405, and/or an interface bus 2407,
and most frequently, although not necessarily, are all
interconnected and/or communicating through a system bus 2404.
Optionally, the computer systemization may be connected to an
internal power source 2486. Optionally, a cryptographic processor
2426 may be connected to the system bus. The system clock typically
has a crystal oscillator and provides a base signal. The clock is
typically coupled to the system bus and various clock multipliers
that will increase or decrease the base operating frequency for
other components interconnected in the computer systemization. The
clock and various components in a computer systemization drive
signals embodying information throughout the system. Such
transmission and reception of signals embodying information
throughout a computer systemization may be commonly referred to as
communications. These communicative signals may further be
transmitted, received, and the cause of return and/or reply signal
communications beyond the instant computer systemization to:
communications networks, input devices, other computer
systemizations, peripheral devices, and/or the like. Of course, any
of the above components may be connected directly to one another,
connected to the CPU, and/or organized in numerous variations
employed as exemplified by various computer systems.
[0120] The CPU comprises at least one high-speed data processor
adequate to execute program components for executing user and/or
system-generated requests. The CPU may be a microprocessor such as
AMD's Athlon, Duron and/or Opteron; IBM and/or Motorola's PowerPC;
IBM's and Sony's Cell processor; Intel's Celeron, Itanium, Pentium,
Xeon, and/or XScale; and/or the like processor(s). The CPU
interacts with memory through signal passing through conductive
conduits to execute stored signal program code according to
conventional data processing techniques. Such signal passing
facilitates communication within the code triggered information
server controller and beyond through various interfaces. Should
processing requirements dictate a greater amount speed, parallel,
mainframe and/or super-computer architectures may similarly be
employed. Alternatively, should deployment requirements dictate
greater portability, smaller Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) may
be employed.
[0121] Power Source
[0122] The power source 2486 may be of any standard form for
powering small electronic circuit board devices such as the
following power cells: alkaline, lithium hydride, lithium ion,
lithium polymer, nickel cadmium, solar cells, and/or the like.
Other types of AC or DC power sources may be used as well. In the
case of solar cells, in one embodiment, the case provides an
aperture through which the solar cell may capture photonic energy.
The power cell 2486 is connected to at least one of the
interconnected subsequent components of the code triggered
information server thereby providing an electric current to all
subsequent components. In one example, the power source 2486 is
connected to the system bus component 2404. In an alternative
embodiment, an outside power source 2486 is provided through a
connection across the I/O 2408 interface. For example, a USB and/or
IEEE 1394 connection carries both data and power across the
connection and is therefore a suitable source of power.
[0123] Interface Adapters
[0124] Interface bus(ses) 2407 may accept, connect, and/or
communicate to a number of interface adapters, conventionally
although not necessarily in the form of adapter cards, such as but
not limited to: input output interfaces (I/O) 2408, storage
interfaces 2409, network interfaces 2410, and/or the like.
Optionally, cryptographic processor interfaces 2427 similarly may
be connected to the interface bus. The interface bus provides for
the communications of interface adapters with one another as well
as with other components of the computer systemization. Interface
adapters are adapted for a compatible interface bus. Interface
adapters conventionally connect to the interface bus via a slot
architecture. Conventional slot architectures may be employed, such
as, but not limited to: Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), Card Bus,
(Extended) Industry Standard Architecture ((E)ISA), Micro Channel
Architecture (MCA), NuBus, Peripheral Component Interconnect
(Extended) (PCI(X)), PCI Express, Personal Computer Memory Card
International Association (PCMCIA), and/or the like.
[0125] Storage interfaces 2409 may accept, communicate, and/or
connect to a number of storage devices such as, but not limited to:
storage devices 2414, removable disc devices, and/or the like.
Storage interfaces may employ connection protocols such as, but not
limited to: (Ultra) (Serial) Advanced Technology Attachment (Packet
Interface) ((Ultra) (Serial) ATA(PI)), (Enhanced) Integrated Drive
Electronics ((E)IDE), Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers (IEEE) 1394, fiber channel, Small Computer Systems
Interface (SCSI), Universal Serial Bus (USB), and/or the like.
[0126] Network interfaces 2410 may accept, communicate, and/or
connect to a communications network 2413. Through a communications
network 2413, the code triggered information server controller is
accessible through remote clients 2433b (e.g." computers with web
browsers) by users 2433a. Network interfaces may employ connection
protocols such as, but not limited to: direct connect, Ethernet
(thick, thin, twisted pair 10/100/1000 Base T, and/or the like),
Token Ring, wireless connection such as IEEE 802.11a-x, and/or the
like. A communications network may be anyone and/or the combination
of the following: a direct interconnection; the Internet; a Local
Area Network (LAN); a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN); an Operating
Missions as Nodes on the Internet (OMNI); a secured custom
connection; a Wide Area Network (WAN); a wireless network (e.g."
employing protocols such as, but not limited to a Wireless
Application Protocol (WAP), I-mode, and/or the like); and/or the
like. A network interface may be regarded as a specialized form of
an input output interface. Further, multiple network interfaces
2410 may be used to engage with various communications network
types 2413. For example, multiple network interfaces may be
employed to allow for the communication over broadcast, multicast,
and/or unicast networks.
[0127] Input Output interfaces (I/O) 2408 may accept, communicate,
and/or connect to user input devices 2411, peripheral devices 2412,
cryptographic processor devices 2428, and/or the like. I/O may
employ connection protocols such as, but not limited to: Apple
Desktop Bus (ADB); Apple Desktop Connector (ADC); audio: analog,
digital, monaural, RCA, stereo, and/or the like; IEEE 1394a-b;
infrared; joystick; keyboard; midi; optical; PC AT; PS/2; parallel;
radio; serial; USB; video interface: BNC, coaxial, composite,
digital, Digital Visual Interface (DVI), RCA, RF antennae, S-Video,
VGA, and/or the like; wireless; and/or the like. A common output
device is a television set, which accepts signals from a video
interface. Also, a video display, which typically comprises a
Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) or Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) based
monitor with an interface (e.g." DVI circuitry and cable) that
accepts signals from a video interface, may be used. The video
interface composites information generated by a computer
systemization and generates video signals based on the composited
information in a video memory frame. Typically, the video interface
provides the composited video information through a video
connection interface that accepts a video display interface (e.g."
an RCA composite video connector accepting an RCA composite video
cable; a DVI connector accepting a DVI display cable, etc.).
[0128] User input devices 2411 may be card readers, dongles, finger
print readers, gloves, graphics tablets, joysticks, keyboards,
mouse (mice), remote controls, retina readers, trackballs,
trackpads, and/or the like.
[0129] Peripheral devices 2412 may be connected and/or communicate
to I/O and/or other facilities of the like such as network
interfaces, storage interfaces, and/or the like. Peripheral devices
may be audio devices, cameras, dongles (e.g." for copy protection,
ensuring secure transactions with a digital signature, and/or the
like), external processors (for added functionality), goggles,
microphones, monitors, network interfaces, printers, scanners,
storage devices, video devices, video sources, visors, and/or the
like.
[0130] It should be noted that although user input devices and
peripheral devices may be employed, the code triggered information
server controller may be embodied as an embedded, dedicated, and/or
monitor-less (i.e." headless) device, wherein access would be
provided over a network interface connection.
[0131] Cryptographic units such as, but not limited to,
microcontrollers, processors 2426, interfaces 2427, and/or devices
2428 may be attached, and/or communicate with the code triggered
information server controller. A MC68HC16 microcontroller, commonly
manufactured by Motorola Inc., may be used for and/or within
cryptographic units. Equivalent microcontrollers and/or processors
may also be used. The MC68HC16 microcontroller utilizes a 16-bit
multiply-and-accumulate instruction in the 16 MHz configuration and
requires less than one second to perform a 512-bit RSA private key
operation. Cryptographic units support the authentication of
communications from interacting agents, as well as allowing for
anonymous transactions. Cryptographic units may also be configured
as part of CPU. Other commercially available specialized
cryptographic processors include VLSI Technology's 33 MHz 6868 or
Semaphore Communications' 40 MHz Roadrunner 184.
[0132] Memory
[0133] Generally, any mechanization and/or embodiment allowing a
processor to affect the storage and/or retrieval of information is
regarded as memory 2429. However, memory is a fungible technology
and resource, thus, any number of memory embodiments may be
employed in lieu of or in concert with one another. It is to be
understood that the code triggered information server controller
and/or a computer systemization may employ various forms of memory
2429. For example, a computer systemization may be configured
wherein the functionality of on-chip CPU memory (e.g." registers),
RAM, ROM, and any other storage devices are provided by a paper
punch tape or paper punch card mechanism; of course such an
embodiment would result in an extremely slow rate of operation. In
a typical configuration, memory 2429 will include ROM 2406, RAM
2405, and a storage device 2414. A storage device 2414 may be any
conventional computer system storage. Storage devices may include a
drum; a (fixed and/or removable) magnetic disk drive; a
magneto-optical drive; an optical drive (i.e." CD
ROM/RAM/Recordable (R), ReWritable (RW), DVD RIRW, etc.); an array
of devices (e.g." Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID));
and/or other devices of the like. Thus, a computer systemization
generally requires and makes use of memory.
[0134] Component Collection
[0135] The memory 2429 may contain a collection of program and/or
database components and/or data such as, but not limited to:
operating system component(s) 2415 (operating system); information
server component(s) 2416 (information server); user interface
component(s) 2417 (user interface); Web browser component(s) 2418
(Web browser); database(s) 2419; mail server component(s) 2421;
mail client component(s) 2422; cryptographic server component(s)
2420 (cryptographic server); the code triggered information server
component(s) 2435; and/or the like (i.e." collectively a component
collection). These components may be stored and accessed from the
storage devices and/or from storage devices accessible through an
interface bus. Although non-conventional program components such as
those in the component collection, typically, are stored in a local
storage device 2414, they may also be loaded and/or stored in
memory such as: peripheral devices, RAM, remote storage facilities
through a communications network, ROM, various forms of memory,
and/or the like.
[0136] Operating System
[0137] The operating system component 2415 is an executable program
component facilitating the operation of the code triggered
information server controller. Typically, the operating system
facilitates access of I/O, network interfaces, peripheral devices,
storage devices, and/or the like. The operating system may be a
highly fault tolerant, scalable, and secure system such as Apple
Macintosh as x (Server), AT&T Plan 9, Be as, Linux, Unix,
and/or the like operating systems. However, more limited and/or
less secure operating systems also may be employed such as Apple
Macintosh as, Microsoft DOS, Microsoft Windows
2000/2003/3.1/95/98/CE/Millenium/NTNista/XP (Server), Palm as,
and/or the like. An operating system may communicate to and/or with
other components in a component collection, including itself,
and/or the like. Most frequently, the operating system communicates
with other program components, user interfaces, and/or the like.
For example, the operating system may contain, communicate,
generate, obtain, and/or provide program component, system, user,
and/or data communications, requests, and/or responses. The
operating system, once executed by the CPU, may enable the
interaction with communications networks, data, I/O, peripheral
devices, program components, memory, user input devices, and/or the
like. The operating system may provide communications protocols
that allow the code triggered information server controller to
communicate with other entities through a communications network
2413. Various communication protocols may be used by the code
triggered information server system controller as a subcarrier
transport mechanism for interaction, such as, but not limited to:
multicast, TCP/IP, UDP, unicast, and/or the like
[0138] Information Server
[0139] An information server component 2416 is a stored program
component that is executed by a cpu. The information server may be
a conventional Internet information server such as, but not limited
to Apache Software Foundation's Apache, Microsoft's Internet
Information Server, and/or the. The information server may allow
for the execution of program components through facilities such as
Active Server Page (ASP), ActiveX, (ANSI) (Objective-) C (++), C#,
Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts, Java, JavaScript, Practical
Extraction Report Language (PERL), Python, WebObjects, and/or the
like. The information server may support secure communications
protocols such as, but not limited to, File Transfer Protocol
(FTP); HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP); Secure Hypertext
Transfer Protocol (HTTPS), Secure Socket Layer (SSL), and/or the
like. The information server provides results in the form of Web
pages to Web browsers, and allows for the manipulated generation of
the Web pages through interaction with other program components.
After a Domain Name System (DNS) resolution portion of an HTTP
request is resolved to a particular information server, the
information server resolves requests for information at specified
locations on the code triggered information server controller based
on the remainder of the HTTP request. For example, a request such
as http://123.124.125.126/myInformation.html might have the IP
portion of the request "123.124.125.126" resolved by a DNS server
to an information server at that IP address; that information
server might in turn further parse the http request for the
"/myInformation.html" portion of the request and resolve it to a
location in memory containing the information "myInformation.html."
Additionally, other information serving protocols may be employed
across various ports, e.g." FTP communications across port 21,
and/or the like. An information server may communicate to and/or
with other components in a component collection, including itself,
and/or facilities of the like. Most frequently, the information
server communicates with the code triggered information server
database 2419, operating systems, other program components, user
interfaces, Web browsers, and/or the like.
[0140] Access to the code triggered information server database may
be achieved through a number of database bridge mechanisms such as
through scripting languages as enumerated below (e.g." CGI) and
through inter-application communication channels as enumerated
below (e.g." CORBA, WebObjects, etc.). Any data requests through a
Web browser are parsed through the bridge mechanism into
appropriate grammars as required by the code triggered information
server. In one embodiment, the information server would provide a
Web form accessible by a Web browser. Entries made into supplied
fields in the Web form are tagged as having been entered into the
particular fields, and parsed as such. The entered terms are then
passed along with the field tags, which act to instruct the parser
to generate queries directed to appropriate tables and/or fields.
In one embodiment, the parser may generate queries in standard SQL
by instantiating a search string with the proper join/select
commands based on the tagged text entries, wherein the resulting
command is provided over the bridge mechanism to the code triggered
information server as a query. Upon generating query results from
the query, the results are passed over the bridge mechanism, and
may be parsed for formatting and generation of a new results Web
page by the bridge mechanism. Such a new results Web page is then
provided to the information server, which may supply it to the
requesting Web browser.
[0141] Also, an information server may contain, communicate,
generate, obtain, and/or provide program component, system, user,
and/or data communications, requests, and/or responses.
[0142] User Interface
[0143] The function of computer interfaces in some respects is
similar to automobile operation interfaces. Automobile operation
interface elements such as steering wheels, gearshifts, and
speedometers facilitate the access, operation, and display of
automobile resources, functionality, and status. Computer
interaction interface elements such as check boxes, cursors, menus,
scrollers, and windows (collectively and commonly referred to as
widgets) similarly facilitate the access, operation, and display of
data and computer hardware and operating system resources,
functionality, and status. Operation interfaces are commonly called
user interfaces. Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) such as the Apple
Macintosh Operating System's Aqua, Microsoft's Windows XP, or
Unix's X-Windows provide a baseline and means of accessing and
displaying information graphically to users.
[0144] A user interface component 2417 is a stored program
component that is executed by a CPU. The user interface may be a
conventional graphic user interface as provided by, with, and/or
atop operating systems and/or operating environments such as Apple
Macintosh OS, e.g." Aqua, GNUSTEP, Microsoft Windows (NT/XP), Unix
X Windows (KDE, Gnome, and/or the like), mythTV, and/or the like.
The user interface may allow for the display, execution,
interaction, manipulation, and/or operation of program components
and/or system facilities through textual and/or graphical
facilities. The user interface provides a facility through which
users may affect, interact, and/or operate a computer system. A
user interface may communicate to and/or with other components in a
component collection, including itself, and/or facilities of the
like. Most frequently, the user interface communicates with
operating systems, other program components, and/or the like. The
user interface may contain, communicate, generate, obtain, and/or
provide program component, system, user, and/or data
communications, requests, and/or responses.
[0145] Web Browser
[0146] A Web browser component 2418 is a stored program component
that is executed by a CPU. The Web browser may be a conventional
hypertext viewing application such as Microsoft Internet Explorer
or Netscape Navigator. Secure Web browsing may be supplied with 128
bit (or greater) encryption by way of HTTPS, SSL, and/or the like.
Some Web browsers allow for the execution of program components
through facilities such as Java, JavaScript, ActiveX, and/or the
like. Web browsers and like information access tools may be
integrated into PDAs, cellular telephones, and/or other mobile
devices. A Web browser may communicate to and/or with other
components in a component collection, including itself, and/or
facilities of the like. Most frequently, the Web browser
communicates with information servers, operating systems,
integrated program components (e.g." plug-ins), and/or the like;
e.g." it may contain, communicate, generate, obtain, and/or provide
program component, system, user, and/or data communications,
requests, and/or responses. Of course, in place of a Web browser
and information server, a combined application may be developed to
perform similar functions of both. The combined application would
similarly affect the obtaining and the provision of information to
users, user agents, and/or the like from the code triggered
information server enabled nodes. The combined application may be
nugatory on systems employing standard Web browsers.
[0147] Mail Server
[0148] A mail server component 2421 is a stored program component
that is executed by a CPU 2403. The mail server may be a
conventional Internet mail server such as, but not limited to
sendmail, Microsoft Exchange, and/or the like. The mail server may
allow for the execution of program components through facilities
such as ASP, ActiveX, (ANSI) (Objective-) C (++), CGI scripts,
Java, JavaScript, PERL, pipes, Python, WebObjects, and/or the like.
The mail server may support communications protocols such as, but
not limited to: Internet message access protocol (IMAP), Microsoft
Exchange, post office protocol (POP3), simple mail transfer
protocol (SMTP), and/or the like. The mail server can route,
forward, and process incoming and outgoing mail messages that have
been sent, relayed and/or otherwise traversing through and/or to
the code triggered information server.
[0149] Access to the code triggered information server mail may be
achieved through a number of APIs offered by the individual Web
server components and/or the operating system.
[0150] Also, a mail server may contain, communicate, generate,
obtain, and/or provide program component, system, user, and/or data
communications, requests, information, and/or responses.
[0151] Mail Client
[0152] A mail client component 2422 is a stored program component
that is executed by a CPU 2403. The mail client may be a
conventional mail viewing application such as Apple Mail, Microsoft
Entourage, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, Mozilla
Thunderbird, and/or the like. Mail clients may support a number of
transfer protocols, such as: IMAP, Microsoft Exchange, POP3, SMTP,
and/or the like. A mail client may communicate to and/or with other
components in a component collection, including itself, and/or
facilities of the like. Most frequently, the mail client
communicates with mail servers, operating systems, other mail
clients, and/or the like; e.g." it may contain, communicate,
generate, obtain, and/or provide program component, system, user,
and/or data communications, requests, information, and/or
responses. Generally, the mail client provides a facility to
compose and transmit electronic mail messages.
[0153] Cryptographic Server
[0154] A cryptographic server component 2420 is a stored program
component that is executed by a CPU 2403, cryptographic processor
2426, cryptographic processor interface 2427, cryptographic
processor device 2428, and/or the like. Cryptographic processor
interfaces will allow for expedition of encryption and/or
decryption requests by the cryptographic component; however, the
cryptographic component, alternatively, may run on a conventional
CPU. The cryptographic component allows for the encryption and/or
decryption of provided data. The cryptographic component allows for
both symmetric and asymmetric (e.g." Pretty Good Protection (PGP))
encryption and/or decryption. The cryptographic component may
employ cryptographic techniques such as, but not limited to:
digital certificates (e.g." X.S09 authentication framework),
digital signatures, dual signatures, enveloping, password access
protection, public key management, and/or the like. The
cryptographic component will facilitate numerous (encryption and/or
decryption) security protocols such as, but not limited to:
checksum, Data Encryption Standard (DES), Elliptical Curve
Encryption (ECC), International Data Encryption Algorithm (IDEA),
Message Digest 5 (MD5, which is a one way hash function),
passwords, Rivest Cipher (RC5), Rijndael, RSA (which is an Internet
encryption and authentication system that uses an algorithm
developed in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman),
Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA), Secure Socket Layer (SSL), Secure
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS), and/or the like. Employing
such encryption security protocols, the code triggered information
server may encrypt all incoming and/or outgoing communications and
may serve as node within a virtual private network (VPN) with a
wider communications network. The cryptographic component
facilitates the process of "security authorization" whereby access
to a resource is inhibited by a security protocol wherein the
cryptographic component effects authorized access to the secured
resource. In addition, the cryptographic component may provide
unique identifiers of content, e.g." employing an MD5 hash to
obtain a unique signature for a digital audio file. A cryptographic
component may communicate to and/or with other components in a
component collection, including itself, and/or facilities of the
like. The cryptographic component supports encryption schemes
allowing for the secure transmission of information across a
communications network to enable the code triggered information
server component to engage in secure transactions if so desired.
The cryptographic component facilitates the secure accessing of
resources on the code triggered information server and facilitates
the access of secured resources on remote systems; i.e." it may act
as a client and/or server of secured resources. Most frequently,
the cryptographic component communicates with information servers,
operating systems, other program components, and/or the like. The
cryptographic component may contain, communicate, generate, obtain,
and/or provide program component, system, user, and/or data
communications, requests, and/or responses.
[0155] The Code Triggered Information Server Database
[0156] The code triggered information server database component
2419 may be embodied in a database and its stored data. The
database is a stored program component, which is executed by the
CPU; the stored program component portion configuring the CPU to
process the stored data. The database may be a conventional, fault
tolerant, relational, scalable, secure database such as Oracle or
Sybase. Relational databases are an extension of a flat file.
Relational databases consist of a series of related tables. The
tables are interconnected via a key field. Use of the key field
allows the combination of the tables by indexing against the key
field; i.e." the key fields act as dimensional pivot points for
combining information from various tables. Relationships generally
identify links maintained between tables by matching primary keys.
Primary keys represent fields that uniquely identify the rows of a
table in a relational database. More precisely, they uniquely
identify rows of a table on the "one" side of a one-to-many
relationship.
[0157] Alternatively, the code triggered information server
database may be implemented using various standard data-structures,
such as an array, hash, (linked) list, struct, structured text file
(e.g." XML), table, and/or the like. Such data-structures may be
stored in memory and/or in (structured) files. In another
alternative, an object-oriented database may be used, such as
Frontier, ObjectStore, Poet, Zope, and/or the like. Object
databases can include a number of object collections that are
grouped and/or linked together by common attributes; they may be
related to other object collections by some common attributes.
Object-oriented databases perform similarly to relational databases
with the exception that objects are not just pieces of data but may
have other types of functionality encapsulated within a given
object. If the code triggered information server database is
implemented as a data-structure, the use of the code triggered
information server database 2419 may be integrated into another
component such as the code triggered information server component
2435. Also, the database may be implemented as a mix of data
structures, objects, and relational structures. Databases may be
consolidated and/or distributed in countless variations through
standard data processing techniques. Portions of databases, e.g."
tables, may be exported and/or imported and thus decentralized
and/or integrated.
[0158] In one embodiment, the database component 2419 includes
several tables 2419a,b. A user profile table 2419a includes fields
such as, but not limited to: a user ID, name, email address,
address, demographic profile, hardware ID, scan history record,
scan statistics, and/or the like. The user profile table may
support and/or track multiple entity accounts on a code triggered
information server. An Information Base table 2419b includes fields
such as, but not limited to: Ad provider ID, Ad ID, Ad content, Ad
labels, geographic tags, temporal tags, subject tags, Ad ratings,
Ad statistics, and/or the like.
[0159] In one embodiment, the code triggered information server
database may interact with other database systems. For example,
employing a distributed database system, queries and data access by
OLBS modules may treat the combination of the code triggered
information server database, an integrated data security layer
database as a single database entity.
[0160] In one embodiment, user programs may contain various user
interface primitives, which may serve to update the code triggered
information server. Also, various accounts may require custom
database tables depending upon the environments and the types of
clients the code triggered information server may need to serve. It
should be noted that any unique fields may be designated as a key
field throughout. In an alternative embodiment, these tables have
been decentralized into their own databases and their respective
database controllers (i.e." individual database controllers for
each of the above tables). Employing standard data processing
techniques, one may further distribute the databases over several
computer systemizations and/or storage devices. Similarly,
configurations of the decentralized database controllers may be
varied by consolidating and/or distributing the various database
components 2419a,b. The code triggered information server may be
configured to keep track of various settings, inputs, and
parameters via database controllers.
[0161] The code triggered information server database may
communicate to and/or with other components in a component
collection, including itself, and/or facilities of the like. Most
frequently, the code triggered information server database
communicates with the code triggered information server component,
other program components, and/or the like. The database may
contain, retain, and provide information regarding other nodes and
data.
[0162] The Code Triggered Information Server
[0163] The code triggered information server component 2435 is a
stored program component that is executed by a CPU. The code
triggered information server affects accessing, obtaining and the
provision of information, services, transactions, and/or the like
across various communications networks.
[0164] The code triggered information server component enables the
identification, generation, and aggregation of Scan Messages and
Reply Messages.
[0165] The code triggered information server component enabling
access of information between nodes may be developed by employing
standard development tools such as, but not limited to: (ANSI)
(Objective-) C (++), Apache components, binary executables,
database adapters, Java, JavaScript, mapping tools, procedural and
object oriented development tools, PERL, Python, shell scripts, SQL
commands, web application server extensions, WebObjects, and/or the
like. In one embodiment, the code triggered information server
employs a cryptographic server to encrypt and decrypt
communications. The code triggered information server component may
communicate to and/or with other components in a component
collection, including itself, and/or facilities of the like. Most
frequently, the code triggered information server component
communicates with the code triggered information server database,
operating systems, other program components, and/or the like. The
code triggered information server may contain, communicate,
generate, obtain, and/or provide program component, system, user,
and/or data communications, requests, and/or responses.
[0166] Distributed Code Triggered Information Server
[0167] The structure and/or operation of any of the code triggered
information server node controller components may be combined,
consolidated, and/or distributed in any number of ways to
facilitate development and/or deployment. Similarly, the component
collection may be combined in any number of ways to facilitate
deployment and/or development. To accomplish this, one may
integrate the components into a common code base or in a facility
that can dynamically load the components on demand in an integrated
fashion.
[0168] The component collection may be consolidated and/or
distributed in countless variations through standard data
processing and/or development techniques. Multiple instances of
anyone of the program components in the program component
collection may be instantiated on a single node, and/or across
numerous nodes to improve performance through load-balancing and/or
data-processing techniques. Furthermore, single instances may also
be distributed across multiple controllers and/or storage devices;
e.g., databases. All program component instances and controllers
working in concert may do so through standard data processing
communication techniques.
[0169] The configuration of the code triggered information server
controller will depend on the context of system deployment. Factors
such as, but not limited to, the budget, capacity, location, and/or
use of the underlying hardware resources may affect deployment
requirements and configuration. Regardless of if the configuration
results in more consolidated and/or integrated program components,
results in a more distributed series of program components, and/or
results in some combination between a consolidated and distributed
configuration, data may be communicated, obtained, and/or provided.
Instances of components consolidated into a common code base from
the program component collection may communicate, obtain, and/or
provide data. This may be accomplished through intra-application
data processing communication techniques such as, but not limited
to: data referencing (e.g., pointers), internal messaging, object
instance variable communication, shared memory space, variable
passing, and/or the like.
[0170] If component collection components are discrete, separate,
and/or external to one another, then communicating, obtaining,
and/or providing data with and/or to other component components may
be accomplished through inter-application data processing
communication techniques such as, but not limited to: Application
Program Interfaces (API) information passage; (distributed)
Component Object Model ((D)COM), (Distributed) Object Linking and
Embedding ((D)OLE), and/or the like), Common Object Request Broker
Architecture (CORBA), process pipes, shared files, and/or the like.
Messages sent between discrete component components for
inter-application communication or within memory spaces of a
singular component for intra-application communication may be
facilitated through the creation and parsing of a grammar. A
grammar may be developed by using standard development tools such
as lex, yacc, XML, and/or the like, which allow for grammar
generation and parsing functionality, which in tum may form the
basis of communication messages within and between components.
Again, the configuration will depend upon the context of system
deployment.
[0171] Among the embodiments envisioned as being within the scope
of the present invention are the following:
* * * * *
References