Patent Application
20150206159
The present disclosure relates to the field of data processing, in particular, to apparatuses, methods and storage medium associated with geographic mnemonics based messaging services.
The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Advances in computing, networking and related technologies have led to proliferation in the availability of multi-media contents, and their consumption through public networks, such as the Internet. Ever since the advance of the Internet and the World Wide Web, advertisers have been focused on targeting online advertisements. For examples, Internet portals have put much effort into targeting the banner advertisements (Ads), based on the content of the web pages being browsed; search engines have put much effort into targeting advertisements based on keywords; and social networks have put their effort into targeting advertisements based on social graphs. Most recently, Internet portals, search engines, social networks, and so forth, have put their effort into targeting advertisements based on current locations of mobile client devices. For example, Internet portals et al have targeted advertisements of businesses in the general neighborhood, based on current locations of mobile devices. As another example, search engines, travel sites et al have targeted advertisements of hotels, restaurants et al, based on searches for things to do, or points of interest at a location.
Embodiments will be readily understood by the following detailed description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. To facilitate this description, like reference numerals designate like structural elements. Embodiments are illustrated by way of example, and not by way of limitation, in the figures of the accompanying drawings.
Apparatuses, methods and storage medium associated with geographic mnemonics based messaging are disclosed herein. In embodiments, an apparatus may include a data collection module configured to collect demographics of users interacting with a geographic mnemonics, e.g., “&ravi_home,” associated with a location or an area that includes the location. In response to a request from a requestor for the demographics of users interacting with the geographic mnemonics, the data collection module may respond to the requestor with collected demographics of users interacting with the geographic mnemonics, to enable the requestor to select and transmit a message to the client device, based at least in part on the collected demographics of users interacting with the geographic mnemonics.
Examples of sources for the demographics data may include, but are not limited to an Internet portal, an ecommerce site, a search engine, a social networking site, an email service, or a messaging service. Similarly, examples of a requestor for the demographics data may include, but are not limited to an Internet portal, an ecommerce site, a search engine, a social networking site, an email service, or a messaging service. An example of the message may be a commercial message.
In the following detailed description, reference is made to the accompanying drawings which form a part hereof wherein like numerals designate like parts throughout, and in which is shown by way of illustration embodiments that may be practiced. It is to be understood that other embodiments may be utilized and structural or logical changes may be made without departing from the scope of the present disclosure. Therefore, the following detailed description is not to be taken in a limiting sense, and the scope of embodiments is defined by the appended claims and their equivalents.
Various operations may be described as multiple discrete actions or operations in turn, in a manner that is most helpful in understanding the claimed subject matter. However, the order of description should not be construed as to imply that these operations are necessarily order dependent. In particular, these operations may not be performed in the order of presentation. Operations described may be performed in a different order than the described embodiment. Various additional operations may be performed and/or described operations may be omitted in additional embodiments.
For the purposes of the present disclosure, the phrase “A and/or B” means (A), (B), or (A and B). For the purposes of the present disclosure, the phrase “A, B, and/or C” means (A), (B), (C), (A and B), (A and C), (B and C), or (A, B and C).
The description may use the phrases “in an embodiment,” or “in embodiments,” which may each refer to one or more of the same or different embodiments. Furthermore, the terms “comprising,” “including,” “having,” and the like, as used with respect to embodiments of the present disclosure, are synonymous. The terms “commercial,” and “advertisement” as used herein are synonymous.
As used herein, the term “module” may refer to, be part of, or include an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), an electronic circuit, a processor (shared, dedicated, or group) and/or memory (shared, dedicated, or group) that execute one or more software or firmware programs, a combinational logic circuit, and/or other suitable components that provide the described functionality.
Referring now
In embodiments, the format of a geographic mnemonic may be defined by the geographic mnemonic service. In embodiments, the geographic mnemonic service may define a geographic mnemonic to have the format of one or more special characters, followed by any number of alphanumeric and special characters. For example, the geographic mnemonic service may define a geographic mnemonic to have the format of having the special character “&” as the lead off character, followed by one or more alphanumeric and special characters, such as “&Ravi_home,” or “&Schwabe_Seattle.” As another example, the geographic mnemonic service may define a geographic mnemonic to have the format of having the special characters “#&” as the lead off characters, followed by one or more alphanumeric and special characters, such as “#&Ravi_home,” or “&Schwabe_Seattle.” These examples are just illustrative, and not meant to be limiting on the present disclosure.
In embodiments, in the course of storing geographic mnemonics, their associated addresses and meta data 138 into storage 116, registration engine 112 may further resolve the geographic mnemonics, based on its associated address, to a pair of geographic coordinates or geographic coordinate ranges, e.g., a pair of geodetic latitude and longitude coordinates, or a pair of geodetic latitude and longitude ranges. For example, the City and County of San Francisco may register the geographic mnemonics “&Coit_Tower,” to facilitate provision of various information associated with the landmark Coit Tower under the present disclosure. The associated address of “&Coit_Tower,” is “1 Telegraph Hill, Blvd, San Francisco, Calif.” In the course of storing “&Coit_Tower” as the registered geographic mnemonics, “1 Telegraph Hill, Blvd, San Francisco, Calif.” as the associated address, and so forth, registration engine 112 may resolve the address of “1 Telegraph Hill, Blvd, San Francisco, Calif.” of “&Coit_Tower” to the geodetic latitude and longitude coordinate pair of {37.8025° N, 122.4058° W}, and store also the geographic coordinates. As another example, the law firm Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt may register the geographic mnemonics “&SWW_Seattle,” to facilitate provision of various information associated with the Seattle Office. The associated address of “&SWW_Seattle,” is “1420 5th Ave., Suite 3400, Seattle, Wash.” In the course of storing “&SWW_Seattle” as the registered geographic mnemonics, “1420 5th Ave., Suite 3400, Seattle, Wash.” as the associated address, and so forth, registration engine 112 may resolve the address of “1420 5th Ave., Suite 3400, Seattle, Wash.” of “&SWW_Seattle” to a pair of geodetic latitude and longitude coordinate, and store also the geographic coordinates. Further, in embodiments, registration engine 112 may organize the storage of the geographic mnemonics, their associated addresses, and meta data, based at least in part on the geographic coordinates to facilitate subsequent processing and retrieval.
While the above example illustrated the resolution to geodetic coordinates that are valued in accordance with a mathematical defined reference ellipsoid that approximates the Earth, the present disclosure is not so limited. Other geographic coordinates with other geographic reference systems may also be used, including but are not limited to, e.g., geocentric coordinates that are valued in accordance with a X-Y-Z reference centered at Earth's center, or spherical coordinates that are valued based on the radial distances from Earth's center, along with polar angles measured from the zenith directions of the positions, and azimuth angles of the positions based on orthogonal projections on corresponding reference planes that pass through Earth's center and orthogonal to the zenith directions.
While for ease of understanding, registration engine 132 and response engine 134 are being illustrated as being operated by processors of processor and memory arrangement 112, in embodiments, registration engine 132 and response engine 134 may be implemented in any combination of hardware and/or software. In embodiments, the combination of hardware and/or software may include processor(s), memory and executable instructions implementing the functions described herein. In embodiments, in lieu of being two separate engines, registration engine 132 and response engine 134 may share some common functions and/or resources. For example, registration engine 132 and response engine 134 may share common communication functions and components for communicating with client devices 104 and servers 106 of other online services. As a further example, registration engine 132 and response engine 134 may share processor and/or memory resources. In embodiments, some functions of registration engine 132 and response engine 134, or vice versa, may be combined.
Processor and memory arrangement 112, in addition to registration engine 132 and response engine 134, may further host execution of various operating system (OS) services (not shown). The OS services may include any one of a number of OS services known in the art, including but not limited to memory management, task management, and so forth. I/O devices 114 may include one or more communication interfaces 128 configured to facilitate communication with client devices 104, and servers 106 of other online services. Communication interfaces 128 may be any one of a number of communication components/interfaces known in the art, including but not limited to wired or wireless communication components for personal, local and/or wide area network communications. Storage 116 may be implemented using any magnetic, optical, and/or solid state non-volatile storage. The magnetic, optical, and/or solid state non-volatile storage may be disposed on one platform, or coupled/networked. In embodiments, storage 116 may also include volatile and/or non-volatile caches. Accordingly, except for the teachings of the present disclosure incorporated therein, server 102 is intended to represent a broad of single or multi-processor servers known in the art. In embodiments, server 102 may include one or more clusters computing servers, which may be coupled with one another, via one or more local or wide area networks (not shown).
Still referring to
Similar to server 102, each of servers 106 may include processor and memory arrangement 122, and I/O and storage devices 124 coupled to with each other as shown. Processor and memory arrangement 122 may host OS Services 142 and application services 144, while I/O and storage devices 124 may include one or more communication interfaces 146. Similar to processor and memory arrangement 112, processor and memory arrangement 122 may be any one of a wide range of such elements known in the art. Likewise, similar to I/O devices 114 and communication interfaces 136, I/O and storage devices 124 and communication interfaces 146 may be any one of a wide range of such elements known in the art. As described earlier, OS Services 142 may include a wide range of OS services, including but not limited to memory management, task management, and so forth. In embodiments, application services 144 may be configured to use geographic mnemonics services offered by server 102, as well as collaborate and/or use geographic mnemonics based demographic services offered by server 162. Except for their usage of geographic mnemonics services offered by server 102, and/or their collaboration with, and/or usage of geographic mnemonics based demographic services offered by server 162, application services 144 may likewise be any one of a number of online services known it art. Examples of application services 144 may include, but are not limited to, Internet portal service, e-commerce service, online search services, social networking services, email and/or short messaging services, to be described in more detail below. In embodiments, application services 144, such as Internet portal service or e-commerce service, may also be configured to collect demographics data of their registered users, including whether they are owners of registered geographic mnemonics.
Continue to
In embodiments, data collection module 182 may be configured to collect demographics data of users who interact with geographic mnemonics from a variety of sources. In embodiments, data collection module 182 may be configured to collect, from geographic mnemonics server 102, demographics of owners who register the geographic mnemonics with the geographic mnemonics service. In embodiments, data collection module 182 may be configured to collect, from an Internet portal or an ecommerce site server 106, demographics of their registered users, who are also owners of registered geographic mnemonics with the geographic mnemonics service. In embodiments, data collection module 182 may be configured to collect, from geographic mnemonics server 102, demographics of users who queried geographic mnemonics service server 102 about particular geographic mnemonics.
In embodiments, data collection module 182 may be configured to collect, from a search engine, demographics of users who issued searches to the search engine that triggered the search engine to query geographic mnemonics server 102 about the geographic mnemonics. In embodiments, data collection module 182 may be configured to collect, from a social networking site, demographics of users who associated themselves with the geographic mnemonics on the social networking site. In embodiments, data collection module 182 may be configured to collect, from an email service, demographics of users who send or receive emails that include the geographic mnemonics. In embodiments, data collection module 182 may be configured to collect, from a short messaging service server 106, demographics of users who follow the geographic mnemonics on the short messaging service. Accordingly, geographic mnemonics based demographics server 162 may be in possession of demographics data of a wide range of users who interact with geographic mnemonics.
Networks 108 may be any combinations of private and/or public, wired and/or wireless, local and/or wide area networks. Private networks may include, e.g., but are not limited to, enterprise networks. Public networks, may include, e.g., but is not limited to the Internet. Wired networks, may include, e.g., but are not limited to, Ethernet networks. Wireless networks, may include, e.g., but are not limited to, Wi-Fi, or 3G/4G networks. It would be appreciated that at the servers' end, networks 108 may include one or more local area networks with gateways and firewalls, through which servers 102, 106 and 162 go through to communicate with client devices 104 and each other. Similarly, at the client device end, networks 108 may include base stations and/or access points, through which client devices 104 communicate with servers 102, 106 and/or 162. In between the various ends may be any number of network routers, switches and other networking equipment of the like. However, for ease of understanding, these gateways, firewalls, routers, switches, base stations, access points and the like are not shown.
Referring now to
Referring now to
At block 302, a request for service may be received. In response, a determination may be made on whether the request is for registration of a geographic mnemonics, for retrieving data associated to a geographic mnemonics or for retrieving geographic mnemonics at a location or within an area. An example request to register a geographic mnemonics may be a request to register, e.g., “&Coit_Tower” as geographic mnemonics. An example request for data associated to a geographic mnemonics may comprise a query for the address and/or meta data associated with a geographic mnemonics. An example request for geographic mnemonics may comprise a query for geographic mnemonics at an address, e.g., “1 Telegraph Hill, Blvd, San Francisco, Calif.”,” or information associated with a geographic mnemonics, or geographic mnemonics within an area, .e.g., “North Beach of San Francisco.” Note that one or more geographic mnemonics, e.g., geographic mnemonics registered by different family members of a family, such as “&AdamSmith_Home,” and “AnnaSmith_Home,” may resolve to the same address.
On determining that the request is for registration of a geographic mnemonics, process 300 may proceed to block 304. At block 304, the geographic mnemonics being registered may be accepted and stored, e.g., in storage 116. In embodiments, registration engine 132 may be configured to ensure each registered geographic mnemonics is unique, and deny registrations for geographic mnemonics that have already been registered. Additionally, acceptance and storage of the geographic mnemonics may include acceptance and storage of an address to be associated with the geographic mnemonics. For example, on accepting and storing the example geographic mnemonics of “&Coit_Tower,” the example address “1 Telegraph Hill, Blvd, San Francisco, Calif.,” may be accepted and stored as the address to be associated with the example geographic mnemonics of “&Coit_Tower.” The example geographic mnemonics is merely intended to be illustrative and is not to be read as limiting on the present disclosure. It is anticipated that a wide range of geographic mnemonics, including e.g., private geographic mnemonics, such as “&Ravi_home,” may be accepted and stored.
Further, in embodiments, concurrent with the initial registration or subsequent to the initial registration, acceptance and storage of the geographic mnemonics may further include acceptance and storage of meta data to be associated with the geographic mnemonics. For example, for the example geographic mnemonics of “&Coit_Tower,” meta data comprising a direction to Coit Tower, seasonal operating hours and so forth, may be accepted and stored. As another example, meta data may further comprise demographics data of the owners of the registered geographic mnemonics and/or users who are authorized to query about the geographic mnemonics. The example meta data are merely intended to be illustrative and are not to be read as limiting on the present disclosure. It is anticipated that a wide range of meta data may be accepted and stored for each geographic mnemonics. Thereafter, process 300 may return to block 302, and continue therefrom as earlier described.
Back at block 302, if the result of the determination is a request for data associated with a geographic mnemonics, geographic mnemonics at a location or within an area, or demographics data of the owners of the geographic mnemonics and/or users who query about the geographic mnemonics, process 300 may proceed to block 306. At block 306, in response to a request for data associated to geographic mnemonics, the response may include the associated address. Additionally, if the request also requested for meta data or particular type of meta, the response may further include some or all the meta data matching the request criteria. Still further, if the request is for demographics data of the owners of the geographic mnemonics or users who query about the geographic mnemonics, the response may include the requested demographics data of owners of the geographic mnemonics or users who query about the geographic mnemonics. Still further, for queries so indicated, the response may include information associated with other geographic mnemonics within an area associated with a geographic mnemonics. For example, in response to a query about the geographic mnemonics of San Francisco, if requested, the response may include information about geographic mnemonics associated with Coit Tower, Lombard Street, and so forth. Thereafter, process 300 may return to block 302, and continue therefrom as earlier described.
Referring now to
Process 350 may start at block 352. At block 352, demographics data of various users who interact with geographic mnemonics may be collected from a wide range of sources, as earlier described. From block 352, process 350 may proceed to block 354. At block 354, a determination may be made with respect to whether a request for the demographics data has been received. If a result of the determination indicates that a request for the demographics data of users who interact with a geographic mnemonics has been received from a requestor, process 350 may proceed to block 356. At block 356, the requested demographics data of users who interact with a geographic mnemonics may be provided to the requestor. As described earlier, the requestor may any one of client device 104 or server 106, offering any one of a wide range of online services. Further, for request so indicated, the response may include demographics data of users who interact with other geographic mnemonics within an area associated with a geographic mnemonics. For example, in response to a request for demographics data of users who interact with the geographic mnemonics of San Francisco, if requested, the response may include demographics data of users who interact with geographic mnemonics associated with Coit Tower, Lombard Street, and so forth. From block 356, process 350 may return the block 352, and proceed therefrom as earlier described. Similarly, if a result of the determination at block 354 indicates that no request for the demographics data of users who interact with a geographic mnemonics has been received, process 350 may likewise return to block 352, and proceed therefrom as earlier described.
Referring to
In another non-limiting example, the online service may be a social networking service configured to facilitate client devices 102 to socially network with each other. In embodiments, the social networking service may extend its support to include supports that allow geographic mnemonics as “users.” As a result, owner user of geographic mnemonics may post contents against the geographic mnemonics. Other users may elect to be associated with the geographic mnemonics (“friend” the geographic mnemonics). These users may then see the posted contents for the geographic mnemonics, and/or receive notification from the social networking service about new contents being posted for the geographic mnemonics. Additionally, the social networking service may obtain demographics data of users who interact with a geographic mnemonics from geographic mnemonics based demographics server 162, and target messages, such as commercial messages, the social networking service selects and transmits to client devices 104.
In still another non-limiting example, the online service may be a messaging service configured to facilitate client devices 102 to message each other, including e.g., but not limited to, short messages. In embodiments, the messaging service may extend its support to include supports for geographic mnemonics. In other words, the messaging service may recognize a term starting off with the special characters “#&,” and followed by any number alphanumeric or special characters, as a geographic mnemonics, differ from other tagged words. As a result, a geographic mnemonics may become a tagged keyword or topic, enabling messages related the geographic mnemonics to be easily recovered. Additionally, the messaging service may obtain demographics data of users who interact with a geographic mnemonics from geographic mnemonics based demographics server 162, and target messages, such as commercial messages, the messaging service selects and transmits to client devices 104.
In still another non-limiting examples, the online service may be an Internet portal service, an e-commerce service or an email/messaging service configured to respectively facilitate client devices 104 to online content, online transactions, or electronic mail/messaging service. Similar to the earlier described example online services, the Internet portal service, e-commerce service or email/messaging service may obtain demographics data of users who interact with a geographic mnemonics from geographic mnemonics based demographics server 162, and target messages, such as commercial/advertisement messages, the Internet portal service, e-commerce service or email/messaging service selects and transmits to client devices 104.
Referring now
From block 406, process 400 may proceed to block 408. At block 408, a determination may be made with respect to whether to obtain demographics data of users who interact with the geographic mnemonics. On determination to obtain demographics data of user who interact with the geographic mnemonics, process 400 may proceed to block 410. At block 410, geographic mnemonics based demographics server 162 may be contacted to obtain the demographics data of users who interact with the geographic mnemonics. As described earlier, in embodiments, the demographics information, in addition to users who interact with a geographic mnemonics, may further include users who interact with other geographic mnemonics within an area of the geographic mnemonics.
From block 410, process 400 may proceed to block 412. At block 412, selection and transmission of messages, such as commercial/advertisement messages, to client devices 104 may be targeted, based at least in part on demographics data of users who interact with the geographic mnemonics and/or demographics data of users who interact with other geographic mnemonics associated with the geographic mnemonics.
From block 412, process 400 may return to block 402, and continue there from as earlier described. Similarly, at block 408, on determination not to obtain demographics data of user who interact with the geographic mnemonics, or at block 404, on determination that the service requested does not involve geographic mnemonics or not need the assistance of geographic mnemonics server 102, process 400 may return to block 402, and continue there from as earlier described. While for ease of understanding, the operations of determining whether to obtain demographics data of user who interact with the geographic mnemonics, and the operations of obtaining demographics data were described as part of the operations associated with determining whether to use the geographic mnemonics service of server 102, in embodiments, the two groups of operations may be separately and independently practiced by the online service.
Referring now briefly back to
For example, in one embodiment, the lowest level 506 may store the geographic mnemonics and their associated data having geographic coordinates of specific locations, e.g. “1 Telegraph Hill Blvd, San Francisco, Calif.” A next immediate intermediate level, e.g., level 504, may store geographic mnemonics and their associated data having geographic coordinates of a wider area, such as a City like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and so forth. Further, another intermediate level (not shown) above intermediate level 504 may store may store geographic mnemonics and their associated data having geographic coordinate ranges defining States, such as California, Oregon, and so forth. Still further, yet another intermediate level, such as intermediate level 502 may store geographic mnemonics and their associated data having geographic coordinate ranges representing Countries, such as United States, Canada, and so forth.
The above example is not intended to be limiting on the present disclosure. The present disclosure may be practiced with any data organization or structure, depending on the application. In the case of hierarchical organization, the hierarchical organization may have any number of levels, with the nodes of the intermediate levels storing geographic coordinate ranges defining any geographic, political, cultural, social, and/or economic organizations.
In applications/embodiments, or in a particular instance in time in the use of an application, one or more operational subsets of the geographic mnemonics and their associated data 138 may be cached by one or more client devices 104 or servers 102 and 106. For example, a portable or handheld client device 104 may be provided with the subset of geographic mnemonics and their associated data of one or more areas, regions, if the application or an instant use of the application is known to be confined in the one or more areas/regions. The example subset is not meant to be limiting, other subset derivations of the larger set of geographic mnemonics and associated data are also possible and anticipated.
For the example applications/embodiments, the subset of geographic mnemonics and their related may be stored in e.g., a content addressable memory (CAM), which is described in further detail in related application, U.S. patent application Ser. No. ______, attorney docket 125621-192392, entitled “Geographic Mnemonics,” contemporaneously filed.
Referring now
Referring now to
Each of these elements may perform its conventional functions known in the art. In particular, system memory 704 and mass storage devices 706 may be employed to store a working copy and a permanent copy of the programming instructions implementing the various operations earlier described, e.g., the operations associated with registration engine 132, response engine 134, data collection module 182, an/or application services 144 collectively denoted as computational logic 722. Computational logic 722 may be implemented with assembler instructions supported by processor(s) 702 or high-level languages, such as, for example, C, that can be compiled into such instructions.
The permanent copy of the programming instructions may be placed into permanent storage devices 706 in the factory, or in the field, through, for example, a distribution medium (not shown), such as a compact disc (CD), or through communication interface 710 (from a distribution server (not shown)). That is, one or more distribution media having an implementation of computational logic 722 may be employed to distribute computational logic 722 and program various computing devices.
The number, capability and/or capacity of these elements 710-712 may vary, depending on whether computer 700 is used as a client device 104 or server 102/106/162. When use as client device 104, whether client device 104 is a stationary or mobile device, like a smartphone, in-vehicle/portable navigation/infotainment systems, computing tablet, ultrabook or laptop, with general or specific applications. The constitutions of these elements are otherwise known, and accordingly will not be further described.
Although certain embodiments have been illustrated and described herein for purposes of description, a wide variety of alternate and/or equivalent embodiments or implementations calculated to achieve the same purposes may be substituted for the embodiments shown and described without departing from the scope of the present disclosure. This application is intended to cover any adaptations or variations of the embodiments discussed herein. Therefore, it is manifestly intended that embodiments described herein be limited only by the examples.
Where the disclosure recites “a” or “a first” element or the equivalent thereof, such disclosure includes one or more such elements, neither requiring nor excluding two or more such elements. Further, ordinal indicators (e.g., first, second or third) for identified elements are used to distinguish between the elements, and do not indicate or imply a required or limited number of such elements, nor do they indicate a particular position or order of such elements unless otherwise specifically stated.
The subject matter of the present application is related to U.S. patent application Ser. No. ______, attorney docket 125621-190213, entitled “Geographic Mnemonics,” contemporaneously filed.
