Patent Application
20090248457
When making travel plans, a traveler may be interesting to know if an acquaintance, co-worker, friend, family member, or other person in his social network may also be traveling on the same date to the same place; and, if so, whether the traveler and the other person or persons of interest could then travel on the same carrier, and even sit together. It is known to the inventor that in group reservations within companies, for example, reservations for one person or persons may be attached to the travel schedule of some other traveler. However, in many cases, this feature is not applicable or of interest. For example, a traveler may be interested in meeting customers or other professional associates while in transit, or, similarly, traveling together with just friends or family.
What is clearly needed is a system and method that allows a traveler to see, during the reservation process, the travel details of other people in his social network, and thus to be able to arrange to travel together on the same carrier.
Some embodiments of the present invention are summarized in this section.
One embodiment provides a method, that may be implemented on a system, for providing the travel schedule of traveler's contacts. One embodiment of the method comprises receiving a travel itinerary for a traveler; identifying at least one travel segment option corresponding to the travel itinerary of the traveler; identifying from one or more of the traveler's sets of contacts, one or more contacts that have selected the travel segment option identified for the traveler; and presenting for selection the travel segment option for the traveler, and presenting the one or more contacts that have selected the travel segment option identified for the traveler.
The present disclosure includes methods and apparatuses which perform these methods, including processing systems which perform these methods, and computer readable media which when executed on processing systems cause the systems to perform these methods.
Other features of the present invention will be apparent from the accompanying drawings and from the detailed description which follows.
The disclosure is illustrated by way of example and not limitation in the figures of the accompanying drawings in which like references indicate similar elements.
In the following detailed description of embodiments of the invention, reference is made to the accompanying drawings in which like references indicate similar elements, and in which is shown by way of illustration specific embodiments in which the invention may be practiced. These embodiments are described in sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice the invention, and it is to be understood that other embodiments may be utilized and that logical, mechanical, electrical, functional, and other changes may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention. The following detailed description is, therefore, not to be taken in a limiting sense, and the scope of the present invention is defined only by the appended claims.
Reference in this specification to “one embodiment” or “an embodiment” means that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment is included in at least one embodiment of the disclosure. The appearances of the phrase “in one embodiment” in various places in the specification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment, nor are separate or alternative embodiments mutually exclusive of other embodiments. Moreover, various features are described which may be exhibited by some embodiments and not by others. Similarly, various requirements are described which may be requirements for some embodiments but not other embodiments.
It is clear that many modifications and variations of this embodiment may be made by one skilled in the art without departing from the spirit of the novel art of this disclosure. In some cases, such as, for example, where a great many contacts are available on a selection of flights (for example, when many contacts are all traveling to a trade show), instead of overcrowding the display by listing each network contact, the system may display classes of available contacts by a system of color-coded icons. When the user runs the mouse over an icon, a box opens listing the available contacts in that class. Additionally, in some cases, a user may wish to send a message to another contact or contacts, saying that he plans to join them on this travel segments, so they can synchronize other travel arrangements, such as seating, transportation to and from travel terminals, meetings, etc. By seeing the contacts during the reservation process, a user may adjust his reservations, for example, to fly in the same class as a friend, etc. These and many other variations do not depart from the broader spirit and scope of the invention, and the examples cited here are to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.
The processes described above can be stored in a memory of a computer system as a set of instructions to be executed. In addition, the instructions to perform the processes described above could alternatively be stored on other forms of machine-readable media, including magnetic and optical disks. For example, the processes described could be stored on machine-readable media, such as magnetic disks or optical disks, which are accessible via a disk drive (or computer-readable medium drive). Further, the instructions can be downloaded into a computing device over a data network in a form of compiled and linked version.
Alternatively, the logic to perform the processes as discussed above could be implemented in additional computer and/or machine readable media, such as discrete hardware components as large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs), application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), and firmware such as electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROMs).
It is clear that many modifications and variations of this embodiment may be made by one skilled in the art without departing from the spirit of the novel art of this disclosure. These modifications and variations do not depart from the broader spirit and scope of the invention, and the examples cited here are to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.
