2497 results about "Information delivery" patented technology

A time/location information delivery system that provides focused advertising and/or other information to individuals based on the time and their location. A wireless identification device is carried by an individual and can be read from or written to when the individual passes by interrogators in a specific geographic location. The detectors read ID information embedded in the wireless identification device. A computer uses the ID and location information to select, from a list of information providers, those information providers which provide information content identifiable or correlated to a location and/or time, and is of interest to the individual. The information content can be forwarded to the individual by a variety of information channels. One channel uses conventional Internet email to deliver advertisements and other information to the individual's Internet mailbox. The email can be delivered to a conventional PC, a portable computer, a PDA, an intelligent telephone, pager or other suitable device. For ease of discussion, a pager and a PDA will be referred to collectively as a PDA. The wireless identification device can be an RFID tag embedded in a card, or even a wireless telephone. The RFID tag is read or written to by fixed interrogators and the location of the wireless telephone is detected by triangulating information from cell towers or by embedding the GPS receiver in the wireless telephone thereby providing the location information directly from the telephone. Of course, other nearly identical location determination means, such as quadrangulation could also be used. The location determination can be performed through similar means with other devices such as PDAs, laptops, pagers, etc.

A visual index method provides graphical output from search engine results or other URL lists. Search engine results or a list of URLs are passed to a web crawler that retrieves the web page and other media information present at the associated URL. The web crawler then passes this information to a page renderer which also receives image scale and format information regarding the web pages present at the URLs. The graphical information as well as other media information is then rendered into a reduced graphical form so that the page may be summarily reviewed by the user. Media, visual, or other information may also be downwardly scaled as appropriate or rendered in its original as appropriate (such as with audio data streams). A variety of convenient formats allows the user to quickly and readily scan the presentation at the URL web pages or other data present. Image maps associated with the reduced images may also provide hyperlink access to the linked web page and/or multimedia allowing the links present on the web page in its original to be accessed through the reduced image provided by the web page renderer.

In the disclosed information delivery scheme for delivering WWW information provided by information servers on the Internet to mobile computers connected to the Internet through a wireless network, a plurality of cache servers capable of caching WWW information provided by the information servers are provided in association with the wireless network. The cache servers can be managed by receiving a message indicating at least a connected location of a mobile computer in the wireless network from the mobile computer, selecting one or more cache servers located nearby the mobile computer according to the message, and controlling these one or more cache servers to cache selected WWW information selected for the mobile computer, so as to enable faster accesses to the selected WWW information by the mobile computer. Also, the cache servers can be managed by selecting one or more cache servers located within a geographic range defined for an information provider who provides WWW information from an information server, and controlling these one or more cache servers to cache selected WWW information selected for the information provider, so as to enable faster accesses to the selected WWW information by the mobile computer.

The presence information delivery system according to this invention manages, for each user, data of one or plural presence group so as to associate one or plural presence information items for the presence information to be delivered with an ID or IDs of one or plural delivery destination user of the presence information relating to the presence information item. With this configuration, by generating a new presence group associating the presence information item with the delivery destination user, by registering the presence information item to another presence group, and by registering the delivery destination user into another presence group, the flexible information delivery is enabled according to characteristics or the like of the delivery destination user and presence information.

The method and apparatus for information conveyance and distribution to bidirectionally focus or guide a wide spectrum of electromagnetic waves propagated over a possible variety of propagation media, including free space or wireless, surface wave, and cable or wired transmission lines. The apparatus communicates with information devices immediately adjacent to these media wherein the devices, which are not themselves part of the apparatus, may have electromagnetic access to one another. The apparatus maintains adequate signal to noise ratio and low distortion for a possible variety of different signal modulation and encoding types which it can support while permitting transparent, simultaneous communications among a variety of devices. Spread spectrum techniques may be used within the apparatus to mitigate propagation medium distortions and impairments as well as to control access and provide a means for securing information within the corridor and for obtaining revenue. Adapters may be employed to provide either full or half duplex access to the information devices which utilize it.

The invention comprises music and information delivery systems and methods. One system comprises a portable communication device configured to receive a piece of music from an audio source and transmit the piece of music via a first communication medium to a host computer. The host computer is configured to receive the piece of music from the portable communication device and search a storage medium to identify and access the piece of music from the storage medium. The host computer is configured to transmit the piece of music via a second communication medium to one or more reception units that are configured to receive the piece of music from the host computer via the second communication medium.

A system and method for receiving travel information such as flight information, directional guidance to airport gates and facilities, and interacting autonomously with service providers such as airlines and rental car companies without requiring human resources to receive the tickets or car keys. The system devices essentially provide an automatic chaperon which can initiate processes such as querying databases or provide navigation guidance without intervention, setup procedures or any prior knowledge on behalf of the user. It can also access secured databases for retrieving rental car reservation information for automatic rental car checkout, personal health files for emergency cases, flight check-in, connecting flight information and call for emergency staff alerting the staff automatically of the caller's location within the compound, as well as recent health history and condition.

A system and method for coalescing a plurality of snapshots into a single destination volume file system. Each snapshot and its replicated file system is replicated in a directory associated with the destination file system in which the coalesced snapshots are stored. The destination file system can be associated with a backup server and information from each of the plurality of snapshots can be transferred to the backup server by an respective backup clients over a network. Information can be passed to the backup server from the backup client(s) using a dump and restore process.

Establishing a conference between a customer at a customer terminal and a live agent at an agent station, by (a) accepting a call request from the customer terminal, (b) requesting that an available live agent take the call request, (c) when a live agent becomes available to take the call request, passing customer information to the agent station associated with the available live agent, and (d) establishing a conference from the agent station associated with the available live agent to the customer terminal. The conference may be an audio-video conference. The audio-video conference may be compliant with the H.323 standard. The call request may generated in response to an event sensed by an API which was previously downloaded to the customer terminal from a web server. The call request may be generated in response to a trigger event. The trigger event may be a customer request for a live agent, adding an item to a virtual shopping cart, adding items having a total purchase prices of more than a predetermined threshold to a virtual shopping cart, removing an item from a virtual shopping cart, dwelling at a certain web page for more than a predetermined length of time, rendering certain content, rendering a certain sequence of content, filling out a form, or issuing a particular command. The customer information may include an Internet protocol address of the customer terminal, a video capability of the customer terminal, and/or a browser type used by the customer terminal.

A communication system for distributing information via a network to one or more subscribers includes a multi-port switch, one or more radio frequency (RF) modems coupled to respective ports of the switch, a combiner and a transmitter. The switch forwards source information to the RF modems based on address information. Each RF modem modulates and up converts information from the switch to an RF signal within a respective subscriber channel of the television broadcast spectrum. Each channel is assigned to one or more subscribers, and each subscriber is allocated unshared bandwidth. Each channel may be further divided into unshared bandwidth increments, so that multiple subscribers may share a single channel. The combiner combines modulated information from each RF modem into a combined signal and the transmitter transmits the combined signal to the subscribers via the network. An HFC network including a distribution point and one or more optical nodes is contemplated, each optical node serving a particular geographic area via a corresponding coaxial cable. Each subscriber destination includes a gateway device or the like that is tuned to a corresponding channel to retrieve source information from that channel, and to deliver the information to one or more local subscriber devices. The gateway further includes converters, a modulator and an up converter to receive and transmit subscriber information upstream to the distribution point. The gateways and an address resolution server enforce point to point communications. A bandwidth manager allocates bandwidth and monitors bandwidth usage.

Embodiments described herein relate to techniques, tools and processes for analyzing a computer system and determining the type and capabilities of hardware and software components resident on the computer system. This information can then be used for multiple different purposes. For example, the information may be used for (1) communicating an individual computer's ability to effectively operate a specific computer software and/or computer hardware product, (2) relaying the information to a technical support operation to allow a more rapid response, or (3) making a simple evaluation of the stand alone performance of a computer. These processes can be used for analyzing an individual computer's system inventory (computer hardware components and system software components) against a static set of manufacturer validated requirements for a hardware or software product.

A method and system for intelligently directing a search of a peer-to-peer network, in which a user performing a search is assisted in choosing a host which is likely to return fast, favorable results to the user. A host monitor monitors the peer-to-peer network and collects data on various characteristics of the hosts which make up the network. Thereafter, a host selector ranks the hosts using the data, and passes this information to the user. The user then selects one or more of the highly-ranked hosts as an entry point into the network. Additionally, a cache may collect a list of hosts based on the content on the hosts. In this way, a user may choose to connect to a host which is known to contain information relevant to the user's search. The host selector may be used to select from among the hosts listed in the cache.