| Patent application number | Description | Published |
|---|
| 20090005968 | Location-based information determination - Techniques are described for determining and providing location-based information, including based on decomposing a geographic area into numerous smaller areas and using one or more layers of polygons to represent various of the smaller areas. In some situations, location-based information for a geographic area is determined efficiently and accurately to reflect actual travel distances and/or times, such as for use in identifying one or more points of interest that are sufficiently proximate to an indicated location (e.g., a current location of a user), and/or to determine actual travel distances and/or times between two or more indicated locations of interest. The location-based information determination may in some situations be performed in a realtime or near-realtime manner after a request is received from a user, such as to interactively provide results to the user that include or are based at least in part on the determined location-based information. | 01-01-2009 |
| 20090005987 | Determining locations of interest based on user visits - Techniques are described for determining locations of interest based on user visits. In some situations, the techniques include obtaining information about actual locations of users at various times, and automatically analyzing the information to determine particular locations in a geographic area that are of interest, such as for frequent destinations visited by users. After determining a particular location of interest, it may be represented by generating a corresponding location model to describe the geographic subarea or other location point(s) covered by the determined location of interest, and one or more points of interest (e.g., businesses, parks, schools, landmarks, etc.) may be identified that are located at or otherwise correspond to the determined location of interest. In addition, a determined location of interest may be further used in various ways, including to identify later user visits to that location (e.g., to a point of interest identified for the location). | 01-01-2009 |
| 20110151892 | Proximity-Based User Interaction - Techniques are described for providing location-based information and functionality to people and computing devices in various ways. In at least some situations, the techniques include enabling multiple people in a common geographic area to interact in various ways, such as via devices capable of communications (e.g., cellular telephones, computing devices with wired and/or wireless communications capabilities, etc.). In addition, the techniques include enabling the creation and maintenance of location-based virtual groups of users (also referred to as “clouds”), such as for users of mobile and/or fixed-location devices. Such clouds may enable various types of interactions between group members, and may be temporary and/or mobile. | 06-23-2011 |
