US 7,516,013 B1
Method for gathering mobile consumer-initiated business service look-up requests
Rick A. Hamilton, II, Charlottesville, Va. (US); Steven A. Steigmeyer, Dripping Springs, Tex. (US); Brian M. O'Connel, Cary, N.C. (US); Keith R. Walker, Austin, Tex. (US); and Steven V. Jackson, Yardley, Pa. (US)
Assigned to International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, N.Y. (US)
Filed on Jun. 20, 2008, as Appl. No. 12/142,874.
Int. Cl. G06F 7/08 (2006.01)
U.S. Cl. 701—213  [707/201] 1 Claim
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method for gathering mobile consumer-initiated business service look-up requests comprising:
receiving, at a Central Processing Station, a business service look-up request entered into a GPS unit by a GPS user, wherein the business service look-up request includes at least one of a point-of-interest request or business name request, and wherein information corresponding to the request is stored in a memory within the GPS unit before being transmitted to the Central Processing Station over a Wi-Fi, cellular or mobile device network;
receiving, at the Central Processing Station, request entry location information, wherein the location information corresponds to the GPS user's geographic location at the time the GPS user entered a business service look-up request in the GPS unit and wherein the location information is stored in a memory within the GPS unit before being transmitted to the Central Processing Station over a Wi-Fi, cellular or mobile device network;
confirming a successful transmission receipt and deleting pending message from storage system of the business service look-up request and request entry location information at the Central Processing Station;
repeating the receiving and confirming steps for a plurality of GPS units;
storing the information received from the plurality of the GPS units in a relational database stored in a Central Processing Station memory; and
analyzing the information received to identify concentrations of similar business service look-up requests within a geographic region.