KMR -
19.03.10 05:57
Apple is working on a new communications based social networking application that they're simply calling "iGroups." According to the documents published by the USPTO today, Apple's iGroup will be a new service that will work on your iPhone and likely work with MobileMe. The idea is to allow groups of friends or colleagues attending such events as aconcert, a tradeshow, business meeting, wedding or rally to stay in communication with each other as a group to share information
or reactions to live events as they're occurring.
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iGroups: Apple's New iPhone Social App in Development
To further explain the concept of token exchange, a scenario at rock concert will now be described. In this example scenario, a number of attendees of a rock concert set their Bluetooth-enabled devices to Token Exchange mode. All devices within transmission range of each other at the concert and that are set in Token Exchange mode begin exchanging and storing tokens. These devices are collectively referred to as a Group, and the users associated with devices in the Group
are referred to as Group members. The Token Exchange is referred to as a "contact event." The contact event could be associated with a "contact time" defined by timestamps provided to the trusted service.
Either during the concert or sometime thereafter, each of the members upload their collected tokens to the trusted service 104 – which in my view is referring to a service such as Apple's MobileMe. On the other hand, the trusted service could be a trusted third party that maintains a secure database 110 of device data, member data and encryption keys and/or other secret data. The database includes additional information and data that can be used by the trusted service
to form Groups based on tokens. Members could set up accounts with the trusted service using secure communication channels. For example, a member could subscribe to a service by signing up through a website or portal operated by the trusted service. Personal information and secret data could be provided by the member to the trusted service through the secure website or portal.
A key feature of the "rock concert" example described above is that a trusted service could infer the members of a group by collecting tokens from a few devices at the concert. For example, the musician's devices could exchange tokens with devices operated by users in the front row of the stadium. The front row devices could then exchange tokens with devices behind the front row, etc. Thus, token exchanges can occur in a "daisy chain" manner starting from one or more
initiating devices. In this example, the musician's devices would be the group "anchor" that defines the "group." The "anchor" devices could be strategically placed around the stadium and used to triangulate the location of the users in the stadium based on their respective distances from the "anchor" devices. Since there is often enough physical separation between concert-goer devices and devices outside the stadium that the trusted service could
determine which devices are contained in the stadium using short-range communication technology (e.g., Bluetooth technology, Wi-Fi). In some implementations, the "anchor devices" can be access devices 114, 118.