System and method for providing intelligent location information

Abstract

A method and system that includes extracting event models from at least one personal planning source of a user, wherein a parameter of an event model includes event location; periodically receiving location information of at least one mobile device of the user; storing the location information in a location log; a pattern worker module maintaining user location patterns through the location log; generating a location prediction from the extracted event models and the user location patterns; a first content worker module checking if the location prediction meets a set of content requirements; if the set of content requirements is satisfied, initiating content retrieval from at least one service; and pushing the content to the mobile device.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method comprising:
 extracting event models from at least one personal planning source of a user, wherein a parameter of an event model includes event location;   periodically receiving location information of at least one mobile device of the user;   storing the location information in a location log;   maintaining user location patterns through the location log;   generating a location prediction from the extracted event models and the user location patterns;   using a first content worker module, checking if the location prediction meets a set of content requirements;   if the set of content requirements is satisfied, initiating content retrieval from at least one service; and   pushing the content to the mobile device.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein extracting event models from the at least one personal planning source of the user includes determine one or more parameters of a predetermined event identified by the event model. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the location prediction includes an estimated future location of the user that is informed by event data of the extracted event models found within the at least one planning source and the user location patterns that were determined independent of a current route of the user. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the location prediction includes a predicted future location of the user, and wherein generating the location prediction includes implementing a set of Markov chains to determine a likelihood of the user moving to the predicted future location based on a current location of the user. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1 , generating a plurality of pattern models based on a location history of the mobile device of the user and a plurality of location categories. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the at least one personal planning source includes one or more of a social network and a text message log. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein maintaining user location patterns comprises updating a plurality of pattern models that characterize location patterns. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the content condition comprises a predefined condition of a current time being an expected departure time to travel to the location prediction. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the expected departure time is defined based on an expected travel time between the location prediction and a current location of the mobile device. 
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising a second content worker module checking if the location prediction meets another set of content requirements of the second content worker module. 
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 10 , wherein the first content worker module is for a traffic content scenario and the second content worker module for a Internet content scenario. 
     
     
         12 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising granting permissions to an outside application to access location information of the user; a context worker module checking if the location prediction meets a set of context requirements and notifying the outside application of the location prediction context if the set of context requirements is satisfied. 
     
     
         13 . A method comprising:
 granting permissions to an outside application to access location information of a user;   at a server of a location prediction platform, periodically receiving location information of at least one mobile device of the user;   storing the location information in a location log of the location prediction platform;   maintaining user location patterns through the location log;   generating a location prediction from the user location patterns;   using a context worker module, checking if the location prediction meets a set of context requirements; and   if the set of context requirements is satisfied, notifying the outside application of a location prediction context.   
     
     
         14 . The method of  claim 13 , wherein the context requirements identify location prediction scenarios that include one or more actions being performed by the user with respect to a particular location. 
     
     
         15 . The method of  claim 14 , further comprising extracting event models from at least one repository of scheduled events of the user, wherein a parameter of an event model includes an event location; and wherein generating the location prediction further comprises generating the location prediction from the extracted event models and the user location patterns. 
     
     
         16 . method of  claim 13 , further comprising providing a location aware application; for a set of content worker modules, a content worker module checking if the location prediction meets a set of content requirements and pushing content associated with the content worker module to the at least one mobile device if the set of content requirements is satisfied. 
     
     
         17 . The method of  claim 13 , wherein the location prediction platform comprises a multitenant platform; and wherein location information for a plurality of users is kept in the location log. 
     
     
         18 . method of  claim 15 , further comprising applying a user categorization to a location based on the extracted event models from the at least one repository of scheduled events of the user; and wherein the location prediction context describes the location information using the user categorization of the predicted location. 
     
     
         19 . The method of  claim 18 , wherein granting permissions to an outside application to access location information comprises the granted permissions restricting location information to a set of location categorizations. 
     
     
         20 . The method of  claim 14 , further comprising receiving content from the outside application; and pushing the content from the outside application to the mobile device.