HELP SAVE MOBILE SEARCH - This application from Google seeks to patent a system for finding open stores which are located near a user at the time of a search! 10 minutes of your time can narrow US Patent Applications. Follow @askpatents on twitter to help.
QUESTION - Have you seen anything that was published before October, 2011 that discusses:
- Receiving a search request from a mobile user that includes both the current time AND the location of the user;
- Identifying businesses which are currently open and located near the user; and
- Returning a search result page indicating a subset of businesses as currently open.
If so, please submit evidence of prior art as an answer to this question. Only one piece of prior art per answer below. We welcome multiple answers from the same individual
EXTRA CREDIT - A reference to anything that meets all of the criteria to the question above AND ALSO uses estimated travel time to estimate whether the business is “close enough” to the user.
TITLE: INDICATING LOCATION STATUS
Summary: [Translated from Legalese into English] A method of searching for currently open businesses from a mobile device. The user’s device sends a search query, the current time and its location. A search is performed based on the user’s search query. A subset of results is selected based on operating hours of the business, current time, and travel time from the device location to the business. The search results which are returned indicate which businesses are “currently open”.
- Publication Number: US 20130110822 A1
- Assignee: Google, Inc
- Prior Art Date: Seeking prior Art predating October, 2011
- Open for Challenge at USPTO: Open through Nov 2, 2013
Claim 1 requires each and every step below::
A method comprising:
- Receiving a query from a user device, a current time, and a location for the user device; AND
- Identifying results responsive to the query, the results including one or more business results that are each associated with a business location and operating hours; AND
- Selecting a subset of the business results as open results based on the operating hours of the business results, the current time, and travel times from the device location to the respective business locations; AND
- Providing data for a search engine results page that designates the subset of business results as open results.
In English this means:
- A user’s device sends user’s search query, current time and its location
- Businesses, their associated locations and business hours are identified from the query
- A few items from this list are selected based on whether the businesses are currently open and the user is close enough to get to them before they close
- A subset of businesses which are open is passed along to a search engine to return results (which presumably could return a list or a map).
You're probably aware of ten pieces of art that meet this criteria already... separately, the applicant is claiming a method using all of the steps above and including travel time from the user’s device to the business to determine whether user will make it to the business before it closes.
"Show restaurants open now”
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