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AN OVERBROAD PATENT ON ELECTRONIC CALENDARS - This application from HTC seeks to patent the idea of... calendar reminders based on location! 10 minutes of your time can help narrow US patent applications before they become patents. Follow @askpatents on Twitter to help.

QUESTION - Have you seen anything that was published before Aug 22, 2008 that discusses:

  1. Creating EVENT REMINDERS for a user; where

  2. EVENT REMINDERS are based on TRAVEL TIME to a next event.

If so, please submit evidence of prior art as an answer to this question.. 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 GPS, Traffic conditions, Walking time to estimate travel time, or involves contacting another individual when it appears you will be late to a meeting.

TITLE: METHOD FOR REMINDING CALENDAR SCHEDULE

Summary: [Translated from Legalese into English] A method in which a reminding message is provided in advance to a user according to the distance between the location of the user’s previous event and the location of an upcoming event, so that the user will not be late for the upcoming event. Basically a standard iPhone reminder of “Your meeting with David Kappos will occur in {X} minutes”, where {X} is calculated in part by how long will be required for you to get to the event”

  • Publication Number: US 20130151143 A1
  • Application Number: 13/761,161
  • Assignee: HTC Corporation
  • Prior Art Date: Seeking prior Art predating August 22, 2008
  • Open for Challenge at USPTO: Open through Dec 13, 2013

Claim 1 requires each and every step below:

A method for creating a calendar reminder, comprising:

  1. Setting a first schedule and a first location of a first event in a calendar;

  2. Obtaining first positioning information of a current location of the mobile apparatus during the first event according to the first schedule, and storing the first positioning information as event positioning information of the first location; and

  3. Retrieving the event positioning information for reminding the calendar schedule when the first location is set in a next event.d

In English this means:

A method for creating a calendar reminder, comprising:

  1. Creating a 1st event on a calendar;

  2. Using the current location of the user as the location of the 1st event;

  3. Creating a reminder for the next event based on the location of the next event and location of the 1st event.

Good prior art would be evidence of a system that did each and every one of these steps prior to the August, 2008.

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 AND ALSO uses GPS, Traffic conditions, Walking time to estimate travel time, or involves contacting another individual when it appears you will be late to a meeting.

"A method of creating event reminders" screen shots from HTC

What is good prior art? Please see our FAQ.

Want to help? Please vote or comment on submissions below. We welcome you to post your own request for prior art on other questionable US Patent Applications.

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6 Answers 6

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I personally wrote software to do this sometime in 2008/2009. The only extant link I can find to it is here: http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Internet-Utilities/Smart-Calendar-Reminders.shtml

If this was helpful, I could try and dig up more evidence for the specific date.

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Method and system for scheduling appointment according to real-time information EP 1378842 A2

Publication date Jan 7, 2004

Filing date Jun 12, 2002

Priority date Sep 5, 2001

May not be dead-on but it has appointments, reminders and location and ETA.

Paragraph 7

"The apparatus also includes components and program logic to acquire and/or obtain real-time information/data and adapt the real-time information/data to augment one or more event-based appointments. The real-time information may include information such as, by way of example, geographical location, proximity location (e.g., proximity to other devices), traffic conditions, weather conditions, time, and the like. The apparatus can then use the acquired real-time information or event to augment the event-based appointments."

claim 4

The method of Claim 1 further comprising: determining movement parameters of the electronic scheduler (814); determining an estimated time of arrival at an event-based appointment location (816) using the movement parameters, the event based appointment location being dependent an the appointment; and notifying a target of the event-based appointment if the estimated time of arrival is beyond an appointment time associated with the event-based appointment(824).

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A Study of Location-Based Reminders on Mobile Phones

September 2005

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=132415

Our findings from a twoweek deployment of Place-Its help validate that location-based reminders can be useful even with coarse location-sensing capabilities. Notably, location was widely used as a cue for other contextual information

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Google Now already does this, it tells you that you should leave home now to reach a scheduled meeting in x minutes based on live public transportation or traffic conditions.

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  • They need information published before August 22, 2008; if you know of any pre-existing info on Google Now that would be great, but otherwise it's not what's needed.
    – Calvin
    Commented Jul 23, 2013 at 14:24
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Smart reminders

Abstract

Systems and methods for scheduling appointment reminders are based on multiple conditions including estimated travel time.

see http://www.google.com/patents/US7925525

  • Publication number US7925525 B2
  • Publication type Grant
  • Application number US 11/089,870
  • Publication date Apr 12, 2011
  • Filing date Mar 25, 2005
  • Priority date Mar 25, 2005
  • Also published as US20060218029, US20110148632
  • Inventors Peter G. Chin
  • Original Assignee Microsoft Corporation
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I found this PDF title Time and Location Based Reminder System from the BVDU College of Engineering in Pune, India which looks like it was published in 2009.

The very last reference in the paper is

Sohn T., Li. K. Lee, G. Smit, I. Scott J. Griswold, W. (205). Place - its Location - Based Reminders on Mobile Phones, Proc. Intl. Conf. on Ub.

TimeSpot is about location based alerts. For example not alerting you that you have a meeting when you are at said meeting.

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