Systems and Methods for Communicating with Remote Users

摘要

A messaging system comprises memory for storing contact information and location information for a plurality of users, referred to hereafter as “participants,” who may be dispersed across a wide geographic area. When a user desires to solicit images from a particular geographic region of interest, the user provides inputs indicative of such region, and messaging logic then automatically determines which participants are within the region of interest based on the stored location information. Using the contact information, the messaging logic then initiates communication with the identified participants in order to solicit images of the region of interest. In response, willing participants may capture and return images as may be desired. Thus, the system facilitates the process of finding people at or close to an event of interest, communicating with such people to solicit images of the event or the effects of the event, and then collecting such images.

主权项

1. A system, comprising:
memory for storing location data indicative of locations of a plurality of user computing devices; a data manager configured to display a map; an input interface for receiving user inputs for selecting a region of the map and for defining a textual message to be communicated to users within a geographic region corresponding to the selected region of the map; and messaging logic configured to track locations of the user computing devices and to update the location data as the locations of the user computing devices change, the messaging logic configured to determine which of the user computing devices are within the geographic region based on the location data and the user inputs for selecting the region of the map, the messaging logic further configured to transmit the textual message to each of the user computing devices determined to be within the geographic region.