SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ACCESSING AND MANAGING MOBILE DEVICE METADATA

摘要

A system and method are provided for accessing information describing content residing on agent devices. The system includes a central node and agent devices communicatively coupled by a network. The central node obtains content information describing content stored at the agent devices and optionally the locations of the agent devices from the agent devices. The content information and optionally the locations of the agent devices are stored in a database associated with the central node. The central node enables requesting nodes such as the agent devices to access the database. For example, the agent devices may communicate with the central node to obtain the content information for a known agent device or to query the database to find agent devices having content information and optionally locations that satisfy specified criteria. Alternatively, the central node may provide alerts to the agent devices when other agent devices matching specified criteria are available.

主权项

1. A central node comprising:
a) a communication interface adapted to communicatively couple the central node to a network; and b) a control system associated with the communication interface and adapted to:
i) obtain content information describing digital media content items digitally stored by a plurality of agent devices;ii) store the content information from the plurality of agent devices in a database;iii) receive a request from one of a plurality of requesting nodes including the plurality of agent devices for the content information for one of the plurality of agent devices where the request comprises an identifier of the one of the plurality of agent devices; andiv) provide at least a subset of the content information for the one of the plurality of agent devices to the one of the plurality of requesting nodes in response to the request.