WO2011021227A2

WO2011021227A2 - A system for acquisition and publication of information

Info

Publication number: WO2011021227A2
Application number: PCT/IN2010/000551
Authority: WO
Inventors: Sanjay Kimbahune; Priyanka Kabra; Rishabh Rastogi; Deepti Chunduru; Suparna Pathak; Namratra Patil; Sylvan Lobo; Sandeep Andre; Sunreeta Chawla; Prashant Gotarne; Kushal Gore; Pankaj Doke
Original assignee: Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.
Priority date: 2009-08-19
Filing date: 2010-08-19
Publication date: 2011-02-24
Also published as: WO2011021227A3

Abstract

A system and method for acquisition and publication of information using mobile devices is disclosed wherein a universal news generating mechanism, which is not just restricted to news acquired from a news reporter's jurisdiction, is provided. The system facilitates in acquiring and sharing news by people by way of either speaking in native language or by sharing any photo of incident or by writing about it or using video. Features such as exchange of information using video clips, images, voice, and text with geo-tagging helps publication companies to cover news from all areas, whether it is a small village or a metro city. The system provides a means for even the illiterate masses to know about the world's events using a mobile phone.

Description

A SYSTEM FOR ACQUISITION AND PUBLICATION OF

INFORMATION

FIELD OF INVENTION

The present invention relates to the field of telecommunications.

Particularly, the present invention relates to the field of mobile phones and social networking.

DEFINITIONS OF TERMS USED IN THIS SPECIFICATION

The term 'geo tag' in this specification relates to adding of a geographical location co-ordinate to particular information.

The term 'information' in this specification relates to news, local happenings, events, bulletin boards, current affairs and such similar content.

The term 'multimedia' in this specification relates to information captured in the forms comprising text, audio, image, video and speech.

These definitions are additions to those expressed in the art.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Newspaper is an essential mode of dissemination of current affairs, which particularly is in the field of general awareness of people. It is a publication containing news and information about what is going on in the world. Typically, there are numerous newspaper published in multiple languages based on the area where it is going to be distributed. In the current age, mobile phones are easiest and simplest method to stay connected with others. Communication devices have evolved from a simple telephonic device to voice and video communication tools that are now extensively used and easily available all over the world.

The urban community and the rural population use mobile phones alike. It has been seen that rural telephony market is growing at a surprising speed. According to a TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) report, it is growing at a rate of 40% CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) for next three years.

At present newspaper companies hire people as journalists or reporters. They tie up with them by providing a salary and, in turn, these reporters provide them relevant information to print. While hiring a person any company looks at the level of education that the person has achieved. Because of this, rural people are hesitant to apply for media jobs.

Newspaper is a textual format of news distribution. That is why it is difficult to send any information in textual format by rural, illiterate or semiliterate people to newspaper companies. Hence, it becomes difficult for rural people to contribute occurrences of relevant information of their respective areas.

These reporters go to the places where an incident has occurred. At times, minute local news, which people^" need to know, is not conveyed to them because of poor connectivity. News media today mostly delivers news that occurs at the national and international level, they do not deliver local news to the rural people that are more relevant to them. Sometimes incidents, which take place in some rural areas, do not get any consideration either because the media company has no employee who can visit the place or they are unaware of the place. Sometimes, they are hesitant also to go to remote areas, smaller villages for gathering news of an incident. Sometimes reporters are delayed while reaching at the desired place, which results in no information coverage and thus that news, is not printed.

Therefore, there is a need for a system, which enables users to contribute information, local happenings, news and any other events occurring in their town / city in their local language for publishing. Additionally, there is a need for a system which accepts the contributed information in a plurality of formats for further dissemination.

OBJECT OF THE INVENTION

An object of this invention is to provide appropriate and accurate news, from all over the world, using mobile phones.

Another object of this invention is to use any medium of mobile communication, i.e. text, image, voice or video, for news related information.

Yet another object of this invention is to provide a multilingual system for mobile based data acquisition and publishing.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention envisages a distributed system for acquisition and publication of information, wherein the system comprises the following components:

• mobile devices having a client application embedded in each one of them, the client application having:

• means adapted to capture multimedia information from users;

• communication means adapted to geo tag and time stamp the captured information; and

• communication means adapted to send the geo tagged and. time stamped information;

• a server remotely located and co-operating with the mobile devices, the server having:

• receiving means adapted to receive the geo tagged and time stamped information sent from the mobile devices;

• collation means adapted to collate the received information into a plurality categories;

• a first database to store the collated information as per their categories;

• processing means, co-operating with the first database, having:

graphical display means, adapted to generate a click based / touch based map showing location-wise aggregated information provided by users for selective viewing; - sensing means, adapted to sense a click-based selection made on the map and provide the corresponding aggregated content and user details; and

- editing means, adapted to selectively edit the aggregated content;

• a second database to store the edited information;

• transfer means, co-operating with the second database adapted to transfer the edited information for publication; and

• first billing means adapted to compute a payment amount for each of the users based on the information sent by them.

In accordance with the present .invention, the communication means is adapted to send the geo tagged and time stamped information using communication formats including text message, multimedia message, data calls, voice calls and data packets.

Additionally, the client application includes composition means adapted to merge different formats of captured multimedia content to create information to be sent to the server.

Typically, the server includes registration means, adapted to register user details including demographic data, contact information and mode of payment preference data with the system. Preferably, the transfer means, is adapted to transfer the edited information for publication to print media and/or to a portal and/or a broadcast channel.

Further, the billing means includes a payment gateway platform adapted to facilitate the payment of the computed amount to the respective users based on their mode of payment preference.

Furthermore, the server includes an advertisement module comprising:

• an interface for receiving advertisements from advertisers;

• advertisement selection means, adapted to select advertisements based on the type and category of information;

• merging means, adapted to merge the selected advertisement with the information for publication; and

• second billing means adapted to generate an invoice for the advertisers based on the publication of their advertisements.

Still further, the system comprises a packet based interactive multimedia response module at the client and the server side adapted to build a voice guided data acquisition and publication system.

In accordance with the present invention, there is provided a method for acquisition and publication of information, wherein the method comprising the following steps:

• capturing multilingual multimedia information using mobile devices associated with users; • time stamping and geo tagging the captured information;

• transmitting the information to an application server;

• storing the transmitted information in a first database;

• segregating the information into different categories;

• generating a map based graphical display showing the location of the users and the corresponding information captured by them;

• selecting a particular location on the map;

• editing the information retrieved by the selected location on the map;

• storing the edited information in a second database;

• publishing the edited information; and

• computing the payment to be made to the user for providing the information.

Typically, the step of editing the information includes the steps of screening the retrieved information and filtering the information for publication.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE ACCOMPANYING DRAWINGS

Other aspects of the invention will become apparent by consideration of the accompanying drawings and their description stated below, which is merely illustrative of a preferred embodiment of the invention and does not limit in any way the nature and scope of the invention.

FIGURE 1 illustrates a schematic of the system for acquisition and publication of information in accordance with the present invention; and FIGURE 2 is a flowchart showing the steps to be followed for information acquisition and publication in accordance with the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The system for acquisition and publication of information will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings which do not limit the scope and ambit of the invention. The description provided is purely by way of example and illustration.

The present invention envisages a universal sharing mechanism where users from rural and urban localities alike contribute information including news, events, current affairs, local happenings and issues to a central server and this news is then published to the print media and/or a portal and/or broadcast network. Thus, overcoming the issue of having at least one reporter being present in every jurisdiction or a reporter being present at the time of an unplanned happening to capture the information and broadcast the information in real-time.

The present invention thus increases the coverage of the publishers and makes people aware of the local issues and events occurring at even the remotest of places. The present invention implements the proposed system using a mobile device having a user friendly client application embedded in it. The application being user friendly enables even illiterate users to easily operate the application, capture the information in various formats and send it to the server. Additionally, the proposed system gives users the ability to capture information in a format .of their choice including audio, videos, video recording / video clips, speech / audio recordings, images / photos and the like. The speech/audio can be recorded in a language of the user's choice. The system comprises language translators, text to speech, keyword spotting engine and speech to text converters for making the information available universally.

The advances in telecommunications have come a long way and mobile devices with color displays, camera, audio recorder, music players, internet connectivity and the like features are available at very nominal prices and within the reach of the masses. Hence, the present invention harnesses the potential and network coverage of the mobile devices to create a system for information acquisition and publication.

FIGURE 1 illustrates a schematic of the system in accordance with this invention.

According to this invention, there is provided a system for mobile-based information acquisition and publishing, typically using social networks. This helps in providing a universal news generating mechanism, which is not just related to reporter-based jurisdictions. The system of this invention will facilitate people to acquire and share news by way of either speaking in native language or by sharing any photo of an incident or by writing about it or using video.

In accordance with an embodiment of this invention, there is provided a mobile device 100 embedded with a client application. The client application includes means adapted to capture multilingual multimedia information 102, using this, users or news reporters can upload news items and related multimedia content from any location using their mobile devices. The captured information is then geo tagged and time stamped by the geo tagging means 104 adapted to capture the location of the user / news reporter reporting the information along with the time when the information was captured.

The features such as exchange of information using video clips, images, voice, and text with geo-tagging help publishers to cover news from all areas, whether it is a small village or a metro city. This will enable a means for even the illiterate or semiliterate masses to know about the world's events using a small mobile phone.

Also, provided in the client application is a composition means 108 which enables users / reporters to merge the discretely captured multimedia information, for instance a user can take pictures / video recording of an incident and later add an audio describing the incident in his/her voice or take pictures, record audio and prepare a documentary and then send the merged information to the server 110. The geo tagged and time stamped information is sent to the server 110 via the communication means 106. The communication means 106 uses communication formats including text- message, MultiMedia Message (MMS), data / voice call and data packets (via the wireless and cellular technology) to send the information to the server 110. If these users / news reporters notice some incidents that need to be notified as news then they will capture this and post it on application's channel. This post can be in video, voice, image, or text format. People who do not know how to read or write can also contribute in information sending and can communicate using the multimedia based messaging service.

Users / news reporters will typically have to sign up first before starting use of this system and application. The server has registration means (not shown in the figures) adapted to register the user / reporter details with this system including demographic data, contact information and choice of payment mode.

The server 110 then wirelessly receives the geo tagged and time stamped information from the mobile devices 100 of registered users / reporters via a receiving means 112. The received information is given to a collating means 114 adapted to collate the entire ensemble of information across various areas and topics. The collating means 114 is equipped to further classify the information for specific news categories.

In accordance with this invention, the collated and categorized information is stored in a first database 116. This stored information is utilized by a processing means 118. The processing means 118 includes a graphical display means which presents the collated information in a map based format to an editors / administrators of the system. The map has a click based / touch screen based interface, where, the various registered users/ news reporters who contribute the news are shown location-wise on the map. On selecting any particular user / news reporter / location a list of information contributed by that user / location is generated. The processing means 110 has sensing means 122 adapted to sense the selection made by the editors / administrators on the map and accordingly retrieve the aggregated information provided by that user / location. This retrieved list is then screened by the editors / administrators who filter the information to ascertain whether the information will be published or not. The edited information is stored in a second database 126 and transferred to the appropriate sources including print media, broadcasting channel and a portal for publication via a transfer means 128.

The users / news reporters are given incentives if the information contributed by them is published; this event is tracked by the first billing means 130. The first billing means 130 include a payment gateway platform which authorizes the payment to the user if the information is published. In accordance with this invention, the first billing means 130 will generate the report of the work done by a user / news reporter and based upon this report the billing means 130 calculates the money to be paid to the users/ news reporters via the payment gateway platform. Typically, payment is done in two ways; either the user/ news reporters can get his/her tie up amount as a talk time in his/her phone or as cash in his/her account or in hand. For direct credit in his/her account, the user has to provide his/her account number at the time of registration.

In accordance with another embodiment of this invention, there is provided an advertisement platform for providing advertisements which will be inserted in the information provided by the mobile devices, thereby sharing the cost of call charges for transfer of news reports to the newspaper. Various business entities, which want to advertise on this platform, can avail of the advertisement module. These advertisements will serve the advertiser since they can target a significantly larger accuracy and success ratio as the location and demographic information of the customer base is available. Further, this system can be tuned dynamic as customer profiling can be increased over a period.

The advertisement module (not shown in the figures) includes an interface for receiving advertisements from advertisers and based on the type of information selecting an advertisement via a selection means. Typically, selection is based on the type of information, for instance, voice and video information can have an initial clip, which promotes the advertiser. Text information can have a textual display of advertisement. The selected advertisement is merged with the edited information and sent for publication. The advertiser is billed via a second billing means in the advertisement module for the advertisements published with the information.

In accordance with the present invention, the system includes a packet data based interactive multimedia response module at the client and the server side to build a voice guided data acquisition and publication system. Such systems allow ease of use for the end consumer. These systems are characterized by the delegation of computing and interactivity to the mobile device thereby reinforcing the architecture of a scalable communication system) can also have advertisement components embedded into them.

In accordance with another embodiment of this invention, there is provided a client application and server adapted to be provided for every news company. The server or web console will be at the company's end on multiple computers. The client application will be clubbed along with the reporter's mobile handset.

Another use of this application could be for dissemination of information to rural people who are not literate or who do not get newspapers in their areas regularly. If there is some news in the news channel, which is relevant for people but is in text, format then that can be converted into voice form automatically, using a text-to-speech engine (TTS).

Anybody with a mobile is equipped to use the system of this invention. Any events or incidents that occur at places geographically closer to them (news from other villages nearby, district or taluka news) could reach them through messages posted by a local person on the application's news channel.

Since these posts can be in a video^", image or voice format, it would facilitate villagers to easily comprehend the news. These posts are geo-tagged; the villagers could also know the location of the incident.

In accordance with the present invention, there is provided a method for acquisition and publication of information, wherein the method comprising the following steps as seen in FIGURE 2:

• capturing multilingual multimedia information using mobile devices associated with users, 1000;

• time stamping and geo tagging the captured information, 1002;

• transmitting the information to an application server, 1004; • storing the transmitted information in a first database, 1006;

• segregating the information into different categories, 1008;

• generating a map based graphical display showing the location of the users and the corresponding information captured by them, 1010;

• selecting a particular location by clicking on the map, 1012;

• editing the information retrieved by clicking on a location on the map, 1014;

• storing the edited information in a second database, 1016;

• publishing the edited information, 1018; and

• computing the payment to be made to the user for providing the information, 1020.

TECHNICAL ADVANTAGES

The technical advantages of the present invention include in providing a mobile based information acquisition system for gathering news, local happenings, events and other information from geographically dispersed users and publishing the collated news to a print media / broadcasting channel / a portal for users to access.

The system enables illiterate / semi-literate and literate users alike to contribute the news from their locality in any format and language of their choice. The users can capture a video clip, record the happening in their voice, click pictures and send the piece of information via a client application embedded in their mobile device to a server for publishing. The client device geo tags the captured multimedia information before sending to the server. The geo tags are used by the server to generate location based maps which graphically show locations of users and the aggregated content provided by them. On clicking on the location of the user on the map, an administrator / publisher can access all the information/news contributed by a particular user. Thus, the publishers do not have to depend upon their journalists for getting latest up to date news and status reports. This also enables the publishers to increase the coverage of the news as now news/ issues from even the rural, distant, low connectivity areas can be captured and published.

Moreover, this system acts as a revenue generating means for the users as they get monetary rewards for contributing the news. The monetary rewards comprise talk time for the mobile device equivalent to the money earned, direct debit of the money to the users account or any other conventional methods of payment. Thus, encouraging users to share their local• happenings and receiving incentives for the same.

Additionally, the system enables advertisers to provide advertisements which can be inserted in the captured information and published. These advertisements will be useful as these will reach even the local people and thus provide the advertisers with a large customer base for promotion of their product.

While considerable emphasis has been placed herein on the components and component parts of 'the preferred embodiments, it will be appreciated that many embodiments can be made and that many changes can be made in the preferred embodiments without departing from the principles of the invention. These and other changes in the preferred embodiment as well as other embodiments of the invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the disclosure herein, whereby it is to be distinctly understood that the foregoing descriptive matter is to be interpreted merely as illustrative of the invention and not as a limitation.

Claims

CLAIMS:

1. A distributed system for acquisition and publication of information, said system comprising:

• mobile devices having a client application embedded in each one of them, said client application having:

• means adapted to capture multilingual multimedia information from users;

• means adapted to geo tag and time stamp the captured information;

• communication means adapted to send the geo tagged and time stamped information;

• a server remotely located and co-operating with said mobile devices, said server having:

• receiving means adapted to receive said geo tagged and time stamped information sent from said mobile devices;

• a first database to store the collated information as per their categories;

• processing means co-operating with said first database, having:

graphical display means adapted to generate a map showing location-wise aggregated information provided by users for selective viewing; - sensing means adapted to sense a selection made on said map and provide the corresponding aggregated information and user details; and

- editing means adapted to selectively edit and filter said information;

• a second database to store the edited information;

• transfer means co-operating with said second database adapted to transfer said edited information for publication; and

• first billing means adapted to compute a payment amount for each of the users based on the publication of the information.

2. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said communication means is adapted to send said geo tagged and time stamped information using communication formats including text message, multimedia message, data call, voice call and data packet.

3. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said client application includes composition means adapted to merge different formats of captured multimedia content to create information to be sent to said server.

4. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said server includes registration means adapted to register user details including demographic data, contact information and mode of payment preference data with said server.

5. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said transfer means is adapted to transfer said edited information for publication to print media.

6. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said transfer means is adapted to transfer said edited information for publication to a broadcasting channel.

7. The system as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said transfer means is adapted to transfer said edited information for publication to a portal.

8. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said billing means includes a payment gateway platform adapted to facilitate, the payment of the i

computed payment amount to the respective users based on their selected mode of payment.

9. The system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said server includes an advertisement module comprising:

• an interface for receiving advertisements from advertisers;

• advertisement selection means adapted to select advertisements based on the type and category of information; • merging means adapted to merge the selected advertisement with the information for publication; and

10. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said system comprises a packet based interactive multimedia response module at the client and the server side adapted to build a voice guided information acquisition and publication system.

11.A method for acquisition and publication of information, said method comprising the following steps:

• capturing multilingual multimedia information using mobile devices associated with users;

• time stamping and geo tagging said captured information;

• transmitting the information to an application server;

• storing the transmitted information in a first database;

• segregating the information into different categories;

• selecting a particular location on the map;

• editing the information retrieved from the selection on the map;

• storing the edited information in a second database;

• publishing the edited information; and • computing the payment to be made to the user for providing the information.

12. The method as claimed in claim 11, wherein the step of editing the information includes the steps of screening the retrieved information and filtering the information for publication.