KR100737430B1 - Method, system and web service for delivering digital content to a user - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention is directed to delivering digital content of content provider 110 to user 160. The present invention is based on the concept of using the user's user presence information in a digital content delivery mechanism to the user. The operation of delivering digital content is separated into two interoperable services, a content provider server of content provider 110 and a delivery provider server of delivery provider 120. The content provider server uses the delivery provider server to succeed in the delivery of the digital content to the particular user to receive. The request to deliver the digital content to the delivery provider server, or the delivery service's attempt to deliver the content, is made in accordance with user presence information indicating the likelihood of the user receiving the digital content.

Description

Method, system and web service for delivering digital content to a user}

The present invention relates to a method, system, and web service for delivering digital content of a content provider to a user.

In digital communications, it is desirable to be able to deliver digital content to users connected to the digital communications infrastructure. The requirement for successful delivery of digital content to a user is that the user must be connected to a particular communication infrastructure, i.e. the user must be "online". The request to deliver the digital content to the user may come from the user / other user or a third party's service / server.

For example, within mobile telephony, downloading custom ringtones to mobile phones is becoming increasingly popular. In addition, a mobile user may want to provide some ringtone to another user's mobile phone, such as a New Year's greeting, birthday or anniversary celebration, or simply a piece of music to be played once just for fun. In the near future, other types of digital content, such as photographs and various applications, will also be as popular as downloading ringtones on mobile phones.

The present invention is in no way limited to downloading or transmitting ringtones and photos to a mobile phone, but also relates to any web content transmission suitable for the user to receive via a fixed or wireless terminal selected by the user. It should be understood that this is only an interesting example of the invention.

Today, when a content provider wants to deliver digital content to a user, the content is usually sent immediately. The success of such delivery depends on the timing of the delivery, whether the user can receive at that time, and whether the receiving user is willing to use the content at that time. If the content provider did not receive an acknowledgment that the user received the content, the content would have to be sent again. This retransmission of content is likely to be performed many times until a confirmation message is received from the receiving user.

Thus, a problem with delivering digital content to a user is that the user may not be available when the delivery is attempted or the user may not want to receive the content. As a result, an additional problem arises: hardware and bandwidth resources must be repeatedly used frequently, ultimately to ensure that content delivery to the user is fulfilled.

It is an object of the present invention to improve the function of delivering digital content to users who can normally receive digital content.

According to the invention, this object is a method for delivering digital content of a content provider to a user according to independent claim 1, and a system for delivering digital content of a content provider to a user according to independent claim 13. Is achieved through.

The present invention is based on the concept of using the user's presence information in a digital content delivery mechanism to the user.

The invention is also based on the concept that a digital content delivery operation to a user is separated into two interaction services, a content service of a content provider and a delivery service of a delivery provider. The content service utilizes a delivery service to succeed in delivering digital content to a specific recipient user. Requests for delivery of digital content to a delivery service, or attempts of delivery services to deliver content, are made according to user presence information indicating the availability of the user receiving the digital content.

This provides the advantage that the delivery can be initiated when the user intended to receive is actually ready to receive the digital content, ie when the user is "online" connected to the communication infrastructure. The likelihood of successful delivery to the user is greatly increased. By knowing the user presence information for the user, there will be no risk of attempting to transmit digital content to the user when the user is unable to receive the content and thus no need to perform repeated delivery attempts. In this way, the hardware and bandwidth resources associated with the delivery of digital content will not be used unnecessarily except when actually delivering digital content. Thus, such as a central processing unit used to execute a delivery service, hardware that implements the delivery service and the bandwidth required for digital content transmission will be more economically available.

In addition, separating the operation of providing digital content to the user into a content service and a delivery service is desirable because it provides high modularity and flexibility. Such separation makes the scope of two different service brokers clear and allows them to cooperate with each other according to a set of rules that can be agreed upon. In this way, a service broker can specialize and optimize services as content services or delivery services in such a way that stakeholders specialize and optimize such content services or delivery services outside the digital world.

Basically, two methods may exist in using the user presence information according to the present invention.

According to one embodiment, user presence information is obtained by the content service before requesting delivery of the digital content to the delivery service. In this way, the content service will be able to know if the user is in a receiveable state before requesting content delivery.

According to another embodiment, the user presence information is obtained by the delivery service after a content delivery request is received from the content service. In this way the delivery service will know if the user is in a receivable state before actually attempting to deliver the content. Preferably, the delivery service waits for time for delivery to occur before acquiring user presence information. This delivery time may be a point in time specified upon the initial request to deliver the content to the user, or may be a point in time preferred by the receiving user as described below.

Before requesting user presence information for the user from the user presence service, the user profile / preference service is used to request the user's delivery preferences, and then the user's user according to the received user's delivery preferences. Presence information request is preferably made. This enables the acquisition of a user's preferred delivery time, etc. for digital content. This also enables the acquisition of the user's preferred communication infrastructure. Accordingly, enable the content service to request that the digital content be delivered to the user through the user's preferred point of view and / or the user's preferred communication path, or the delivery service through the user's preferred point of view and / or communication path. Enables the delivery of digital content to the user. Thus, the user can be supported for more customized delivery of digital content.

The content provider is responsible for the requested digital content delivery before requesting delivery of the content to the delivery service, or for delivery performed for that content after the content delivery has been confirmed by the delivery service to the content provider. Charge the parties. The concept of charging includes any conventional method for performing this charging, including any method based on the use of credit points (credit scores).

Thus, using the present invention, a content provider can provide a web service for digital content delivery to a variety of users, and can charge a fee for delivery and digital content itself to the party requesting such delivery.

The above and further features and advantages of the invention will be more fully understood from the following description of several exemplary embodiments of the invention. As will be appreciated, when considering the general teachings described herein and the following detailed description, those skilled in the art will recognize that various modifications, changes, and various combinations of the specifications derived within the concept and scope of the present invention will become apparent. .

Exemplary embodiments of the invention will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Figure 1 schematically illustrates an exemplary system and its overall operation in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 illustrates a sequence diagram of schematic interoperability between components in the system of FIG. 1 in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present invention. FIG.

3 illustrates another sequence diagram of schematic interoperability between components in the system of FIG. 1 in accordance with another exemplary embodiment of the present invention.

4 illustrates another sequence diagram of schematic interactions between components in the system of FIG. 1 in accordance with another exemplary embodiment of the present invention.

With reference to FIG. 1, one exemplary embodiment of the present invention will now be described. 1 illustrates a system for delivering digital content of a content provider to a user. The system includes a content provider server 110 that performs a content service, a delivery provider server 120 that performs a delivery service, a user presence service server 130, and a user profile / preference service server 140. All of the servers are connected to the Internet 100. All of these servers are implemented through the state of the art hardware known to those skilled in the art.

The delivery service operation of the content service of the content provider server 110 and the delivery provider server 120 may be performed in accordance with the present invention by utilizing the user presence service server 130 and the user profile / preferred service server 140 together. To provide a web service for delivering the digital content of the content provider server 110 to the user. As such, the content provider server 110 and delivery service server 120 execute computer instructions that control the servers and the provision services of those servers to be operated in accordance with the present invention. The operation will be described later below. Although content provider server 130 and delivery provider server 120 are shown as different entities in FIG. 1, those skilled in the art can still implement them via one and the same hardware while still separating content and delivery services. You will know.

The user presence service server 130 is the best available server that provides the best available services. Accordingly, the basic operation and function will be well known to those skilled in the art. Typically, the user presence service server 130 handles user presence information about different users. This includes receiving an update for presence information of specific users, servicing a request for presence information about specific users, and servicing a subscription for receiving presence information about specific users. By reserving user presence information for a particular user, a reservation request by this service is notified when there is a change in the presence information of that user, that is, when the user goes "online" or "offline".

The user presence service server 130 is preferably implemented as a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) server, that is, a server that uses the SIP protocol for signaling communication. The SIP protocol and the executables it supports are well known to those skilled in the art. Naturally, the SIP presence server 130 implies that the terminals using the service / application and the services provided by the SIP presence server 130 will include SIP clients capable of performing signal communication using the SIP protocol.

The user profile / preference service server 140 manages the profile / preferences of individual users. One user can store his / her profile / preferences on the server for later retrieval by any application or other user. Profiles / preferences may include various kinds of information such as user preferred networks, available bandwidth, terminal type / class, and the like.

1 also includes a first user 150 and a second user 160. Both first and second users are provided with means for connecting to the Internet, such as wireless terminals 151, 161 or fixed computers 152, 162. Typically, users are connected to the Internet via some type of intermediary network 153, 163. If the user has a mobile phone with associated radio transceiver circuitry or a wireless terminal such as a personal digital assistant (PDA) or laptop, the intermediate network is a radio communication network such as a GSM system (Global System for Mobile communications). . If the user uses a fixed computer, the intermediary network may be a public switched telephone network (PSTN) or some other fixed network.

With continued reference to FIG. 1, examples of various modes of operation according to embodiments of the present invention will now be described. In these example embodiments, it is the first user requesting delivery of digital content to the second user. In FIG. 1, the first user 150 is depicted as a requester for the delivery of digital content, but the request is sent to the content provider server 110 from any party who wishes to provide digital content to the second user 160. You should know that you can receive. Thus, the request may be generated from an application on another server or from the user himself, i.e., the second user 160, to receive.

The operation starts when the content provider server 110 receives (1) a request from the first user 150 to deliver specific digital content to a particular user, which in this case is the second user 160. The content service of the content provider server 110 then requests the preference of the second user 160 from the (2) user profile / preference service server 140. In response, the content service will (3) receive a profile / preference of the second user 160, such as a preferred reception time.

The content service will then request (4) user presence information of the second user 160 from the user presence service server 130 according to the received profile / preferences. For example, if the received profile / preference included the user's preferred reception time of the user 160, the content service would wait until its occurrence before requesting user presence information. However, this wait may be the result when the initial request received by the content service to deliver the specific digital content includes instructions from the requesting party for a predetermined delivery time of the content. If the user presence service server 130 responds (5) that the user 160 is not currently receivable, the content service may request a reservation of user presence information associated with the user 160, and ultimately the user presence service may (5) The content service will be notified that the second user 160 may be connected or is "online".

When the content service is given information that the second user 160 to which digital content is to be transmitted is receivable, the content service (6) delivers on the delivery provider server 120 to deliver the digital content to the second user 160. Request a service. In response, the delivery service (7) delivers the digital content to the second user 160.

If the second user is set to confirm to the delivery service that (8) the digital content has been received, then the delivery service can (9) inform the content service of the successful delivery. The content service can then (10) charge the party who initially requested the delivery of the digital content for the fulfilled services. Alternatively, this step of charging the requesting party may take place prior to the performance of the service, or may be based on what services are requested by the party.

Steps (2)-(5) are indicated by dashed arrows because the steps may be initiated by the delivery service as an alternative to being initiated by the content service. Thus, when initiated by the delivery service, there are steps (61)-(64), also indicated by dashed arrows, in operation, not steps (2)-(5). In either case, the user profile / preference service server will be asked for the user's profile / preference (step 2 or 61) and answer the profile / preference (step 3 or 62). Based on the received profile / preferences, the user presence service / server will be asked for user presence information (step 4 or 63) and respond with that information (step 5 or 64).

FIG. 2 illustrates the interoperation between components in the network of FIG. 1 according to an embodiment of the present invention. Referring to the signal flow shown in FIG. 2, the process involving the components of FIG. 1 is as follows (where reference numbers differ from those used in FIG. 1):

1. The content provider server is asked to transmit some specific digital content to a specific user at a given delivery time. The content service requests the delivery service to deliver that particular digital content (identified by the parameter Content) to the specific user (identified by the parameter userId) at the requested delivery time (identified by the parameter TimeOfDelivery).

2. After receiving the request, the delivery service waits until the current time matches the requested delivery time.

3. When it is time or perhaps slightly earlier to deliver the digital content, the delivery service sends the message getUserDeliveryPref () to the user profile / preference service to request the user's profile / preference.

4. In response to the profile / preference request, the user profile / preference service will return the user's delivery preferences.

5. The delivery service now requests user presence information from the user presence service by sending a getUserPresence () message to the user presence service.

6. As a special case, if the user is currently "offline", a message indicating it is returned to the delivery service.

7. The delivery service then sends the message subscribeForUserPresence () to the user presence service to reserve the user presence information associated with that user.

8. Then, when the user is "online", he updates his presence by sending the message updatePresence ("online") to the user presence service accordingly.

9. In response to the newly updated user presence, the user presence service notifies the scheduled delivery service of the user's newly updated presence.

10. The delivery service now knows that the user is in a receivable state and delivers the digital content to that user.

3 illustrates an interaction between components in the network of FIG. 1 according to another embodiment of the present invention. Referring to the signal flow shown in FIG. 3, the process involving the components of FIG. 1 is as follows:

1. The first end user 150 selects the specific digital content to be delivered to the second user by requesting the content service to deliver the specific digital content to the second user 160.

2. The content service then charges the first end user for the requested service.

The following sequence of 3-12 is the same as the sequence of 1-10 of Figure 2 and will not be repeated here again. This sequence diagram shows that the digital content is eventually delivered to the second end user 160.

4 illustrates the interaction between components in the network of FIG. 1 in accordance with another embodiment of the present invention. Referring to the signal flow shown in FIG. 4, the process involving the components of FIG. 1 is as follows:

1. An end user, for example, the second user 160 of FIG. 1, requests a content providing server to deliver the content when some digital content becomes available. For example, the digital content may be content that has not yet occurred, such as future weather forecasts or audio or video productions that have not yet been distributed.

2. The content service waits until the content becomes ultimately available, such as when the content is to be made public electronically.

3. When the content becomes available, the content service sends a getUserDeliveryPref () message to the user profile / preference service to request that user's profile / preference.

4. In response to the profile / preference request, the user profile / preference service will return the user's delivery preferences.

5. The content service now requests the user presence information from the user presence service by sending a getUserPresence () message to the user presence service.

6. In the particular case where the user is currently "offline", a message indicating this is returned to the delivery service.

7. The content service then sends a subscribeForUserPresenceInfo () message to the user presence service to reserve the user presence information associated with that user.

8. The user then becomes "online" and accordingly updates his / her presence by sending updatePresence ("online") message to the user presence services.

9. In response to the existence of the updated user, the user presence service notifies the existence of the updated user to the reserved content service.

10. The content service now recognizes that the user is receivable, and accordingly requests the delivery service to deliver the specific digital content (identified by the parameter Content) to the particular user (identified by the parameter userId).

11. The delivery service delivers the requested content to the user.

12. The delivery service notifies the content service that the content has been delivered.

13. The Content Services charge a fee for services performed to the party who requested this delivery, for example the user to whom the Content has been delivered.

It is to be understood by those skilled in the art that the above description of various embodiments of the invention has been given by way of example only, and that there may be various modifications and variations that fall within the scope and spirit of the appended claims and the general teachings described herein. do.

Claims (23)

A method for delivering content to a user by a content provider server, the method comprising: Receiving, by the content provider server, a request to deliver specific digital content to a user; In response to receiving the request, the content provider server requesting a delivery provider server to deliver the digital content to the user; And In response to the request of the content provider server, the delivery provider server delivering the digital content to the user, The requesting or delivering step is performed when the user presence information associated with the user indicates that the user is capable of receiving the digital content, The user presence information may include requesting user presence information of the user from a user presence service server before the content provider server requests the digital content delivery to the delivery provider server; And receiving user presence information of the user as a response thereto, Prior to the step of requesting user presence information of the user from the user presence service server, Requesting the user's delivery preferences from a user profile / preference service server; And Receiving the delivery preferences of the user in response to the above step is preceded, Requesting presence information of the user is made according to the received delivery preferences of the user. delete 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the content service precedes the step of waiting for the content to be delivered prior to the step of requesting user presence information of the user from a user presence service server. Delivery method of the content. The method of claim 1, wherein the obtaining of the user presence information comprises: requesting, by the delivery provider server, user presence information of the user from a user presence service server after receiving a delivery request from a content provider server; And receiving the user presence information of the user as a response thereto. 5. The method of claim 4, wherein the delivery provider server delivers as specified in a request received from the content provider to deliver digital content to the user prior to requesting the user presence information of the user from the user presence service server. A method of delivering digital content, comprising the step of waiting for time. The method of claim 1, wherein the requesting presence information of the user comprises: Requesting a subscription of the user presence information of the user to the user presence service server. delete The method of claim 1, wherein the delivery preferences of the user include a preferred delivery time or a preferred communication path for the delivery. The method according to any one of claims 1, 3, 4, 5, and 8, before the content provider requests the delivery provider server to deliver the digital content in response to the received request to deliver the digital content. And charging a fee for the requested services to the party who requested delivery of the digital content. 9. A party as claimed in any of claims 1, 3, 4, 5 and 8, wherein the content provider has requested the delivery of the digital content in response to a notification from the delivery provider server that the digital content has been delivered to the user. And charging a fee for the fulfilled services. 9. A method according to any one of claims 1, 3, 4, 5 and 8, wherein the user presence information relates to a user presence in a radio communication network by a connected mobile communication terminal. A method of providing a web service, adapted to perform the steps of any one of claims 1, 3, 4, 5, and 8, in order to deliver digital content of a content provider to a user. A system for delivering digital content of a content provider to a user, comprising a content provider server for providing a content service and a delivery provider server for delivering a service and a user presence service server for providing user presence information. The content provider server is configured to receive a request to deliver specific digital content to a user, The content provider server is configured to request the delivery provider server to deliver the digital content to the user, The delivery provider server is configured to deliver the digital content to the user, The request operation of the content provider server or the delivery operation of the delivery provider server is performed when the user presence information indicates that the user can receive the digital content, The content provider server receives the user presence information of the user in response to and requesting the user presence information of the user from the user presence service server before requesting the delivery provider server to deliver the digital content. And configured to obtain user presence information. The content provider server or delivery provider server, requesting the user profile / preference service server's delivery preferences from the user presence service server before requesting the user presence information of the user; And in response thereto receive the delivery preferences of the user. Requesting user presence information of the user depends on the received delivery preferences of the user. delete The content delivery system of claim 13, wherein the content provider server is configured to wait until the content to be delivered is available before requesting user presence information of the user from the user presence service server. The method of claim 13, wherein after the delivery provider server receives the delivery request from the content provider server, requesting the user presence information of the user from the presence service and receiving the user presence information as a response thereto. And is configured to obtain user presence information. 17. The delivery system of claim 16, wherein said delivery provider server delivers digital content to said user as specified in a request received by said content provider before requesting said user presence information of said user from said user presence service server. Content delivery system, characterized in that set to wait for time. The method of any one of claims 13, 15, 16, and 17, wherein the request of the user presence information of the user comprises requesting a reservation for the user presence information of the user from the user presence service server. Content delivery system. delete 14. The content delivery system of claim 13 wherein the user's delivery preferences include a delivery preferred time or preferred communication path for delivery. 18. The system of any of claims 13, 15, 16, 17, wherein the content provider server responds to a request received to deliver the digital content, before requesting a delivery provider server to deliver the digital content. And charge a fee for the requested services to the party who requested the delivery of the content. The content provider server according to any one of claims 13, 15, 16, and 17, in response to a notification from the delivery provider server that the digital content has been delivered to the user, to the party who requested delivery of the digital content. And to charge for the fulfilled services. 18. A content delivery system according to any of claims 13, 15, 16 and 17, wherein the user presence information is related to the presence of the user in a radio communication network by a connected mobile communication terminal.

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