Enhanced Portable Navigation Device (16-Sep-2009)
A personal navigation device (PND) is provided for assisting with dynamic management of schedules of appointments, meetings, and other activities. The PND monitors communications and other information sources to extract information (e.g., location information) associated with particular meetings. Using the information obtained, the PND can automatically provide suggestions to the user of the PND for generating a meeting schedule and for updating and/or altering the user’s schedule and driving routes. In some implementations, the PND can automatically generate and transmit communications (e.g., emails, text messages, etc.) to meeting participants for various reasons such as, for example, to update meeting details, to change or cancel meetings, to provide information to be used during meetings, and to inform them of changes in the user’s status with respect to a meeting.
enhanced Portable Navigation Device
Conventional portable navigation devices (PNDs) provide driving directions, maps, and other useful functions, but offer limited usefulness in dynamic route planning. The invention is an intelligent PND that is configured to address many of the challenges faced by mobile users who frequently commute between locations. These users can include anyone such as private users, field salespeople, traveling artists, and repairpersons. Scheduling assistance provided by the PND includes functions such as helping to set up remote meetings, producing timely reminders for meetings, automatic-address extraction from messages for navigation, and pre- and post- meeting communications.
Figure 1 illustrates an exemplary operating environment for various implementations of an intelligent portable navigation device (PND) as described herein. As illustrated, the exemplary operating environment includes a PND 100 that can be communicatively coupled to a navigation service 120 by way of a network 115. The network 115 can be a local area network (LAN), a wireless (mobile) network, or a wide area network (WAN) such as, for example, the Internet. The PND 100 is a computing device that can perform various functions related to navigation. As with conventional PNDs, the PND 100 can be integrated with an automobile or can be a stand-alone portable device.
According to various implementations of the invention, the PND 100 can provide intelligent navigation, planning, and scheduling management tasks to assist a user that must travel from one place to another. For example, the PND 100 can be configured to provide scheduling suggestions for appointments, update travel plans, infer future travel plans and changes to current travel plans based on different types of information, generate automatic communications based on various factors, and a number of other navigation-related tasks.
The PND 100 can include various types of hardware components such as a display device, input devices, speakers, a microphone, communication ports, and the like. As is known in the art, input devices can include a touch-screen display, a keyboard, a mouse, a track-ball, a microphone, or any other device suitable for allowing a user to provide input to the PND 100. As illustrated in Figure 1, the PND 100 can also include a number of software components as well. Exemplary software components can include, as shown in Figure 1, a synchronizer 102, data miners 104, a data store 106, a map application 108, and an analysis module 110. In addition to any number of other software and/or firmware components not illustrated in Figure 1, the PND 100 can include a user interface (UI) 112 that facilitates a user’s interaction with various hardware and software components of the PND 100.
In some implementations, any comb...
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