Methods and apparatuses for delivery of advice to mobile/wireless devices
View Patent ↗Methods and apparatuses to connect consumers to diverse advice sources of experts. In one embodiment, a method includes: providing a list of experts to a mobile device via a wireless media channel for presentation to a consumer; responsive to receiving from the mobile device a selection of one expert from the list of experts, initiating a telephonic connection between the expert and the consumer prior to the consumer submitting a question for advice. In one example, the list includes information to indicate whether one or more of the experts are individually available to telephonically communicate with the consumer at a time when the list is provided to the consumer. In one example, initiating the telephonic connection includes: initiating a first call to the consumer; initiating a second call to the expert; and joining the first and second calls to make the telephonic connection between the expert and the consumer.
1. A method, comprising:
providing a list of experts of diverse advice sources to a mobile device via a wireless media channel for presentation to a consumer, the list comprising:
information to indicate whether one or more of the experts are individually available to telephonically communicate with the consumer at a time when the list is provided to the consumer, and
telephonic references of a phone router assigned to the experts, the telephonic references selectable to cause the mobile device to call the phone router using the telephonic references, each of the telephonic references comprising an encoded target phone number associated with additional information that includes an identification of the wireless media channel used to deliver the list of experts to the mobile device; and
responsive to the phone router receiving a phone call from the mobile device using one telephonic reference of the telephonic references of the phone router assigned to an expert selected from the list of experts, determining a telephonic reference of the expert, decoding, by the phone router, the encoded target phone number to retrieve a target phone number of the expert, and initiating a telephonic connection to the expert, by the phone router, using the telephonic reference of the expert to connect the phone call from the consumer to the target phone number of the expert.
2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
joining the phone call from the mobile phone and the telephonic connection to connect the expert and the consumer.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the mobile device comprises a cellular phone.
4. The method of claim 3 , wherein said providing further comprises:
performing text-to-speech on the list.
5. The method of claim 2 , wherein the media channel comprises one of:
a web-based channel;
a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) channel;
a custom client-server channel over a wireless communication link; and
a Short Message Service (SMS) based channel.
6. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:
determining a location of the mobile device;
wherein the list is provided to the mobile device, via the wireless media channel, according to the location of the mobile device.
7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the determining of the location of the mobile device comprises determining the location of the mobile device by one of:
an Automatic Number Identification (ANI) based location determination system;
a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver coupled to the mobile device; and
a cellular communication system.
8. The method of claim 1 , wherein said providing comprises transmitting wirelessly the list in response to a search submitted from the mobile device.
9. The method of claim 8 , wherein a request for the search is received as a voice input at the mobile device;
the method further comprises:
generating text for the search from the voice input using a speech recognition technique.
10. The method of claim 1 , wherein said providing comprises transmitting wirelessly the list to the mobile device in response to determining a location of the mobile device.
11. The method of claim 1 , wherein said providing is in response to the mobile device entering into a predefined district;
the list is based at least partially on a current location of the mobile device; and
the list is provided without an explicit user request from the mobile device.
12. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
prompting the consumer to provide a quality score for the expert.
13. The method of claim 1 , wherein the list comprises information to individually indicate whether each of the experts is available to telephonically communicate with the consumer at a time when the list is provided to the consumer.
14. The method of claim 1 , wherein the list comprises one of:
an avatar representation for each of the experts;
certification information for each of the experts;
a compensation rate for each of the experts; and
a quality score provided by previous consumers of the experts.
15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the list is provided in response to one of:
a selection of a category of experts; and
a keyword search to match expert characteristics.
16. The method of claim 1 , wherein the telephonic connection comprises at least one of:
an internet telephony connection;
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP); and
a video connection.
17. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
monitoring how long the telephonic connection is maintained between the expert and the consumer;
wherein the consumer is charged based upon how long the telephonic connection is maintained.
18. A non-transitory machine readable medium containing instructions that when executed by a processor computer system, cause the computer system to:
provide a list of experts of diverse advice sources to a mobile device via a wireless media channel for presentation to a consumer, the list comprising:
information to indicate whether one or more of the experts are individually available to telephonically communicate with the consumer at a time when the list is provided to the consumer, and
telephonic references of a phone router assigned to the experts, the telephonic references selectable to cause the mobile device to call the phone router using the telephonic references, each of the telephonic references comprising an encoded target phone number associated with additional information that includes an identification of the wireless media channel used to deliver the list of experts to the mobile device; and
responsive to the phone router receiving a phone call from the mobile device using one telephonic reference of the telephonic references of the phone router assigned to an expert selected from the list of experts, determining a telephonic reference of the expert, decoding, by the phone router, the encoded target phone number to retrieve a target phone number of the expert, and initiating a telephonic connection to the expert, by the phone router, using the telephonic reference of the expert to connect the phone call from the consumer to the target phone number of the expert.
19. A system, comprising:
a phone router; and
a computer server to provide a list of experts of diverse advice sources to a mobile device via a wireless media channel for presentation to a consumer, the list comprising:
telephonic references of a phone router assigned to the experts, the telephonic references selectable to cause the mobile device to call the phone router using the telephonic references, each of the telephonic references comprising an encoded target phone number associated with additional information that includes an identification of the wireless media channel used to deliver the list of experts to the mobile device; and
the phone router configured to, responsive to receiving a phone call from the mobile device using one telephonic reference of the telephonic references of the phone router assigned to an expert selected from the list of experts, determine a telephonic reference of the expert, decode the encoded target phone number to retrieve a target phone number of the expert, and initiate a telephonic connection to the expert using the telephonic reference of the expert to connect the phone call from the consumer to the target phone number of the expert.