In today's increasingly populated, yet very busy world, there is a growing
need to create community and enable an efficient flow of information
through shared interactions; such as matching, alerting, gaming, and
commerce. Interactions can be facilitated by advancing technology and the
proliferation of wireless devices. Wireless devices and applications can
facilitate the matching of people based on similar characteristics, token
and data exchanges for gaming situations, or the sending of alerts to
warn those entering hazardous areas. With the advent of inexpensive radio
frequency (RF) chips and wireless communication standards of many forms,
microprocessors (and computing ASICs), and flash memory embedded in many
common devices, it is possible to increase the amount of automatic person
to person interaction as people pass within RF range of the devices they
carry with them or which may reside in fixed locations. The utility of
the present invention will describe an application and system whereby
current and future portable devices; such as mobile phones, personal
digital assistants, pagers, AM/FM radios, music players, key fobs,
watches, video playback devices, etc. will seamlessly interact to share
information. The utility to the user is derived from systems' ability to
match, alert, transact commerce and gaming within a system requiring
little to no user intervention beyond the initial configuration. It is
anticipated that with the technology described within the current
invention: two people will be able to meet in a public setting as they
pass each other because they have shared commonalities; individuals will
be alerted to hazardous circumstances, perhaps a convicted sex offender
in the area, construction zone, or approaching accident scene; groups of
people will enjoy gaming opportunities by playing virtual tag with
electronic tokens, until the winner is finally tagged; and users will be
able to purchase digital content, such as songs, videos, or other
streamed or broadcast media, by merely pressing a button on the receiving
device. The utility of the current invention will further describe the
application and systems which can be made available in a highly portable
device or embedded into a host of commercially available devices.