Techniques for transmitting personal data and metadata among computing devices

Abstract

Personal data services, such as a set of Web services, are enabled that allow a user to enter personal metadata information, e.g., about likely people and/or events to be targets of a camera capture event. Then, when a user's computing device acquires such metadata, e.g., via embedded Web services software, an intelligent user interface allows the user to enter whether any of such personal metadata information pertains to any personal data, such as a video, an audio file or an image, which is captured by the user's computing device. The personal data including the metadata information can be automatically uploaded via one or more wired and/or wireless networks to a device that hosts a personal data service, which stores the personal data and associated metadata, providing for effective means to access and manage a user's personal data store. The services of the invention also enable a system for identifying unknown or new metadata where existing metadata is not sufficient to describe a video, audio or image capture event. In addition, a gateway is provided that enables transfer of content from the Web services to other media service providers, such as a cable or television over Internet Protocol ('TVoIP') video or other video on demand ('VOD') service.