METHOD OF AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING ARBITRARILY DEFINED HIERARCHY MAPS DEPICTING RELATIVE GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

The present invention discloses a method of and apparatus for determining and presenting information about the location of one party relative to the location of another party. The location may be determined from information pertaining to an active session, such as a telephone connection. A centralized address-book contains information about the location of each party listed within the address-book. An arbitrary number of map hierarchies (ranging from 1-N) is defined. Each map hierarchy comprises a plurality of geographical maps each classified as having an equivalent granularity. Each map is associated with one or more entries in the address-book. As each level of map hierarchies increase, the granularity of the maps contained therein, decrease. The location information is presented as a series of maps with a varying level of granularity. The most appropriate map based on the relative locations of the parties is automatically selected. Additionally, any of the maps within the set of associated maps may be viewed. A privacy feature is provided that allows a party to selectively grant viewing permission to others and/or prevent others from viewing their location information.