A switching system (100) for the electronic presentment and payment of bills between a Consumer and a Biller. The system includes an open, interoperable switching network (115) for routing bill summary information between a Biller (105) and a Consumer (125). Bill summary files are generated by a Bill Service Provider (110). Consumer Service Providers (120) poll the Bill Service Providers (110) thr...

In the present price comparison and shopping method disclosed in Fig. 2, products are respectively assigned unique product codes in a database. The operator of the database is an intermediary between mail order vendors and consumers. Participating vendors are assigned respective unique vendor numbers by the database operator. The vendors upload pricing information to the database for the products ...

An electronic donor directed charitable donation system designed specifically for the WWW/Internet whereby donors can direct the disposition of donations. Participating charitable institutions can identify goods and services needed and donors can donate money to be applied for those specific needs by the institutions. The system also provides an aggregation of participating merchants that provide ...

A method for conducting a contest using a network. A selected article of commerce is identified to a plurality of users remotely disposed at user locations on the network which bears an indicia encoding an identification code which corresponds to the selected article in accordance with an extrinsic standard. An unvalidated entry message packet is then received at a reference location which was tra...

The present invention provides methods and apparatus for delivering a physical item such that an indirect address code (IAC) (102) is added to a physical item (112), subsequently evaluated into a deliverable address (118), and associated to the item to enable in delivery of the item. An efficient and secure method of delivery of a physical item is thereby achieved.; L'invention porte sur des procé...

A new form of security designated the proxy asset provides risk management capabilities, such as liquid interests in illiquid assets and economic indicators, without the deficiencies associated with other types of financial instruments. A proxy assets set is defined to respond to one or more indices. Each proxy asset has a share value and a number of shares. The proxy assets have a prox y assets s...

A method and apparatus (100, 200, 300) for usage-based price planning is disclosed. A Price plan (310) for services is established according to how the services are used (235). Charges are calculated according to the price plan (310) as applied to the actual usage (340). The apparatus (100, 200, 300) is used by network service providers (NSPs) (130, 230) and Internet service providers (ISPs) (130,...

A novel approach for generating and updating rules allows non-technical users to create and modify rules. A rules generation system includes a rules engineer interface, user interfaces and a rules generator. The rules engineer interface is an interface through which a rules engineer, such as rules engineer, may generate templates. Templates contain data that define rule "templates" that in turn sp...

A computer operation is provided to automatically compute (Fig. 1) a pixel region associated with a geometric object, or approximation of the geometric object, in a graphical image file. The pixel region may be made pointer-sensitive and automatically designated with an identifier according to a particular numbering convention. Clicking on the object calls up information with an item that object r...

Processing transactions involving participants that do not support the same currency generally involves incrementing and decrementing currencies associated with the participants. This allows the participants to participate in transactions where they would not ordinarily be able to do so. A request is received from a first participant to process a transaction using a first currency that is not reco...

The invention relates to a method for transferring a digital payment order from a first terminal device to a second terminal device, and for saving the payment order on a payment order server. In the method, the request for the aforementioned payment order is sent from the aforementioned first terminal device (MSA) to the aforementioned payment order server (SMS); in response to the aforementioned...

Zahlungskarte (1) für den elektronischen Geldverkehr in Form eines Flächengebildes, das einen Identifikationscode (8) einer Zugriffsberechtigung für einen vorausbezahlten Geldbetrag trägt und der Identifikationscode (8) durch eine Markierung verdeckt ist, die zur Sichtbarmachung des Identifikationscodes (8) vor Inbenutzungnahme der Zahlungskarte (1) erkennbar irreversibel zerstörbar ist.; The inve...

A distributed software program allows for creating and providing presentation packages of real properties. It comprises a mechanism for uploading pictures to the servers (112), a sketching program (102) that is stored in servers but can be started from client computers, a mechanism to convert sketching results to presentation and deploy them to appropriate locations, and a mechanism to transmit th...

The invention relates to a method and a device for recording an information signal (10) in a phase change layer of a recording medium. A mark is recorded by a sequence (13) of write pulses and previous marks between the marks to be recorded are erased by a sequence of erase pulses (14). The bias power level (191) between the erase pulses is made dependent on the recording speed, thus obtaining low...

Methods and apparatus for providing a custom golf club fitting system comprising a computer interface for receiving a user selection of a predetermined golf club-fitting parameters. The system may include a memory or storage device for storing the user selection and baseline values for predetermined parameters. The user interface may further include representative images of a golf club and/or play...

L'invention concerne un système d'achat groupé géré par ordinateur qui forme un réseau de communication informatisé d'acheteurs et de vendeurs, et permettant de traiter des offres faites par des vendeurs en vue d'obtenir une commande d'achat provenant de groupes d'acheteurs qui partagent une demande similaire d'achat pour un produit ou un service. Le système reçoit des demandes d'achat provenant d...

The present invention resolves the problems associated with traditionally distinct media-based systems (100) by providing an integrated solution, which is medium independent and has the capability of interfacing with various types of communication systems (350). In particular, the present invention provides a simple interface via a selection transceiver (330) for the user to interact with traditio...

L'invention concerne un système et un procédé informatiques sur l'Internet consistant à fournir et à distribuer des services relatifs à des opérations de vente complexes, notamment dans l'immobilier, les assurances et autres domaines à transactions multicomposées. La transaction immobilière classique est une opération relativement complexe qui exige de la part de nombreuses parties qu'elles apport...

L'invention concerne un système et un procédé, permettant de fournir des données d'analyse à au moins un instrument financier, sur un dispositif de sortie. Des données de recommandation et des données financières sont d'abord reçues par un premier agencement du système. Les données de recommandation indiquent les informations d'évaluation émises par au moins une institution financière, pour l'inst...