Abstract: An electronic commerce system has a kit creation module for creating a customizable project kit that is publicly available on-line and a kit buying module for facilitating purchase of a project kit. The system provides automatic substitution of unavailable products or customization of kits by the kit buyers to reflect taste or buyer needs while making sure that selected products fit the intended purpose of the project. The system also may have an assisted products exploration and similar products search capability facilitating specification of customizations available for the project during the kit creation as well as selection of customization options during the kit buying. The system may enable multiple contributors collaborating on a kit, as well as making kit variants. The system may also provide an ability to browse collection of projects, project kits and project kit variants.

Abstract: A method and system for creating interactive guides and information exchange services for gathering events that includes receiving input from a user via a communication device. The input provided by the user is processed. Requested information is delivered to the user and other parties and requested user actions are performed.

Abstract: A method of performing and delivering analysis of an activity includes receiving input from a user via a communication device. The input provided by the user is processed. Analysis information of the activity is generated based on the input provided by the user. The analysis information of the activity is provided to a requester.

Abstract: User provided product configurations are identified and memorized along with their corresponding configuration information such as constraints and incompatibilities. The next time that configuration is provided by a user, the corresponding configuration information can be retrieved from memory so that a configuration engine will not need to be accessed. Retrieving the corresponding configuration information from memory as opposed to recomputing them with a configuration tool requires less time and avoids tying-up scarce configuration resources. Factors such as frequency and recentness can be considered in determining which configurations to memorize. Each time a particular configuration is provided, a counter associated with that configuration is incremented. Thus, within any given period of time, the number of times that particular configuration has been selected can be determined. Long-term frequency counts can track the most selected product configuration over a longer period of time.