Abstract: A method and apparatus for coordinating and managing renting of items among multiple parties. Participants of the system interact with others at a central server connected via a communications network. According to an embodiment, each participant plays a role of a potential lender, a potential renter, or both. As the items of a participant get rented more, the system rewards him so that he is able to rent more himself. In a certain embodiment, a point value system is used. The server computer maintains all required information as to which items are currently for rent (e.g., offers) and which items are currently being requested (e.g., bids), as well as all data pertinent to rentable items and participants. A rental transaction occurs when a certain preset criterion is met, and point values are adjusted at the beginning, at the end and/or in the middle of the rental period.

Abstract: A data processing system and method of presenting data on a graphical user interface. A dropdown widget with multiple lists is provided. According to an embodiment, items are grouped into multiple lists, and the lists are presented in an alternating or cyclic fashion in response to a user input. In a certain embodiment, a particular list may be selected for display by choosing the corresponding button on a widget. In some cases, multiple lists may be displayed at the same time. The present invention enables the user to select one or more items from mutually exclusive or hierarchically organized lists.

Abstract: A method, a system, and an apparatus for storing, retrieving, and sharing business or personal contact information on one or more servers on a computer network. A set of contact information (e.g., for a single individual) is given an identity, called contact entity, and it is managed through the system-wide unique identifier. Same contact entity is shared by one or more users with proper permission settings in the system. Contact entities can be searched and retrieved based on degrees of separations or other criteria. The social networking relationship may be established through use of certain electronic or physical tokens. In one embodiment, a business card is used to define a contact entity and/or it is used as (a medium for transmitting) a networking/connecting token.

Abstract: A method for designing a keyboard for efficient data entry. A user inputs data from a predefined set of characters such as letters or symbols on an input device by pressing one or more keys, in a sequential fashion, for each character. Based on the frequency of occurrence for each character, a prefix-free coding is used to generate an optimal or near-optimal key sequence mapping for the given character set. In one exemplary embodiment, eight to twelve keys from a phone keypad are used to generate English alphabets, which substantially reduces the average number of keystrokes per character. The present invention enables the user to efficiently input typical data from a given probability distribution of characters using a limited number of keys.