Abstract: An information offering system stores information on products and services along with attributes describing these products and services. Individual users are allowed to automatically register information on their products and services with the information offering system. By this method, the information offering system advertises products and services. Because the registration is done automatically by each offeror of a service or product, the efforts of a central administrator entering this information becomes unnecessary, thus making it possible to advertise more products and services efficiently.

Abstract: Light from an EL backlight is used effectively without a condensing unit such as a lens sheet. A liquid crystal display includes a liquid crystal display panel provided with multiple openings allowing adjustable in light transference quantity and an EL backlight being an approximate size of the liquid crystal display panel and irradiating the liquid crystal display panel from the back. Concave luminous parts respectively corresponding to the openings are formed in a luminous layer of the EL backlight. Light generated in the concave luminous part is repeatedly reflected by an inner wall of the concave luminous part and then goes out along the central axis of the concave luminous part, therefore, the light has a strong directivity to the opening corresponding to the concave luminous part.

Abstract: A lottery on a network like the Internet can be more easily attained by preventing impersonation and validating participation. In a preferred embodiment, the opportunity to participate in the lottery is a reward for viewing an advertisement. When the advertisement is viewed a lottery ticket issuing number is displayed as an image file on the browser of the user viewing the advertisement. The image file is sent from the server providing the lottery service to the browser with HTML source to display the number. The image file on the lottery server is deleted after being sent, so that if the user requests re-display of the ticket issuing number display, the number cannot be obtained. The lottery server maintains a database of date and time stamped. requests for lottery ticket issuing numbers to prevent multiple requests during a single session. The user is requested to input the number displayed by the browser to find out whether it is a winning number.

Abstract: This invention relates to a transaction processing system including a host computer (1), a transaction device (2), a first customer card (3) and a second customer card (4). The first card (3) and the second card (4) directly transfer information representing monetary values between them on the basis of signals verifying a transaction processing received from the host computer (1) through the transaction device (2). When the information representing the monetary values are exchanged between the first card (3) and the second card (4), the host computer (1) updates the balance of the account stored in the host computer (1).