Abstract: Embodiments include a system, a device, an apparatus, a method, and a computer program product. A method of reporting influence on a person includes collecting data indicative of the person accessing electronic content over a computer network using the user computing device. The method also includes generating a user influence report by transforming the collected data into information indicative of events associatable with the person accessing the electronic content over a computer network using the user computing device. The method further includes transmitting data indicative of the user influence report via a network, the user influence report being receivable by a site operable to facilitate delivery of a benefit to an owner of the electronic content.

Abstract: The present invention generally relates to providing a status for one or more rewards using a format in a plurality of display formats. Portable device information associated with a portable device and acceptance point device information associated with an acceptance point device are determined. A status for one or more rewards is determined based on the portable device information and the acceptance point device information. A display format is then determined from a plurality of display formats based on the portable device information and acceptance point device information. A status is then displayed using the display format.

Abstract: An information providing device can provide an arrangement, in addition to conventional affiliate programs, through which affiliators or the like can get rewards. In the information providing device, when a user of a terminal device specifies an advertisement display area, a partial area including a position specified in the advertisement display area is specified such that a reward is paid to the user allocated to the partial area.

Abstract: A method and system of inspecting advertising contents of a keyword advertisement is provided. The method includes: crawling a Universal Resource Locator (URL) registered by an advertiser and extracting a URL keyword related to an advertisement site of the advertiser; extracting a target keyword from a plurality of advertisement information being registered in relation to the URL; and determining further inspection-required advertisement information through keyword comparison between the extracted URL keyword and the target keyword, the further inspection-required advertisement information having low relevance to the advertisement site.

Abstract: Disclosed is a card-less reward system providing buyers with promotional offers and engendering buyers to be rewarded by submitting receipts obtained from sellers. A method for rewarding the buyers comprises providing to a buyer a list of promotional offers for a product or service of at least one seller, allowing the buyer to accept electronically at least one promotional offer, and allowing the buyer to submit a digital image of at least one receipt obtained from the seller, which offered the accepted promotional offer. The method further comprises processing received image to retrieve purchase data, and rewarding the buyer in response to the retrieved purchase data.

Abstract: A remote station for tracking promotion of at least one group of products each of which bears a code that uniquely identifies each product in the group, wherein the remote station may be communicatively coupled to at least one user station is disclosed. The station includes a database resident at the remote station, wherein the database stores ones of the uniquely identifying codes that have been previously received from one or more user stations, and a database server, coupled to the database, that compares each new candidate code received from a given user station against the previously received codes stored in the database. The database server credits an account of a user associated with the given user station with a non-zero promotional credit only if such new candidate code received from the given user station was not previously stored in the database.

Abstract: Systems and techniques for providing feedback to improve accuracy of order assembly. Images corresponding to items comprising an order transaction are presented in a display. As items are moved to an order assembly area, each item is detected and an image corresponding to the item is removed from the display. If an incorrect item is detected, an error message identifying the incorrect item is displayed. Once all items comprising the order have been detected, a completion message is displayed.

Abstract: An action plan data structure for one or more selected rendered documents is described. The data structure contains information specifying an action to perform automatically in response to a text capture from any of the selected rendered documents.

Abstract: A package includes a plurality of a first absorbent product from a first product category and at least one sample of a second absorbent product from a second product category. The first absorbent product and the second absorbent product have a common characteristic. A transition aid has a first region including a depiction of the first absorbent product, a second region including a depiction of the second absorbent product, and a third region including at least one scale of reference comprising a depiction of the common characteristic of both the first absorbent product and the second absorbent product. The depiction of each of the first absorbent product and the second absorbent product is positioned along the scale to indicate the common characteristics of each product. A method for creating such a package is also disclosed.

Abstract: A system and method enabling people, including children, to shop on-line in a safe and secure manner. A gift card having a predetermined monetary value is purchased by a parent, friend or other third party. An account is established in conjunction with a web site with a starting account balance related to the predetermined monetary value. As a user shops at the web site, their account balance is reduced as items are purchased. One or more filters are used to limit the types of products that can be purchased on the web site. Such filters may relate to a user's age, gender, hobbies or interests, price range, media maturity rating, and so forth. In the preferred embodiment, consent information is received in conjunction the COPPA (Child Online Privacy Protection Act) or other applicable law(s). The consent information includes usage options, opt-out provisions, child master records information, etc. The method further includes the step of funding the account by a third party.

Abstract: A method of offering a user a plurality of scenarios under which to conduct at least one primary transaction involving at least one specific item, the specific item being one of goods and services, with each one of these scenarios entailing a corresponding cost to the user. The method can include at least the following. Communication is established via a communications device between the user and a system to facilitate the primary transaction. Primary transaction data is obtained relating to the primary transaction, with the primary transaction data including data representing an identity of the user and representing the at least one specific item. The user is offered a choice between at least two scenarios under which to conduct the primary transaction, determining costs of the transaction based on allowance of receiving offers of upsell transactions.

Abstract: A computer-implemented method includes accessing, with a user computing device, a web-based document from a first party containing a mark-up code segment pointing to a second party; and loading, using the mark-up code segment, a program for generating a shopping application for the web-based document. The loaded program is used to add to the web-based document event handlers associated with tags indicating items for sale, and a shopping cart containing information about an item for sale is generated upon triggering of one of the event handlers.

Abstract: A device may convert accounts maintained by a first information technology system to a second information technology system. In one implementation, the device may convert a first set of attributes corresponding to an account in the first information technology system to a second set of attributes corresponding to the account in the second information technology system. The device may validate the second set of attributes by converting the second set of attributes back to a third set of attributes corresponding to the account in the first information technology system.

Abstract: The invention provides a system and method for calculating, collecting and/or disbursing one or more third party payments owed to one or more third parties resulting from one or more electronic transactions occurring over a wide area network (WAN) between a customer and a merchant. The transaction concern one or more services and/or products provided by the merchant. The system and method require that the calculation of the amount owed to the third party occur at a WAN node that is different than and at a different locale than that of the merchant. By so doing, the merchant is not required to purchase and install equipment and/or software of the third party to which a payment is due. The present system includes a merchant node, third party payment processing node, financial network, and third party payment receiving node. A consumer conducts a transaction at a merchant node. As a result of the transaction, a third party may or may not be due a payment.

Abstract: The present invention provides an account charging method used for charging a user account over a network, including: establishing an intermediary account; saving a second user's charging amount sent by a first user in the intermediary account; and if a confirmation message of receiving a payment is received from the first user, transferring the said charging amount to an account of the second user. The invention facilitates and expedites the charging process, and thereby improves the account charging efficiency, fully utilizes network resources, and greatly reduces the cost of account charging. The intermediary account of the invention can ensure the security and integrity of the account charging process, and thus eliminates the bottleneck of too few online banking users and low maximum payment limitation of the public edition of online banking, increases network usage efficiency, and takes full advantages of speed, convenience and low cost of online transactions.

Abstract: An automated and interactive system that facilitates efficient capitalization/liquidation and monitoring of private and publicly-traded enterprises through a network-driven marketplace is disclosed. The system may be comprised of a dynamic process for enterprise characterization, a customizable computational engine that utilizes statistical reference information to quantify a multi-factor scoring value for each unique enterprise, a customizable system for investor-users to filter, rank, and screen enterprise prospects, a customizable system for monitoring the performance of enterprises, an integrated internal system for electronic communication between market participants, and an empirical feedback system that provides a dynamic knowledge base of statistical reference information for various computational components of the invention.

Abstract: An automated and interactive system that facilitates efficient capitalization/liquidation and monitoring of private and publicly-traded enterprises through a network-driven marketplace is disclosed. The system may be comprised of a dynamic process for enterprise characterization, a customizable computational engine that utilizes statistical reference information to quantify a multi-factor scoring value for each unique enterprise, a customizable system for investor-users to filter, rank, and screen enterprise prospects, a customizable system for monitoring the performance of enterprises, an integrated internal system for electronic communication between market participants, and an empirical feedback system that provides a dynamic knowledge base of statistical reference information for various computational components of the invention.

Abstract: The present invention provides a system and method to process items for sale or bid, to transmit electronic negotiations between prospective buyer and seller, and to verify the condition of the item before delivery to the buyer. The invention facilitates autonomous and remote negotiation between sellers and prospective buyers while protecting buyers from fraud and item misrepresentation. With the present invention, items can be sold individually and are not treated as standardized items that are interchangeable with similar commodity goods. The present invention also provides a waitlisting function. In addition, the functionality of traditional auction systems may be integrated with the novel features of the present invention. Furthermore, the present invention provides a system and method for conducting a reverse auction by allowing prospective buyers to list desired items.

Abstract: New and improved methods and systems for modeling the performance of selected company metrics. Multiple, nontraditional sets of objective data along with mathematical analytical techniques are used to provide transparency and visibility into company performance relating to the particular metrics. Company inflection points and changes in strategy may be identified. The performance of a company and/or the performance of a selected industry or industry sector may be analyzed.

Abstract: A system for transferring a customer's account information from one account to a new account is described. The system utilizes a switch kit application and associated system that can determine services at the old account and facilitate the transfer of these services to the new account.

Abstract: A Single Tranche Synthetic ABS product designed to replicate economics returns of structured finance collateralized debt obligations (SF CDO) securities, allow parties to express a leveraged and/or correlation view on a custom ABS portfolio by transferring a credit risk of a particular transacted tranche of a portfolio in swap format, and account for an available funds cap risk of the ABS securities within the underlying portfolio in a manner equivalent to a cash analog based on the same underlying portfolio with sequential pay structure.

Abstract: Systems and methods for providing a customizable spreadsheet application interface for an electronic trading system or market data source. A customizable spreadsheet application using the application interface according to the invention may be executed or stored either at the client or at a server. In either case, a user is preferably provided with an spreadsheet interface that allows the user to implement a real time electronic trading model. The trading model may preferably be used to trade in the electronic trading system without additional user intervention.

Abstract: System and methods for pre-marshalling messages in an electronic trading environment are provided. Specifically, pre-marshalling messages allows for client and network devices to create messages in response to a defined first condition. Pre-marshalling messages allows a trading system to do more processing up front before the message is needed and when a second condition is satisfied. Thus, when the message is needed no further or very little processing must be performed to generate and send the message. The client and/or network device may allocate a separate, unused, or under-utilized processing thread to the task of creating pre-marshalled messages. Pre-marshalled messages may be stored in memory at the network device until it is determined that the second condition has been satisfied. Once a pre-marshalled message is sent, the unused pre-marshalled messages that were stored in memory may be deleted or may be overwritten with newly pre-marshalled messages.

Abstract: A method for responding to order flow is disclosed. The method comprises establishing for a market maker a rule for automatically generating a contra order in response to an order. The rule comprises at least one condition comprising at least one characteristic describing the order. The at least one condition allowing matching based on a security in the order is in a security list specified by the market maker. The method further comprises receiving from a trader the order; matching on the computer the order to the at least one condition of the rule; automatically generating the contra order in response to the order, if the rule is satisfied; and providing the contra order for acceptance.

Abstract: A system and computer-implemented method for managing storage locations storing a physical commodity or physical commodities. According to an embodiment of the present invention, the method includes receiving data associated with the physical commodity such that the data includes an order of a specific number of lots of the physical commodity. The method also includes tracking one or more lots of the physical commodity stored in the storage location based on the specific number of the lots. The method further includes transforming the order into fractional shares based on the tracked one or more lots of the physical commodity and a geographic premium associated with the storage location.

Abstract: A method for matching orders is provided. The method includes receiving a first order for a product, the first order specifying a first volume, receiving a second order for the product, the second order specifying a second volume, wherein the first volume is different than the second volume, generating an implied order based on a ratio spread defined between the first order and the second order, and matching a third order with the implied order.

Abstract: An interface for trading multiple tradeable objects includes a price axis or scale. A first indication of quantities represented in a market for a first tradeable object is displayed in association with the price axis or scale. A second indication of quantities represented in the market for a second tradeable object is displayed in association with the price axis or scale. The first tradeable object may be different than the second tradeable object. Alternatively, the first tradeable object and the second tradeable object may be the same, but the indications of quantity may be provided from different sources, such as different exchanges.

Abstract: A computerized method for processing investment data includes providing a server supporting a database for receiving, processing and storing investment data; providing a rules engine for processing rules data employing rules relating to credit assignment; introducing into the server investment data from a plurality of external sources, processing the rules data by the rules engine and permitting user access to the processed and stored investment data. Information regarding customer investments, client information and investment transaction information is provided in the server. A corresponding system is disclosed.

Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention relate to methods and systems for implementing a product or property search for a consumer, based upon a consumer's desired down payment or/and desired monthly payment. Embodiments disclosed comprise a first subsystem adapted to receive a consumer profile input from a user interface wherein the said subsystem is capable of qualifying the input consumer profile against a single or plurality of lenders' guidelines, and a second subsystem adapted to match lenders' with whom the consumer qualifies, with product sets or properties, and to present the consumer with a set of available products or properties to select.

Abstract: A Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) enabled server executing Java software provides a financial transaction Web service to a client each of which communicates wirelessly with the J2EE enabled server and executes Java software to conduct financial transactions between a merchant and a consumer upon an account issued by an issuer to the consumer. Each financial transaction is submitted by the merchant to an acquirer for processing by a transaction handler/payment processor, and is submitted by the transaction handler/payment processor to the issuer to obtain a payment amount for the financial transaction from the account, and wherein the issuer forwards the payment amount of the financial transaction to the transaction handler/payment processor who forwards the payment amount of the financial transaction to the acquirer to pay the merchant for the financial transaction.

Abstract: A method facilitating secure financial transactions using email is presented comprising the steps of receiving bill data at a server implementing the method, and generating an email message to a recipient with information including at least a portion of the received bill data. The amount of bill data included in the email message is based, at least in part, on the email address of the recipient.

Abstract: A system and method for using derived account identifiers. The derived account identifiers are associated with a single permanent account identifier. Each derived account identifier is associated with a communication channel or portable consumer device.

Abstract: Self-service methods for money remittance and kiosks are provided. An exemplary kiosk includes a video display, a card reader, a keypad, a money validation device, and a processor in communication with a database and a processing system across a network. A person can remit money to a recipient by simply presenting an access card to the card reader, entering a PIN on the keypad, and inserting cash into the money validation device. The database includes information associated with the identifier such as one or more established recipients and necessary information for remitting funds to each. The kiosk can receive a list of established recipients from the database and present the list to the person on the video display. After the person selects a recipient from the list, the kiosk can transmit to the processing system the recipient and the cash amount received by the money validation device.

Abstract: A card fraud prevention network and method are provided. The network includes a plurality of network-connected data processing terminals, including at least one server. Electronic authorization requests are received for authorizing the processing of an electronic transaction associated with a cardholder's card data or account data. The received requests are filtered according to predetermined or configurable criteria. A cardholder terminal is identified, to which the request is sent in order to notify the cardholder that processing of an electronic transaction is proposed, a parameter of which is the cardholder's card data or account data. Means are provided for interrupting processing of the, or any further, electronic transaction with that card data or account data, should the request correspond to an unauthorised transaction.

Abstract: An authorization system allows for cardholder-provided parameters to a personal authorization subsystem. The parameters can be selected by the cardholder to limit the authorizations that would otherwise be granted on the card. The parameters can indicate limits by frequency, dollar amount, merchant, geographic location, time of day, combinations thereof, or the like. Authorization for a given transaction, even where authorized by an issuer and a network operator, might be denied based on self-constraints set by the cardholder. In some variations, messages are sent to the cardholder based on constraints set by the cardholder and transactions might be approved and messaged, or denied and messaged.

Abstract: Offsite financial account onboarding is provided which creates a more streamlined process for a customer. The customer accesses a money services business electronic system to request financial account setup. The onboarding system establishes account access to a pooled custodial account managed by the money services business based on preliminary identification (ID) data from the customer. With only preliminary ID data, account access limits are assigned which reduces the risk of fraud or criminal activity with the customer's account access. Because account access is established with just the preliminary ID data, the customer may fully obtain account access directly from a mobile device. The money services business provides additional graduated access levels depending on additional ID data provided by the customer. Thus, depending on the type of ID data provided by the customer, the customer's account access will have corresponding access level rights to the custodial account.

Abstract: A duplicate detection system is provided for analyzing and processing documents received at one or more capture sites. A physical document may be electronically captured at a capture site and subsequently transmitted to a regional or central processing system. The regional or central processing system may receive capture documents from multiple capture sites. The processing system may analyze the captured documents to identify and flag false-positives prior to performing duplicate detection. Duplicate detection may be performed in accordance with predefined rules associated with false-positive flags. Once duplicate detection is complete, suspected duplicates may undergo manual review while non-duplicates are released for posting or dispatching.

Abstract: Embodiments related to systems and methods comprising receiving payment data at an access device; receiving an identifier for a phone at the access device; and generating and sending an authorization request message to a payment processing network, wherein the payment processing network generates a verification token, which is then sent to the phone whereby the phone is thereafter used to conduct payment transactions.

Abstract: In an example embodiment, a digital content distributor may transmit an unsigned license associated with a protected digital object to a digital rights management provider. The digital rights management provider may digitally sign the license and may transmit the signed license to the digital content distributor.

Abstract: A system and method for enabling direct transactions between a customer and a provider of goods and/or services. A plurality of suppliers or service providers provide data regarding offerings and services, and a database of selected information is collected and integrated for review and comparison by potential customers. An efficient distribution system delivers products and services to local service and pick-up centers where the customer retrieves them, or delivers the products and services directly to the customer, depending on customer preference. The cost of delivery is dependent on the customer preference and is based on proximity of delivery to customer.

Abstract: System and method for the addressing of mail pieces by a variable printing system. Information allowing a mail piece to be associated with a mailing list of address information is printed on the mail piece prior to processing of the piece by a variable printing system. As the piece is processed by the variable printing system, the information printed on the piece is read and used to identify a mailing list from among a plurality of available mailing lists. Address information for that mail piece is obtained from the identified mailing list and printed on the mail piece by the variable printing system.

Abstract: Systems and methods for optimizing the process of digitizing and delivering physical mail based upon selective scanning are described and in certain illustrative examples, an intelligent agent computer system is employed for making selective scanning decisions in the process of digitizing and delivering physical mail.

Abstract: The present subject matter generally relates to techniques and equipment to apply move update address information to mailpieces based on move update requirements. More particularly, the present subject matter relates to a pre-print move update process that updates addresses for moves without affecting stored address data while meeting postal authority standards for move update and pre-sort mailpiece groupings. The move update process is applied to the address data before print and preserves the initial stored address data. The move update address information and initial address information are both printed.

Abstract: A semantic software agent and methods for designing and implementing the software agent and multi-agent systems, where the semantic software agent includes an interface adapter configured to receive instances of data collected and queries from an external source; a semantic repository configured to receive the instances and queries from the interface adapter; and an inference engine configured to receive the instance data from the semantic repository and to generate semantic inferences on the instances based on an ontology and semantic rules. An online simulation apparatus is also provided to generate actions and events for a simulation environment in real-time.

Abstract: A phrase matching system is described. The system includes a training engine and a matching engine. The training engine is configured to: learn terms and term variants from a training corpus, wherein the terms and the term variants correspond to a specialized dictionary related to the training corpus; and generate a list of negative indicators found in the training corpus. The matching engine is configured to: perform a partial match of the terms and the term variants in a set of electronic documents to create initial match results; and perform a negation test using the negative indicators and a positive terms test using the terms and the term variants on the initial match results to remove matches from the initial match results that fail either the negation test or the positive terms test, resulting in final match results.

Abstract: Described is a method for particle swarm optimization (PSO) utilizing a random walk process. A plurality of software agents is configured to operate as a cooperative swarm to locate an optimum of an objective function. The method described herein comprises two phases. In a first phase, the plurality of software agents randomly explores the multi-dimensional solution space by undergoing a Brownian motion style random walk process. In a second phase, the velocity and position vectors for each particle are updated probabilistically according to a PSO algorithm. By allowing the particles to undergo a random walk phase, the particles have an increased opportunity to explore their neighborhood, land in the neighborhood of a true optimum, and avoid prematurely converging on a sub-optimum. The present invention improves on what is currently known by increasing the success rate of the PSO algorithm in addition to reducing the required computation.

Abstract: Embodiments of a system and method for seeding rule-based machine learning models include generating a set of seed rules including one or more rules resulting from one or more previously performed machine learning operations and one or more randomly or pseudo-randomly generated rules. Embodiments may include performing one or more machine learning operations on the set of seed rules to generate a new set of rules for determining whether a pair of information items have a specific relationship. Generating the new set of rules from the seed rules may be faster than generating a set of rules from random data. Embodiments may also include applying the new set of rules to one or more pairs of information items to identify at least one pair of information items as having the specific relationship. For instance, the rules may be applied to identify pairs of information items that are duplicate pairs.

Abstract: A method for generating switching plans to restore power to out-of-service areas after fault isolation through back feeding. A chromosome architecture is defined to create chromosomes representing candidate post-restoration systems. The chromosomes are evaluated are repeatedly genetically altered until an acceptable solution is identified. The solution identifies a plurality of switching operations that back feed power to the out-of-service areas in the most optimal manner.

Abstract: A system, method and program product for estimating effort of implementing a system based on a use case specification document. A method is provided that includes: quantifying a structure of the document and evaluating a format of the document using a computing device; identifying a domain of an application associated with the document; defining a set of complexity variables associated with the document based on the structure of the document, a format of the document and a domain of the document; using a neural network to estimate an effort based on the set of complexity variables; and outputting the effort via a tangible medium.

Abstract: Provided is a classification device capable of classifying time series data of location information into groups in which continuity of time is secured. The classification device (100) includes a data storage unit (110) that stores time-of-day information and location information corresponding to the time-of-day information, a sorting unit (120) that sorts the location information in order of time using the time-of-day information, a hidden Markov model storage unit (130) storing therein a left-to-right hidden Markov model containing a plurality of states and in which a parameter is undetermined, a Markov model output unit (140) that determines the parameter by inputting the location information sorted in order of time into the hidden Markov model, and a classification unit (150) that classifies each location information in one of the plurality of states by inputting the location information sorted in order of time into the hidden Markov model containing the determined parameter.