摘要:
Apparatus and methods for providing a fine granularity alerting mechanism for alerting customers of the status of an order are provided. With the apparatus and methods, a customer selects a supplier of a good or service and places an order with the supplier. Upon submitting the order to the supplier, a session between the supplier and the customer is initiated such that the customer may be provided with one or more alerts of the current status of the customer's order. The one or more alerts may be periodic or may be based on the occurrence of one or more certain events. The alerts may include an estimated time of travel from a customer's current location to a location at which the order is to be completed along with an estimated time of completion of the order. In one embodiment, if the estimated time of travel from the customer's current location to the completion location is the same or within a certain tolerance of the estimated time of completion of the order, an alert is transmitted to the customer indicating that the customer should begin traveling to the completion location. In another embodiment, the alerts may include an estimated cost of the order based on a base cost for the product or service ordered as well as incremental costs for delay on the part of the customer for completion of the order.
摘要:
A vending machine is disclosed that has one or more compartments with a mechanism for dispensing a content of a compartment upon receipt of a payment. A receptacle can accept an item, from a member of the public, as content into an empty compartment and identify the item accepted, such as with a barcode label. The vending machine can also include a mechanism that will connect it over a network, such as the Internet, to a computing device. An appraised value of the identified item can be received over the communication network and displayed in association with the compartment containing the item. The item can be dispensed from the vending machine in response to receiving predetermined sales amount or upon specific instruction from an authorized individual. A searchable database of information relating to buyers, sellers, items and other sales related information can also be associated with the vending machine.
摘要:
A method, system and program for brokering and facilitating consumer projects in an electronic system are provided. A buyer submits a project request to a broker system. The broker system distributes the project request to multiple prospective manufacturers from among a catalog of manufacturers. Manufacturers submit bids and other indicators of the feasibility of manufacturing the project. The broker system facilitates obtaining a manufacturer who can feasibly manufacture the project request. The buyer selects a preferred manufacturer from among those obtained by the broker server, such that a buyer's project request is brokered to multiple manufacturers and a preferred manufacturer is then procured to produce the project.
摘要:
A method, system and program for managing customization of projects prior to manufacture in an electronic commerce system is provided. An order system distributes a project offer to potential customers. A selection of potential customers return orders in response to the project offer, wherein each order includes customized selections by the customer. Manufacture of the project is then customized according to the order responses, such that a selection of potential customers control customization of a project.
摘要:
A system and method for gathering data regarding receivers of multicast content is provided. A spanning tree is used to connect a content producer, such as a pay-per-view broadcaster, to one or more receivers over a computer network, such as the Internet. Clients that wish to join a multicast group to which content is sent join the multicast group at the client's designated multicast router. The router sends information regarding the request, such as a tally of the number of clients that have joined the group, through intermediate routers to an endpoint router as identified by the spanning tree. The content producer is able to use the information, such as the tally and demographic information, to analyze the group of receivers. In a pay-per-view setting, the tally can further be compared to the number of subscribers to determine whether illicit receivers have joined the group, whereupon appropriate action is taken.
摘要:
A method, system, and computer program product for providing products to a user via an automated product dispensing machine is provided. In once embodiment, an automatic product dispensing machine in a micronetwork of proximally located diverse automatic product dispensing machines receives a request for an item. Responsive to a determination that the item is unavailable at a current automatic product dispensing machine, the automatic product dispensing machine provides a user with an alternative redemption product, such as, for example, a coupon that may be redeemed at another automatic product dispensing machine or at a nearby store.
摘要:
Facilitating customs planning and clearance including creating in an international customs server, in response to a signal communicated through a client device coupled for data communications through at least one internet connection to the international customs server, a master customs planning record; creating a related customs planning record wherein the related customs planning record is related to the master customs planning record; calculating duty on the goods described in the related customs planning record; storing the amount of the calculated duty in the related customs planning record; incrementing the total amount of duty stored in the duty total field in the master customs planning record; submitting, to the destination country, payment of the duty; creating, in dependence upon the related customs planning record, a customs declaration form for a destination country; and submitting the customs declaration form to a customs declaration forms database for the destination country.
摘要:
A mechanism is provided for augmenting the mail header of a message with a list of digital signatures representing the chain of contributors to the message. The augmented header may also encode the actual contributions corresponding to each digital signature. The list is appended every time a message is forwarded. If a message has a portion with no corresponding digital signature or if one or more of the digital signatures is not trusted, the user may handle the message accordingly. Furthermore, a mail server or client may discard a message if the number of digital signatures exceeds a threshold to filter out unwanted messages, such as e-mail chain letters.
摘要:
Facilitating customs planning and clearance including creating in an international customs server, in response to a signal communicated through a client device coupled for data communications through at least one internet connection to the international customs server, a master customs planning record; creating a related customs planning record wherein the related customs planning record is related to the master customs planning record; calculating duty on the goods described in the related customs planning record; storing the amount of the calculated duty in the related customs planning record; incrementing the total amount of duty stored in the duty total field in the master customs planning record; submitting, to the destination country, payment of the duty; creating, in dependence upon the related customs planning record, a customs declaration form for a destination country; and submitting the customs declaration form to a customs declaration forms database for the destination country.
摘要:
A method, program, and system for augmenting digital rights management are provided. The invention comprises associating two fields with an electronic document. The first field identifies the current owner of the electronic document, and the second field contains information about previous ownership of the electronic document. If ownership of the electronic document is transferred from the current owner to a subsequent owner, the current owner's name in the first field is replaced with the subsequent owner's name. In addition, information about the subsequent owner is added to the ownership history field.