12246 results about "Business enterprise" patented technology

The invention provides systems and methods for facilitating the sale of commodity-like goods / services. The commodity-like goods / services at which the invention is directed, are of a type that are relatively indistinguishable from one brand, identity and / or outlet to another in end-use functionality and features. These types of goods / services are many times sold at retail under various brands or identities at multiple locations, to the final end user. Such goods / services may also or separately be of a type that are repeatedly purchased at intervals, and / or for which the price varies between purchases, from outlet to outlet or brand to brand. The goods / services may also be of a character such that they are not deliverable to the consumer, but require the consumer to travel to the retailer outlet. The system and methods also provide information relating to the consumers and competitors of a retailer of such goods / services. The invention establishes methods and procedures to define, organize, collect, distribute, and maintain information that can be used by the owner of a business selling commodity-like goods / services as well as by its customers. This information may include, but is not limited to, name brand of the product, location of the retailer, price of the product, other related goods / services available and their prices, and promotions. These processes may be performed and implemented on a computer network that is accessible in real time via a suitable communication device, such as a computer, wireless communication device, telephone or the like. A database of such information is created, allowing the consumer and other retailers to query the database using various search criteria. The consumer has the opportunity to obtain information about retailers of commodity-like goods / services that meet the consumer's requirements, and pricing may be guaranteed by the retailer.

The usefulness, and consequently the performance, of advertisements are improved by allowing businesses to better target their ads to a responsive audience. Location information is determined (or simply accepted) and used. For example, location information may be used in a relevancy determination of an ad. As another example, location information may be used in an attribute (e.g., position) arbitration. Such location information may be associated with price information, such as a maximum price bid. Such location information may be associated with ad performance information. Ad performance information may be tracked on the basis of location information. The content of an ad creative, and / or of a landing page may be selected and / or modified using location information. Finally, tools, such as user interfaces, may be provided to allow a business to enter and / or modify location information, such as location information used for targeting and location-dependent price information. The location information used to target and / or score ads may be, include, or define an area. The area may be defined by at least one geographic reference point (e.g., defined by latitude and longitude coordinates) and perhaps additional information. Thus, the area may be a circle defined by a geographic reference point and a radius, an ellipse defined by two geographic reference points and a distance sum, or a polygon defined by three or more geographic reference points, for example.

Virtual machine optimization and / or storage reclamation solutions are disclosed that manage virtual machine sprawl and / or growing enterprise storage costs. For instance, certain solutions receive recommendations based on one or more rules, policies and / or user preferences that identify storage and / or alignment criteria for virtual machine disk (VMDK) partition(s). In certain examples, a resize tool that operates within a host operating system of a host server dynamically resizes and / or aligns one or more VMDK partitions of a powered-down virtual machine. For instance, the resize tool can be injected to the host server from a remote management server and can resize and / or align the VMDK partitions without requiring contents of the VMDK to be copied to another VMDK. By reallocating storage and / or aligning the VMDK partitions, embodiments of the invention can increase virtual machine performance and improve storage management.