In particular, they supply liquidity and price information that makes futures markets more efficient.
From New York, Brandwise.com offers product reviews and price information about white goods and electrical appliances.
Intuit adopted such a strategy when developing Fasal, a mobile platform that delivers agricultural market price information to farmers in India.
Inter-dealer brokers have the only trading systems in the Canadian bond market and are the primary source of real-time price information.
But to do this, they first need timely and actionable price information.
Whereas punters desperate for price information were reputed once to have drilled holes in the NYSE's walls, now they click on a screen.
According to the authoritative Oil Price Information Service, retailers sold gas for an average 13 cents per gallon more than they paid for it.
More than the telephone, however, the New York Stock Exchange gained its preeminence because it aggressively used its ticker tape to disseminate price information.
FORBES: Why the world would be better off with one big stock market.
Simply pushing the trolley up to a checkout would relay all the product and price information, so supermarkets could automate most of their tills.
"There is a tremendous amount of expansion, " said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, speaking of projects at existing facilities.
With all three dealers taking a cut, the buyer needs accurate price information so that those commissions aren't piled on top of fair market value.
As an intermediate solution, several sellers are considering anonymously posting prices, which would allow initial price-data collection and may stimulate further price information to be posted.
"I'm not surprised at what I'm seeing, but I am surprised it's coming early, " said Tom Kloza, Chief Oil Analyst at the Oil Price Information Service.
The lack of any sales price information whatsoever from galleries and dealers is even more troubling, because these sales account for over 50% of art market transactions.
Pennsylvania has detailed price information on cardiac and joint replacement surgeries on its Health Care Cost Containment Council Web site, but the data are several years old.
Many of them trade infrequently, meaning price information is limited.
But it also contributes to blurring the line between retail and wholesale investors, since it gives small-timers the same price information and market access as huge pension funds.
The need for there to be transparency of health care price information and quality information elicits copious nodding on the part of health plans, policy wonks and sometimes even politicians.
Price information hasn't been released yet, but you can expect it won't be cheap--licenses for Palm Computing (nasdaq: PALM - news - people) operating systems are very expensive.
NYSE's price information, which is available free of charge.
ECONOMIST: America��s leading stock exchanges need modernisation
By reducing barriers to entry and making price information more widely available, the Internet is pushing down the prices of goods ranging from cars to books, and of services from insurance to air travel.
People on the ground can also use a geographical information system that displays farmer contact data, farm size and location, tree inventory and price information, which makes it easier to forecast and optimize cashew collection.
One simple way to thwart robots is to frequently change a website's layout by, say, moving price information to a different place on the screen, so that a "bot" programmed for the original layout can't find it.
One simple way to thwart robots is to change a Web site's layout frequently, moving price information, say, to a different place on the screen so that a "bot" programmed for the original layout can't find it.
In addition to those demand response dispatches, Constellation Energy was providing real-time market price information to many of its customers, thus giving them information on the value of curtailing energy use during the heat wave when power prices jumped.
Access to price information shifts the balance of power to the buyers: they can buy as little or as much as they need, treating the order form as if it were a spreadsheet, to see the effect of volume discounts or of adding or removing features.
Since 1992, the Canadian Investment Dealers Association has been trying to create a real-time price-information system for Canadian government bonds and treasury bills.
The launch price confirms information Nintendo let slip in August that the Wii would cost less than 250 euros when it launched in Europe.
According to Dealio.com and offers.com, two websites that track price special information, plenty of big retailers will be kicking off the new year with offers.
"One of things they have said quite eloquently is that not even Harvard can afford to keep up with the rising price of information, " said Tom Leonard, chief librarian at the University of California Berkeley.
应用推荐