e Bay

The online auction website was founded as AuctionWeb in San Jose, California, on September 3, 1995, by French-born Iranian computer programmer Pierre Omidyar [3] as part of a larger personal site that included, among other things, Omidyar's own tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Ebola virus.[4] In 1997, the company received approximately $5 million in funding from the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital.[5]

The very first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. Astonished, Omidyar contacted the winning bidder to ask if he understood that the laser pointer was broken. In his responding email, the buyer explained: "I'm a collector of broken laser pointers."[6] The frequently repeated story that eBay was founded to help Omidyar's fiancée trade Pez Candy dispensers was fabricated by a public relations manager in 1997 to interest the media. This was revealed in Adam Cohen's 2002 book, The Perfect Store,[4] and confirmed by eBay.

Chris Agarpao was hired as eBay's first employee and Jeffrey Skoll was hired as the first president of the company in early 1996. In November 1996, eBay entered into its first third-party licensing deal, with a company called Electronic Travel Auction to use SmartMarket Technology to sell plane tickets and other travel products. The company officially changed the name of its service from AuctionWeb to eBay in September 1997. Originally, the site belonged to Echo Bay

Free Crdit Card for you

Payoneer is changing the way the world pays. We offer an easier, more cost-effective way to deliver payments online.

Payoneer is an issuer of Prepaid MasterCard® cards and is an ACH (e-check) facilitator so our partners can pay online directly to the recipients' co-branded debit cards or (US-only) bank accounts. Some of our benefits for partners include:

* Cost-effective method to deliver payments for you and for your recipients - particularly for international recipients. No steep bank fees, delays or hassles.
* The fully hosted solution including all payment options is normally integrated within 2 business days with minimal integration on your part.
* Universal - it can be offered to anyone over 18 (13 with parental involvement). No bank account necessary.
* Control employee spending - create and manage online company debit cards. Employees cannot spend more than the funds loaded on the card.
* Reinforce your brand - the co-branded card can have your company's name or logo imprinted on it.
* An easy-to-use Web interface to track transactions.
* We provide full back-office functions and customer support.
* Online comprehensive reporting and control over payments.
* Secure and trusted - top-of-the-line secure technology and stringent regulations for customer privacy, authentication and identity verification.
* Full compliance - Payoneer complies with the required KYC (Know Your Customer), BSA (Bank Secrecy Act), AML (Anti-Money Laundering) procedures and OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control)

Visa Credit cards

Visa Inc. (NYSE: V), commonly referred to as VISA (Visa International Service Association), is a multinational corporation based in San Francisco, California, USA. The company operates the world's largest retail electronic payment network, managing payments among financial institutions, merchants, consumers, businesses and government entities. Before Visa Inc's IPO in early 2008, it was operated as a cooperative of some 21,000 financial institutions that issued and marketed Visa products including credit and debit cards.

In 2006, according to The Nilson Report, Visa held 44% of the credit card market share and 48% of the debit card market share in the United States.[2]

E-money

Alternative systems

Technically electronic or digital money is a representation, or a system of debits and credits, used to exchange value, within another system, or itself as a stand alone system, online or offline. Also sometimes the term electronic money is used to refer to the provider itself. A private currency may use gold to provide extra security, such as digital gold currency. Also, some private organizations, such as the US military use private currencies such as Eagle Cash.

Many systems will sell their electronic currency directly to the end user, such as Gogopay, Paypal, WebMoney and Wirex, but other systems, such as Liberty Reserve, sell only through third party digital currency exchangers.

In the case of Octopus Card in Hong Kong, deposits work similarly to banks'. After Octopus Card Limited receives money for deposit from users, the money is deposited into banks, which is similar to debit-card-issuing banks redepositing money at central banks.

Some community currencies, like some LETS systems, work with electronic transactions. Cyclos Software allows creation of electronic community currencies.

Ripple monetary system is a project to develop a distributed system of electronic money independent of local currency.

HSDPA, wi-Fi

The High-Speed Downlink Shared Channel (HS-DSCH) lacks two basic features of other W-CDMA channels—variable spreading factor and fast power control. Instead, it delivers the improved downlink performance using adaptive modulation and coding (AMC), fast packet scheduling at the base station, and fast retransmissions from the base station, known as hybrid automatic repeat-request (HARQ).
[edit] Hybrid automatic repeat-request (HARQ)

HARQ uses incremental redundancy, where user data is transmitted multiple times using different codings. When a corrupted packet is received, the user device saves it and later combines it with the retransmissions, to recover the error-free packet as efficiently as possible. Even if the retransmitted packets are corrupted, their combination can yield an error-free packet.
[edit] Fast packet scheduling

The HS-DSCH downlink channel is shared between users using channel-dependent scheduling to make the best use of available radio conditions. Each user device periodically transmits an indication of the downlink signal quality, as often as 500 times per second. Using this information from all devices, the base station decides which users will be sent data on the next 2 ms frame and how much data should be sent for each user. More data can be sent to users which report high downlink signal quality.

The amount of the channelisation code tree, and thus network bandwidth, allocated to HSDPA users is determined by the network. The allocation is "semi-static" in that it can be modified while the network is operating, but not on a frame-by-frame basis. This allocation represents a trade-off between bandwidth allocated for HSDPA users, versus that for voice and non-HSDPA data users. The allocation is in units of channelisation codes for Spreading Factor 16, of which 16 exist and up to 15 can be allocated to HSDPA. When the base station decides which users will receive data on the next frame, it also decides which channelisation codes will be used for each user. This information is sent to the user devices over one or more "scheduling channels"; these channels are not part of the HSDPA allocation previously mentioned, but are allocated separately. Thus, for a given 2 ms frame, data may be sent to a number of users simultaneously, using different channelisation codes. The maximum number of users to receive data on a given 2 ms frame is determined by the number of allocated channelisation codes. By contrast, in CDMA2000 1xEV-DO, data is sent to only one user at a time.
[edit] Adaptive modulation and coding

The modulation scheme and coding is changed on a per-user basis depending on signal quality and cell usage. The initial scheme is Quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK), but in good radio conditions 16QAM and 64QAM can significantly increase data throughput rates. With 5 Code allocation, QPSK typically offers up to 1.8 Mbit/s peak data rates, while 16QAM offers up to 3.6. Additional codes (e.g. 10, 15) can also be used to improve these data rates or extend the network capacity throughput significantly.
[edit] Other improvements

HSDPA is part of the UMTS standards since release 5, which also accompanies an improvement on the uplink providing a new bearer of 384 kbit/s. The previous maximum bearer was 128 kbit/s.

As well as improving data rates, HSDPA also decreases latency and so the round trip time for applications.

Along with the HS-DSCH channel, three new physical channels are also introduced: HS-SCCH, HS-DPCCH and HS-PDSCH. The High Speed-Shared Control Channel (HS-SCCH) informs the user that data will be sent on the HS-DSCH 2 slots ahead. The Uplink High Speed-Dedicated Physical Control Channel (HS-DPCCH) carries acknowledgment information and current channel quality indicator (CQI) of the user. This value is then used by the base station to calculate how much data to send to the user devices on the next transmission. The High Speed-Physical Downlink Shared Channel (HS-PDSCH) is the channel mapped to the above HS-DSCH transport channel that carries actual user data.

In later 3GPP specification releases HSPA+ increases data rates further by adding 64QAM modulation, MIMO and dual carrier (DC) operation, i.e. two 5 MHz carriers are used simultaneously.

Master cards

In 1966 a number of banks formed the Interbank Card Association (ICA). The name Master Charge was licensed by the above mentioned California banks from the First National Bank of Louisville, Kentucky in 1967. With the help of New York's Marine Midland Bank, now HSBC Bank USA, these banks joined with the ICA to create "Master Charge: The Interbank Card". The card was given a significant boost in 1969, when National City Bank joined, merging its proprietary Everything Card with Master Charge.

In 1979, "Master Charge: The Interbank Card" was renamed simply "MasterCard". In the early 1990s MasterCard bought the British Access card and the Access name was dropped. In 2002, MasterCard International merged with Europay International SA, another large credit-card issuer association, which for many years issued cards under the name Eurocard.

In 2006, MasterCard International underwent another name change to MasterCard Worldwide. This was done in order to suggest a more global scale of operations. In addition, the company introduced a new corporate logo adding a third circle to the two that had been used in the past (the familiar card logo, resembling a Venn diagram, remains unchanged). A new corporate tagline was introduced at the same time: "The Heart of Commerce".[1]

From the 1970s to the early 1990s MasterCard was known as "Carnet" (Card Network), but keeping the original MasterCard logo

World Trad Center

General

* Record of the Year
o Ken Nelson (producer & engineer/mixer), Mark Phythian (engineer/mixer) & Coldplay (producers, engineers/mixers & artists) for "Clocks"
* Album of the Year
o Carl Mo (producer), Vincent Alexander, Chris Carmouche, Terrence Cash, Kevin "KD" Davis, Reggie Dozier, John Frye, Robert Hannon, Padraic Kernin, Moka Nagatani, Pete Novak, Brian Paturalski, Neal Pogue, Dexter Simmons, Darrell Thorpe (engineers/mixers), Brian Gardner & Bernie Grundman (mastering engineers) & OutKast (producers & artists) for Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
* Song of the Year
o Richard Marx and Luther Vandross for "Dance with My Father" performed by Luther Vandross
* Best New Artist
o Evanescence

[edit] Alternative

* Best Alternative Music Album
o The White Stripes for Elephant

[edit] Blues

* Best Traditional Blues Album
o Jacquire King (engineer), Ed Cherney (engineer/mixer), Dennis Herring (producer) & Buddy Guy for Blues Singer
* Best Contemporary Blues Album
o Donto James (engineer/producer), Josh Sklair (producer), Sametto James (producer) & Etta James for Let's Roll

[edit] Children's

* Best Musical Album for Children
o Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer for Bon Appétit!
* Best Spoken Word Album for Children
o Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev & Sophia Loren for Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf/Beintus: Wolf Tracks music performed by the Russian National Orchestra conducted by Kent Nagano

[edit] Classical

* Best Orchestral Performance
o Pierre Boulez (conductor) & the Vienna Philharmonic for Mahler: Symphony No. 3 performed by Anne Sofie von Otter, Johannes Prinz, Gerald Wirth, the Vienna Boys' Choir & the Women's Chorus of the Vienna Singverein
* Best Classical Vocal Performance
o Thomas Quasthoff & Anne Sofie von Otter for Schubert: Lieder with Orchestra performed by Thomas Quasthoff, Anne Sofie von Otter & the Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by Claudio Abbado
* Best Opera Recording
o Wolfram Graul (producer), Bernard Haitink (conductor), Jerry Hadley, Karita Mattila, Eva Randová, Anja Silja, Jorma Silvasti for Janáček: Jenůfa performed by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House & Chorus & various artists
* Best Choral Performance
o Paavo Järvi (conductor), Tiia-Ester Loitme & Ants Soots (chorus masters) for Sibelius: Cantatas performed by the Ellerhein Girls' Choir, the Estonian National Male Choir & the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra
* Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with orchestra)
o Mstislav Rostropovich (conductor) & Maxim Vengerov for Britten: Violin Concerto/Walton: Viola Concerto performed by Maxim Vengerov & the London Symphony Orchestra
* Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without orchestra)
o Emanuel Ax for Haydn: Piano Sonatas Nos. 29, 31, 34, 35 & 49
* Best Small Ensemble Performance (with or without conductor)
o Jeff von der Schmidt (conductor) & Southwest Chamber Music for "Chávez: Suite for Double Quartet"
* Best Chamber Music Performance
o The Kronos Quartet & Dawn Upshaw for Berg: Lyric Suite
* Best Classical Contemporary Composition
o Dominick Argento (composer) for "Argento: Casa Guidi" performed by Frederica von Stade, Eiji Oue & the Minnesota Orchestra
* Best Classical Album
o Andreas Neubronner (producer), Michael Tilson Thomas (conductor) & Michelle DeYoung for Mahler: Symphony No. 3; Kindertotenlieder performed by Michelle DeYoung, Vance George, the Pacific Boychoir, the San Francisco Girls Chorus & the San Francisco Symphony & Chorus
* Best Classical Crossover Album
o Jorge Calandrelli (conductor) & Yo-Yo Ma for Obrigado Brazil performed by various artists

[edit] Comedy

* Best Comedy Album
o "Weird Al" Yankovic for Poodle Hat

[edit] Composing and arranging

* Best Instrumental Composition
o Wayne Shorter (composer) for "Sacajawea"
* Best Instrumental Arrangement
o Michael Brecker & Gil Goldstein (arrangers) for "Timbuktu" performed by the Michael Brecker Quindectet
* Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)
o Vince Mendoza (arranger) for "Woodstock" performed by Joni Mitchell