INFORMATION PRESENTATION AND MANAGEMENT IN AN ONLINE TRADINGENVIRONMENT

摘要

A method and apparatus for information presentation and management in an online trading environment are provided. According to one aspect of the present invention, person-to-person commerce over the Internet is facilitate d by providing prospective buyers the ability to quickly preview items for sal e. Images are harvested (455) from a plurality of sites based upon user-supplie d information. The user-supplied information (420) includes descriptions of items for sale and locations from which images that are to be associated wit h the items can be retrieved. Thumbnail images are created (430) corresponding to the harvested images and are aggregated onto web page for presentation at a remote site (470). According to another aspect of the present invention, a user may submit a query to preview items for sale. After receiving the query , thumbnail images corresponding to items that satisfy the user query are displayed, each of the thumbnail images previously having been created based upon a user-specified image.