METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR COMPARING, RANKING AND SELECTING DATA ITEMS INCLUDING WEB PAGES

摘要

A system that maintains a database of web sites and their subordinate web pages that are offering to sell products and services. The system includes a facility to search the database by specific products, by product categories and by web sites. Utility functions provided by the system include a means to rate the products according to the web site and the product category. The system collects information about its users to create user profiles for a plurality of users. The user profiles are used to correlate different users during real-time chat requests in support of collaborative shopping and web browsing. A book-marking facility enables users to browse web pages and then set referenced to those pages. The references, or book marks include user entered categorization and subjective rating information.