Lending tree and eloan

Lending tree and eloan

LendingTree

LendingTree, LLC is an online lending exchange, providing a marketplace that connects consumers with lenders that compete for their business. LendingTree is a web-based company (LendingTree.com), operating a lead-generation business. A "lead" is a collection of information about a consumer interested in getting a loan. Lenders pay for these leads, and LendingTree is a source for them. The prospective borrower fills out a questionnaire on LendingTree.com detailing the loan request, property, personal finances, and contact information. They use this information to select the lenders to whom the information is sold. Lenders prepare an offer to the borrower based on the same information.

LendingTree customers are the lenders and mortgage brokers who can afford to buy these leads. They pay LendingTree for mortgage-loan leads to get this information on potential customers. These leads are sold to the highest bidder depending how good the information and credit standing is for each lead.

LendingTree has facilitated more than 20 million loan requests and $152 billion in closed loan transactions. LendingTree provides access to mortgages and refinance loans, home equity loans/lines of credit, auto loans, personal loans, online high yield savings accounts, and credit cards.

Launched in 1998 with headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, LendingTree is part of IAC Financial Services and Real Estate, an operating company of IAC (NASDAQ: IACI), which also owns or operates LendingTree Loans, LendingTree Settlement Services, GetSmart, RealEstate.com, Domania, and iNest Realty.

E-loan

E-Loan, Inc. is a financial services company that offers home mortgage, home equity, and auto loans, along with online high yield savings and certificates of deposit (CDs).

E-LOAN is currently headquartered in Pleasanton, CA, and employs more than 950 people. As of October 2006, the company has funded over $32 billion in loans.

Founded in 1997 by Janina Pawlowski and Chris Larsen, E-Loan, Inc. was established to provide customers with access to mortgage loans over the Internet.

As the company continued to evolve, more products and enhancements were introduced. In 1998, E-LOAN launched E-Track, a proprietary system that allows borrowers to securely check the status of their loans online. On September 2, 1998, E-LOAN received venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital. [1]

In 2000, E-LOAN became the first company to provide consumers with free access to their credit scores, allowing customers to check for possible incidents of identity theft or erroneous entries of credit debt. This was introduced at a time when many financial companies were reluctant to release this information.

Buoyed by this success, but still determined to improve public credit disclosures throughout the nation, Larsen helped form “Californians for Privacy Now” to lead the fight for stricter financial privacy protection. After collecting over 600,000 signatures, the measure was placed on the California ballot and passed into law in 2003.

Ownership of the company changed in 2005 when Popular, Inc. acquired E-Loan, Inc.

In 2006, E-LOAN branched out into online savings accounts and CDs, promising their CD rates would be among the highest in the nation.

At E-LOAN, "Radically Simple" says it all. We're dedicated to providing the best lending and savings service possible. We offer reduced paperwork; personalized service; the industry's strictest privacy policy; and no hidden costs.

Since our 1997 launch, E-LOAN has led the charge to protect consumers' financial privacy. We've lobbied Congress; we've helped change laws for the better. We've also assisted many in securing the loans they need. From its inception, E-LOAN has originated over $32 billion in consumer loans.

Two independent studies further tell the story. One, conducted by TRUSTe and The Ponemon Institute, ranked E-LOAN as one of the Top 20 most trusted companies for privacy in America. Another, conducted by The Customer Respect Group, awarded us their highest rating in "Online Customer Respect Study" for North America's largest financial services firms.

Broadband

Broadband

Broadband in telecommunications is a term that refers to a signaling method that includes or handles a relatively wide range of frequencies, which may be divided into channels or frequency bins. Broadband is always a relative term, understood according to its context. The wider the bandwidth, greater is the information carrying capacity. In radio, for example, a very narrow-band signal will carry Morse code; a broader band will carry speech; a still broader band is required to carry music without losing the high audio frequencies required for realistic sound reproduction. A television antenna described as "normal" may be capable of receiving a certain range of channels; one described as "broadband" will receive more channels. In data communications a modem will transmit a bandwidth of 64 kilobits per seconds (kbit/s) over a telephone line; over the same telephone line a bandwidth of several megabits per second can be handled by ADSL, which is described as broadband (relative to a modem over a telephone line, although much less than can be achieved over a fibre optic circuit, for example).

Broadband in data communications can refer to Broadband Networks or Broadband internet and may have the same meaning as above, so that data transmission over a fiber optic cable would be referred to as broadband as compared to a telephone modem operating at 600 bits per second.

However, broadband in data communications is frequently used in a more technical sense to refer to data transmission where multiple pieces of data are sent simultaneously to increase the effective rate of transmission, regardless of actual data rate. In network engineering this term is used for methods where two or more signals share a medium.[citation needed]

The various forms of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) services are broadband in the sense that digital information is sent over a high-bandwidth channel above the baseband voice channel on a single pair of wires.[citation needed]

A baseband transmission sends one type of signal using a medium's full bandwidth, as in 100BASE-T Ethernet. Ethernet, however, is the common interface to broadband modems such as DSL data links, and has a high data rate itself, so is sometimes referred to as broadband. Ethernet provisioned over cable modem is a common alternative to DSL

The Broadband Revolution

The International Telecommunications Union recently issued a press release announcing with joy the release of “the first set of global standards for Internet Protocol TV (IPTV).” A key sentence:

A combination of voice, Internet and video services over a single broadband link and from a single provider is foreseen as the ultimate goal of the broadband revolution.

Those of you who lived through ‘What Is Broadband Good For?’ with me last summer (first post here) know that the word “broadband” is a pet bugaboo of mine. It’s a word that answers a lot of policy questions in a particular way. It connotes (and denotes) a speeded, managed “service” that happens to use the Internet Protocol but is ultimately completely within the discretionary control of the network provider. So when the ITU talks about “the broadband revolution,” they mean (I think) the rise of these speeded, managed “services” provided by telephone companies. And the stated goal—made express in this press release—is to combine “services” over single broadband links and “from” a single provider. Revolutionary! Remarkably similar to cable television with a cellphone overlay.

I’m not going to say “I told you so,” but this is why the AT&T/BellSouth merger conditions a year ago were not unmixed great news. I said at the time (so I guess I am saying I told you so) that AT&T’s promise as part of that merger to keep its “wireline broadband Internet access service” neutral didn’t actually cover its planned IPTV service, which it calls its “AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet U-verse Enabled” service. That won’t be neutral—ever—unless things change rather dramatically in this country. I think consumers will be offered “internet” as *part* of their subscription to IPTV, IPTV will definitely affect “bandwidth management,” and “internet” won’t be what we thought it was.

Online Photo sharing

Online Photo sharing

Photo sharing is the publishing or transfer of a user's digital photos online, thus enabling the user to share them with others (whether publicly or privately). This functionality is provided through both websites and applications that facilitate the upload and display of images. The term can also be loosely applied to the use of online photo galleries that are setup and managed by individual users, including photoblogs.

The first photo sharing sites originated during the mid to late 1990s primarily from service providing online ordering of prints (photo-finishing), but many more came into being during the early 2000s with the goal of providing permanent and centralised access to a user's photos, and in some cases video clips too. This has resulted in different approaches to revenue generation and functionality amongst providers.

While photoblogs tend only to display a chronological view of user-selected medium-sized photos, most photo sharing sites provide multiple views (such as thumbnails, and slideshows), the ability to classify photos into albums as well as add annotations (such as captions or "tags") and comments. Some photo sharing sites provide complete online organisation tools equivalent to desktop photo-management applications.

Desktop photo-management applications may include their own photo-sharing features or integration with sites for uploading images to them. There are also desktop applications whose sole function is sharing photos, generally using peer-to-peer networking. Basic photo sharing functionality can be found in applications that allow you to email photos, for example by dragging and dropping them into pre-designed templates.

Photo sharing is not confined to the web and personal computers but is also possible from portable devices such as cameraphones, using applications that can automatically transfer photos as you take them, to photo sharing sites and photoblogs, either directly or via MMS. Some cameras now come equipped with wireless networking and similar sharing functionality themselves.

Snapping a huge number of photos with a digital camera is easy, but finding a practical way to print your pictures and show them to friends and family can be a hassle. Fortunately, there are many Web sites that allow you to upload your photos to online albums and other sharing tools and to order prints of them to be mailed to your home. The last couple of years have seen an explosion in the number of these photo-sharing and photo-printing sites, which means that print prices have dropped, and the range of services offered has expanded. Whether you have a handful of vacation shots or you're a serious photographer with a big image archive, there are plenty of sites that can make printing and sharing a pleasure. We tried out more than 40 of them to give you a snapshot of your options. Most sites offer both sharing and printing, but to make it easier to get a handle on a large amount of information, we've put the details on sharing and printing in separate sections.

Image sharing

The same technology that allows digital photographs to be shared can be used for other electronic image formats. This can include computer-generated art or scans of hand-drawn artwork or photographic prints just as easily as it can include digital photographs. Even though 'image sharing' is a more general term and would include photo sharing as a subset of the available options, the term 'photo sharing' is more widely known.