Send a romantic e-card, for instance, and someone will try to sell you flowers.
Plus there is a chance to hear some of Anne's ultimate put-downs and send a Weakest Link e-card or download wallpaper for your PC desktop.
People were far less likely to send an e-card to their boyfriends or girlfriends, perhaps because they were too busy buying them chocolate bacon cookies and roses.
As crisp as the music sounded, the visuals occasionally felt like visions of the future from the late seventies, or early digital art you might find in an e-card from your mom.
One-third of American adults plan on sending an e-card this Valentine's Day, according to a recent study by the mobile testing company SOASTA. Digital cards are most popular with men between 35 and 44, and spouses were the most common recipients.
Ample expansion is available with two open PCI-E x1 slots for adding a sound, graphics or RAID card and an open PCI-E x16 slot for a video card.
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In recent years, passing on sensitive data points like e-mail addresses and credit card codes to marketing partners has also been a frequent source of corporate data breaches--about 40% of all breach incidents were a result of a third party's handling of data, according to another Ponemon study, released in November 2007.
Powerful interests -- Microsoft, credit card concerns, banks -- are betting billions that zapping around e-cash will be as commonplace as sticking a card in an ATM.
Although fast-growing, the regional e-commerce market is hampered by low credit-card use and poor postal services.
Mobile users can also be duped through so-called "smishing" -- a combination of the words SMS and phishing -- where a user receives a text message asking for personal information like a credit card number, e-mail address or social security number.
His two-year-old Seattle startup makes software that tracks gift-card balances in real time and blasts e-mails about looming expirations.
At Amazon.com, it takes eight clicks--along with entering an e-mail address, password, physical address and credit card number--to buy the latest Modest Mouse CD.
At Amazon.com (nasdaq: AMZN - news - people ), it takes eight clicks--along with entering an e-mail address, password, physical address and credit card number--to buy the latest Modest Mouse CD.
Sony Reader customers can use the company's Library Finder software and check out e-books with a valid library card.
Moreover, Ready believes that a new generation of payments companies will lead m-commerce just as PayPal and three others took over e-commerce payments from traditional credit card payment processors.
Chuck Robel, one of Silicon Valley's leading accountants, has five contact telephone numbers and an e-mail address on his business card to make sure that his clients can get hold of him.
Still, that is cold comfort for the backers of products such as the iCache Geode, a strange and ambitious iPhone contraption combining NFC and e-paper with a reprogrammable credit card that was floated last April.
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As phones and PDAs become transaction terminals and repositories for valuable information - credit card numbers, personal IDs, digital money, e-keys, bank passwords, even company secrets - much more will be at stake.
He also sees a trend toward e-gift cards or virtual gift cards, which boil the card down to a bar code--no plastic necessary.
He says that 20% of the people who get that card send him an e-mail.
It is also confronting the grim reality that, in a world filled with e-mail and cell phones, greeting card sales are flat.
As Chief Digital Officer, Brotman has responsibility for Starbucks core digital businesses, including web, mobile, social media, card, loyalty, e-commerce, Wi-Fi, and the Starbucks Digital Network.
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We, or rather the electronic devices we employ, are data pack rats, accumulating e-mails, Web pages, credit card swipes, phone messages, stock trades, memos, address books and radiology scans.
Its Japanese-language counterpart, which currently accepts orders but not online payments, will be relaunched next month as a full-service e-commerce center complete with virtual shopping trolleys and real-time credit-card processing.
In third phase, users were allowed secure access to their government e-mail, calendar and contacts after authenticating using a federally-mandated CAC smart card reader.
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Far more common--but still damaging--are the high-volume crime spikes, spam e-mail distribution and "phishing, " a pernicious technique for stealing credit-card information. (For more on online scams, check out "Where The Scammers Are".) The carnage is hard to pin down in dollar terms, but Marcus Ranum, chief security officer of Tenable Security, says it's "billions upon billions"--far more than all "major" hacking incidents combined.
Be suspicious of e-mail messages or even sites which ask you to re-enter login, credit card or other information to check your status.
PayWizard can manage multiple different payment types, ranging from one-off card transactions all the way to a feature-rich, balance-holding e-wallet.
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Or a signed signature card (if you have an e-book or audio-book)?
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