Application service providers host software for users who rent it on a subscription basis, instead of buying it outright and installing it on their hard drives.
Investors will also like another addition from TurboTax this year: free access to BasisPro, a service from the GainsKeeper division of Wolters Kluwer Financial Services that helps determine the cost basis of securities bought many years ago.
They also monitor customers' reactions, on the basis of what they buy and don't buy, and what they say to a sales clerk: "I like this scooped collar" or "I hate zippers at the ankles".
[With] recommendation systems we are seeing the rise of machine learning all over the internet - if you buy products from Amazon it will recommend things to you on the basis of what you buy but also on what those like you buy.
And in the meantime you can collect a yield premium of 150 basis points by buying these preferreds instead of straight high-yield bonds.
By late summer, the Federal Reserve was rushing to the rescue, making the first of many unorthodox interventions in the economy, including cutting the lending rate by 50 basis points and buying up tens of billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities.
A bond investor with a duration target of around 7 (corresponding to the duration of a 10-year corporate bond) earned up to 50 extra basis points for buying a combination of 5-year and 30-year paper.
The biggest effort by the ad networks is to move beyond data about where people surf to customizing ads on the basis of what people buy.
The rules are being phased in over three years: starting in 2011, the cost basis of stock investments bought that year and in future years will be reported to the I.R.S., and in 2012, the same will happen for mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and dividend reinvestment plans.
(Last month, as part of the $700 billion bailout bill, Congress mandated that brokers report the basis of any stocks bought in 2011 or later).
