  We examine several online matching problems, with applications to Internet
advertising reservation systems. Consider an edge-weighted bipartite graph G,
with partite sets L, R. We develop an 8-competitive algorithm for the following
secretary problem: Initially given R, and the size of L, the algorithm receives
the vertices of L sequentially, in a random order. When a vertex l \in L is
seen, all edges incident to l are revealed, together with their weights. The
algorithm must immediately either match l to an available vertex of R, or
decide that l will remain unmatched.
  Dimitrov and Plaxton show a 16-competitive algorithm for the transversal
matroid secretary problem, which is the special case with weights on vertices,
not edges. (Equivalently, one may assume that for each l \in L, the weights on
all edges incident to l are identical.) We use a similar algorithm, but
simplify and improve the analysis to obtain a better competitive ratio for the
more general problem. Perhaps of more interest is the fact that our analysis is
easily extended to obtain competitive algorithms for similar problems, such as
to find disjoint sets of edges in hypergraphs where edges arrive online. We
also introduce secretary problems with adversarially chosen groups. Finally, we
give a 2e-competitive algorithm for the secretary problem on graphic matroids,
where, with edges appearing online, the goal is to find a maximum-weight
acyclic subgraph of a given graph.
