I closed my PayPal account today. Nobody ever sent me any money. ;) It wasn’t real MicroPayment like ScottMcCloud wanted it, and I had heard some gruesome stories on http://paypalsucks.com/, so when my account got flagged for a security check, I decided to opt out. If you *still* want to send me money, donate to some charity and let me know. 😄
Having read ScottMcCloud’s two books on understanding and reinventing comics, and hoping for “true micro-payment” after having read about it on JakobNielsen’s AlertBox, I decided to take a look at Scott’s website again. And he was using a service he claimed to be “not evil”! 😄
I joined, paying $3.00 with my credit card. And I downloaded “The Right Number” part one and two, and read them. A comic written in Flash. Interesting. I enjoyed it, even if the story was weird. At ¢25 per part, it felt like it was a fair deal.
The use of Flash was cool. Things moved on, I felt. This is important in a story that is essentially static, introspective. But I knew JefRaskin’s ZoomingInterfaceParadigm (ZIP), and yesterday I looked at a Flash demo of *that*. It was impressive, too. Maybe not at first sight. But when he said “if you are lost, just zoom out” – it felt a click.
My recent interest in diagram drawing (see CategoryDiagram on CommunityWiki) points me in the same direction. What if we could have “layers” of documents. High level diagrams, and then – instead of “zooming in” – just “fade in” deeper levels. Connect things with trails. Use small text samples. (The ZIP demo uses complete papers in the demo. Those I found them hard to read.) Like comics.
Zooming. Fading in and out. Use trails to guide people. Use pacing as in comics.
Anyway. Micropayment. It might be cool. I wonder if EmacsWiki users would use micro-payments to donate? What about Oddmuse users? I think I’d send a dollar for freenode.net. I once paid $5.00 for freenode.net via PayPal, I think. But PayPal kept $2.00, if I remember correctly. I don’t remember anymore. Some time back I also investigated the Affero thing. I don’t remember the details. I think I felt their overhead was too hight, too. I wonder what BitPass's overhead is.
Hm.
There are no setup or monthly fees. For BitPass Pro - For items priced $0.01-$5.00, the transaction fee is 15%. - For items priced $5.00 and higher, the transaction fee is 5% + $0.50. For BitPass Studios - For items priced $0.01-$5.00, the transaction fee is 30%. - For items priced $5.00 and higher, the transaction fee is 10% + $1.00.
Payout for “earners” is via PayPal or the Automated Clearing House (ACH). Should I try to get my PayPal account back? ;)
#Micropayment
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What about e-gold and related systems? Cf. http://goldify.net/
– bpt 2005-02-07 05:08 UTC
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It has been a long time since I looked at e-gold. I basically looked at what ScottMcCloud was suggesting because I know he has been a micropayment nut before I even knew about it. So I took the bait, registered, uploaded $3 and tried the micropayment system on Scott’s site by buying his comic.
– Alex Schroeder 2005-02-07 15:46 UTC
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hmm. Coincidence coincidence. I don’t remember to have ever seen a ref. to e-gold before this comment, and today I followed a link in a forum post that lead me to this page and scrolled down the page to discover a link to e-gold!! maybe It’s just that e-gold is in wider use than I think and I never noticed these links ....
– PierreGaston 2005-02-07 16:41 UTC
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I always wonder: If people would like to support EmacsWiki – how would they prefer doing it? What do you think? Personally I don’t often support particular projects because I offer my own work without asking for support, either. I wonder how much money actually comes together this way...
– Alex Schroeder 2005-02-08 12:07 UTC