jeremy borger [blog]

Well, I already screwed up my goal of updating Mac…

Well, I already screwed up my goal of updating MacComedy every Friday. Maybe every other Friday. Actually, I did post a new video on the Movies/MP3s page today. So that’s SOMETHING. And it’s not even Friday!

I was thinking today that they have to create some sort of HTML standard for having micropayments for content online. For example, some web sites have you pay $5 a month or whatever to access all their content. But there’s not many places that you can just go to and say “I want to watch this video” and it costs 5 cents or something. It’s either free or you have to sign up for the whole site for a couple of bucks.

Now, you might be asking yourself “Why?” Well, right now, most credit card transactions cost something like 30 cents per transaction. So even if you COULD pay 5 cents to view a video or a picture or read an article via PayPal for example, the site would have to pay 30 cents on top of that. Or it would actually cost you 35 cents or whatever.

MICROPAYMENTS, PEOPLE! That’s the key to the next generation of online success stories: Some 11-year-old kid makes $5,000 by 100,000 people paying 5 cents to watch his skateboard video or something.

Now payment systems already work. It’s easy to set up a PayPal account. Easy to have people give you money online or donate money to you or whatever. If you want to sell t-shirts on a website, you can set up a PayPal account, have people send you money, and you’ll get a nice little e-mail saying Bob Smith at 123 Happy Street just gave you $25 for a “Beer Can Bob” t-shirt. You mail it out, and wow, you’re selling crap online. You’re rich.

Content is a different story. Even systems now where you pay $5/month to access Slate or Bob’s Crazy Porno World (keep dreaming) is a little more complex. But possible. But a pay-per-view system with micropayments under 30 cents? It doesn’t exist I tell you! But if someone wanted to set up something like that, they could possibly have something where you give them your credit card and each time you viewed something, it would bill you. But they’d have to wait until you reached a couple bucks, because the credit card company would get pissed about 50 one to ten cent payments. AND you’d have to do that for a bunch of sites because there’s no universal system.

My dream is having it built into HTML…. a link could have a “cost=.05″ tag in it. You click it, a dialogue box says “It will cost 5 cents to continue. Ok?” You click Yes, it charges you 5 cents, you get the content. Beautiful! The credit card info would be stored locally on your browser. The individual sites would never see it.

Yes it’s a great idea. But I’m not a programmer. I want someone else to come up with it so I can charge you 5 cents to read this.

Blah. Okay, I’ll stop blabbling. I’m sooo hungry right now. Oh, and for a good laugh, check out the singing Burger King boy. Merry Christmas.