Tips identify content just by URL de-coupling content attribution from the authors claiming their tips. This also us to work for tipping content on YouTube, Flickr, and GitHub, etc. without requiring the site to be directly integrated with TipTheWeb.
Thanks for this. I tried Flattr but it seemed A) too barren and B) too Euro-centric for me. TTW seems like an awesome service, I've already made $4. =)
Sites like Hacker News could easily add rel="author" link elements to posts— since every post and comment has a permalink— and users could add their site URL to their profile. This would create a nice semantic link between the user’s content on HN to their own personal site. With these author links in place, if you come across a great comment on HN you could use TipTheWeb to tip it some small amount of money, and that tip would be assigned to the author, and not news.ycombinator.com.
Until now, TipTheWeb.org has supported two types of sites: 1) independent websites (no integration required), where Tips go to the site publisher, and 2) popular publishing platforms like YouTube, Flickr, GitHub, etc. with custom integrations that we did with these sites. With our new multi-author support TipTheWeb now works well with a thrid type of site: ones which have content produced by multiple authors or contributors.
We would love to see sites with user-contributed content add this meta data to their pages, what do you think?
Chrome has the Task Manager tool which helps you track down tabs which are being resource hogs (CPU and RAM). I was curious if something like this existed in Firefox 4 or there was an extension for a feature like this? (I looked but couldn't find anything promising)
Totally agree, and even before Firefox gets any sort of strong tab isolation, I would love a readout that provides any sort of vague 'blame' for CPU/memory usage to individual tabs.
As FF runs for a long time with many tabs, I get longer and longer pauses doing simple tasks -- scrolling, switching tabs, popping the right-context menu, setting focus into a field, etc. Sometimes, this sluggishness seems linked to (and fixable by closing) a few tabs of the most Javascript-heavy sites (those with many ad inserts, background status polling, etc.). I'd hoped FF4 would help but it's just about as bad as 3.X. Generally restarting, even with the exact same tab set, helps (for a while).
Separate but similar, sometimes I'm doing nothing and no tab is visibly busy but Firefox is reported as using 50-100% (out of 200%) CPU time. Give me any proxy for tab activity (object allocations, timer callbacks, method-dispatching, whatever) and I can probably kill the miscreants.
We’ve wanted to the decision to tip to be an active one, but low-barrier. Basically as close to bookmarking a link a possible, or like tweeting a link to share it. Automatic tipping would be difficult to balance things correctly. For example a funny YouTube video I may want to tip 25¢, but an open source project on GitHub I might want to tip $5.
All user accounts have Tip Streams that are a feed of the Tips that user has funded (you can make tips before you put money into your account). But, we have an option to make your account anonymous, removing all personal-identifiable information from your Tip Stream page.
Have you considered adding a way for content makers to require a small payment (via a Facebook Connect-esque popup)? It seems like you're halfway to micropayments.
> We’ve wanted to the decision to tip to be an active one, but low-barrier.
I'm generally of the opinion, though it is only a hunch, that any scheme requiring a user to actively tip for each site they like is doomed to fail.
I also think that the other problem with tip jar and/or Xanadu-style micropayment schemes is that people are uneasy about building up a surprising total. This is the advantage of Readability/Kachingle-style subscription services.
People are free to add money to their TipTheWeb account to use to fund their Tips at any time. Making a Tip isn't a financial transaction; this allows Tips to be as small as 5¢! And Tips can be made even if there isn't enough money to back it at the time it's made, and can be funded whenever the person wants to.
We’ve made everything about the service extremely flexible and low-key, and shouldn't cause any tense feelings. For example you can cancel Tips (up until they are paid out) if you made a mistake.
> Making a Tip isn't a financial transaction; this allows Tips to be as small as 5¢! And Tips can be made even if there isn't enough money to back it at the time it's made, and can be funded whenever the person wants to.
Tipjoy basically did this, but they still had the fundamental problem that the user has to remember to click in order for the tip to take place. I just don't think people are wired that way.
I admire the work you've done (I am, in part, working on a for-profit "competitor"), but I just don't think it's the right model. In terms of human factors, Readability is closest to perfect IMO.
With Readability you still have to "remember to click" the read now/later button, and you don't get to choose how much you want to support that article; you actually have to support it _before_ you even read it.
I stand corrected. Looks like I was projecting my own thinking on to their system. The closest to what I'm doing was Contenture, since shut down.
If they don't have one already, I expect an opt-out feature before too long. It's the first objection raised to my system whenever I talk to people about it.
At the moment, no. Believe it or not, I've managed to spin an honours project out of part of it (reliable user tracking) and I'm focusing on that at the moment.
In terms of the business model, Contenture was almost exactly what I thought up on my own.
When you think long enough about this whole idea of supporting web content, there are some major requires that arise:
• Support should be direct (whereas ads are indirect)
• People publish all over the Internet, most people don’t own a domain, they have (hosted) Wordpress, Blogger, Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, GitHub accounts where they publish content, this content _has_ to be supportable.
• You can’t effectively charge someone fees for their acts of voluntary support.
• Voluntary, is voluntary, is no subscription, and is the right to choose!
• Easy to use, low barrier to give, no pulling out the credit card for 25¢.
• Support something while browsing the web and on that web page.
• The mechanism/service you use to support content online can’t be the only winner, consumers and publishers have to be the outright winners!
• The service used _must_ be trustworthy and transparent.
• The service _has_ to work with the Internet, which means it has to work when only given URLs of web pages to support.
So! We actually did this, and built TipTheWeb http://tiptheweb.org/ with all these ideas in mind!
A non-profit that gives 100% of the money tipped by people to the web publisher of the content, non of that fee or cuts crap, 100%. You can support something with TipTheWeb by just giving us a URL to what you want to support and an amount, that's it; no publisher integration required.
We want to provide a positive feedback loop for the web, give publishers a way to know what their followers actually like, give readers/consumers a way to directly support what they truly love online and choose how much they want to give (5¢ — $100 per Tip). We want to encourage publishers to keep it up! Keep their content freely-accessible to everyone <— _this_ is what makes the Internet so great.
The Internet is valuable. Good publishing is hard. Selling content doesn’t work. Advertising is not sufficient. Community-supported web publishing can work!
You say "100% of claimed Tips". How much initiative do you take to inform publishers that they've received a tip and should sign-up and claim their money? What do you do if a publisher who has received tips declines participating?
The idea that I could donate money which the publisher hasn't agreed to receive and you could end up keeping it if the publisher doesn't decide they want to be a part of your service rubs me the wrong way.
We hope to always error on the side that will benefit the user in these cases.
Telling web publishers they have tips waiting for them is tricky business, i.e. Don't want to be spammy. We hope to develop some interesting ways to notify people that they have tips; but tippers have been filling this void by mentionig on services like Twitter that they've tipped someone for something.
For now, if a tip goes unclaimed by the publisher for 6 months, it's automatically canceled, and the money is returned to the tipper for them to use to tip something else.
We don't currently have a way for someone to block or decline tips for a particular website, but we've talked about adding this type of feature; someone could claim their site, then say they don't accept tips there.
Bottom line, we don't have any intentions of keeping people's money that goes unclaimed, we rather return it so they could fund other tips with it. People can also help support our operations by tipping us, TipTheWeb; eating our own dog food.
I don't know that I agree with the refund strategy as the way to handle the issue but it's good to hear you guys come down in a good place ethically/morally on the issue (as you say, the most important thing with this sort of site is trust).
I thought it would be interesting to create a comparable example of this mini-app with basic YUI 3 code: http://jsfiddle.net/ericf/wpuCm/
backbone.js seems like a great library, and MVC is on the YUI 3 roadmap ( http://yuilibrary.com/projects/yui3/roadmap ), hopefully some of the concepts from backbone get implemented in the YUI’s MVC layer.
