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Introduction

While looking for better ways to publish a newsletter online, this writer, who designed and wrote software in a previous career, invented what looks like a new tool for online commerce. This article outlines fundraising possibilities of this "smart codes" design for computer-controlled money, with financial accounts that can reproduce without limit, inheriting options and services and forming family trees. Believing that this approach may be a fundamental advance that should not be patented and owned exclusively by one person or company, I published it online for anyone to use, and am encouraging open-source software development.

This article focuses on fundraising--on making it convenient, engaging, and rewarding to donate as much or as little as one chooses. The details needed to do everything described here are already published at http://www.MicropaymentSmartCodes.com. But that site looks less at fundraising than at how musicians and other artists could use smart codes to market their work independently through social networks worldwide--allowing friends, supporters, and other donors to buy bulk prepaid downloads as gifts, for sharing in smart Web links through networks, so that most downloads can be free while the artist still gets paid for them. (For our readers, the same system could also make medical-journal articles more accessible, as journals could easily sell thousands of downloads at a time to third parties who could market them effectively to small organizations and others now excluded because they are not part of a big university, corporation, or other institution.)

This article considers four fundraising scenarios:

I. Instant Web pages automatically born with the ability to accept payment by credit or debit cards and in many other ways--regardless of whether or not an organization already has a presence on the Web;

II. Allowing anyone to reward good work online by giving large or even very small online donations by using a single payment code, and with almost no transaction cost:

III. Direct links from music to practical ways of getting involved; and

IV. Turning an individual donation to an historically important organization into a collectible investment as well--creating digital collectibles, which could add an entirely new incentive to conventional fundraising appeals.

At this time (July 2005) the smart codes described are only a design; the software to provide and manage them has not been written. I am committed to AIDS Treatment News, and would like to use smart codes in our fundraising, but am not in a position to develop this accidental invention as a business. I can develop it as a conversation, and am looking for others to help explore next steps. Perhaps you know someone who might be interested.

Here we cut this article for length, and prepared the following bullet points from the remainder of the text. You can find the full article at http://www.MicropaymentSmartCodes.com/fundraising.

Smart Codes: Benefits

* Anyone with a smart code can immediately pay money online, receive money (including from credit cards or any other means provided by the smart-code server), use the code's control center on the Web to change any' of dozens or hundreds of options, and create any number of new children codes (with those options) to give or sell to others. These children are fully powered smart codes that can also reproduce, through any number of generations--forming family trees of related accounts that can evolve through practical use in social, business, or other networks.

* Anyone with a smart code can also create any number of public codes--limited smart codes that can only receive money (which credits the parent), but can never pay money. Each public code automatically has its own dynamic Web page with its own funding stream and accounting; it can accept payment from smart codes, credit cards, and other means through the server (subject to restrictions). Public codes, each of which may represent a donation appeal or merchandise offer, can be given memorable names and published or distributed widely. They will usually be included in Web links, so the public can use them without knowing anything about the smart-code system. Their owners can simply check a box at the control center tot such services as a color cartoon display (on the public Web page) showing fundraising progress so far, and the donor's or any other new contribution going into the pot.

* Each server will be able to manage many thousands of codes, and offer smart-code service throughout the world, even to people using different languages and currencies. International users will be able to change their choice of language and currency if necessary at their code's control center, probably by clicking on a row of flags, and on a row of currency symbols. Smart codes do not do language translation, but could provide system messages in many languages--and also standard business, etc. phrases, allowing anyone to click a flag on a public-code site to refresh the display with those phrases in their language. All the work is done on the server; smart codes will not need to run any software on the end user's computer.

# posted by Medical Information : 2:58 AM