John S. James was a computer programmer/analyst and software designer for over 20 years starting in 1963. He was best known for publishing articles about the Forth computer language, and also developed a tree-structured message board, The Conference Tree (CommuniTree), in 1978.
In 1986 he started a well-known newsletter, AIDS Treatment News, and has published it since then.
The smart-codes design developed unexpectedly from his effort to find a better, more flexible way to sell newsletter subscriptions. Increasingly subscribers either had plenty of money or almost none, with few in between. And organizations often had funds sporadically, not timed with annual subscriptions. Customers and publishers alike would benefit from a more flexible kind of subscription, letting companies or individuals spend what they wanted when they wanted -- buying access in bulk and later using it themselves and/or selling or giving away paid access free to company departments, community organizations, or others. Smart codes (computerized payment codes that can reproduce, creating children codes with various options) support such subscriptions and much more besides.
No smart-code system has been implemented at this time (July 2005). Implementation would be straightforward, and require little computation, bandwidth, or storage, resulting in very low cost. One implementation on one server could support many different for-profit and/or nonprofit organizations, allowing them to receive money from the public by smart codes, credit cards, or other means. Customers or donors can simply buy or be given a code, and never need to register or set up an account.
For more information see the home page, www.MicropaymentSmartCodes.com.
John S. James, 2005-07-05, Philadelphia
jjames at MicropaymentSmartCodes dot com (reformat this email address of course)