[jacques_chester]

> Of course, the fees would be split across the publishers proportional to the time or number of articles I read from each.

This has been tried several times without success (Kachingle, Contenture, Readability), possibly because it was all being done on the open web or through proxies, for too little money.

The main problem is that tracking visits on the open web is unreliable with the current approaches.

Blendle arrived after tablets were common, so they can use the proxy model, and they're not doing it on subscription so they don't need to establish a viable minimum monthly amount in the mind of consumers. On the other hand they face the taxi fare problem, which subscription schemes don't.

I started work on my own approach in 2008 and so became waylaid by the tracking problem; I have a patent pending but it's possible I simply moved too late.

On the other hand, my design works for the open web, for mobile, for apps, for games, for music, basically for anything without first needing the protection and support of a walled garden like an app talking to a de facto proxy server.

[girvo]

> taxi fare problem

Do you mind expanding on that?

[jacques_chester]

I poked around on Google, can't find where I first saw the term.

Many people prefer fixed prices to pay-by-use. Taxis are paid-by-use, but in some cities you can pay a fixed fee to be taken to the airport. Even if people are told and shown that the fixed fee costs more, many will pick it over a regular fare structure because it is fixed.

For the same reason many people pay for phone data they don't need and so on. The value comes from not needing to consider the price once it has been paid.

Some micropayment schemes always had the sense that one was potentially running up a huge bill; Tipjoy had this problem.