Ok, this is me being mercenary, take it or leave it. There was a request to add spellcheck to IS in the gallery today. Here’s my offer, $200 in tips earmarked for this purpose to my paypal account, and it’ll happen not long after. We’re already at $50 earmarked for that purpose (I’ll update this amount daily as it changes), so only another $150 and we’re there.
Yes, if you’re running Firefox 2.0 and some other browsers, you probably get spellcheck for free. Yeah, this is a little like guilting you into it, but well, this request feels like work, so I’m treating it as such. If you’ve made a previous donation that didn’t go towards something and would like to see spellcheck, lemme know. If you have another feature you’d like added, contact me before tipping, I’ll let you know how much it’ll take to make it happen.
As for other improvements like logins, they’ll come eventually, I just haven’t been in a feature adding mode lately. So there.
March 22nd, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Um . . . I’m broke right now. Couldja loan me five and I’ll give ya ten next time I see you?
March 22nd, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Gerson and all,
When I made the request for spellcheck the other day I was kidding. I think it would be a bad idea. The typos and misspelled words are a part of the capping experience and should happen as they naturally do. A perfect example would be 144b, Bert Tilley’s captions. The typos and misspelled words were as much a part of his captions as his unique wit and his own personal way of captioning.
Sorry if there was any misunderstanding.
As for Pay Pal contributions, I’m not a member of Pay Pal, but I would gladly make a contribution to you personally if it would help keep this site up and running. I plan on being at the NYC get-to-gether in June if it happens and could either give you something there or sooner by mail if you would rather.
Thanks for all you do for us here,
T-Rex
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Thanks for the offers folks. To clarify:
(1) At this point, the tip box is about two things – I’m providing a service (not exclusively) that many people find useful and I like money. I’ve given up on the idea of this site bringing in meaningful (correction 3/23: life-changing) money as I’d hoped when I put the tip jar up.
(2) At least one person has wanted the spellcheck enough to tip when I mentioned the idea. While most of what I do here sits somewhere between play and work, depending on my mood, spellcheck just struck me as work. Since it’s an idea that comes up from time to time, I decided to try one of these now unfashionable featur telethons for it. Didn’t put too much thought into the pricing – just maybe a few times what’d it cost to pay a freelancer to do it if you had the IS source code.
(3) The site doesn’t cost me a whole lot of cash to run. The hosting costs are minimal, though maybe I should consider a more expensive host that’d add another 9 of reliability. While the high speed modem is very helpful in running the site, I’d probably have it anyway. For that matter, I’d still be paying about the same in webhosting without the site.
(4) The time spent on the site varies depending on how much I feel like putting into it.
March 23rd, 2007 at 12:39 pm
(I’ve been putting off making a tip large enough to not be well called a tip.
The later I get that done, the larger it will be.
Don’t give up [on $IS$] altogether yet.)
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:28 pm
If you really neeed to plan this tip, then feel free to keep putting it off forever. ANd really, tips are fine. I’m not looking to bleed any 401k’s or have people endow buildings. While I do appreciate all your thoughts, neither I or the site are going anywehre, even if nothing rolls in.
March 24th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Actually, Gerson, the tip was a thanks for what you do here. I have Firefox 2, so having a spell checker on the site isn’t a big deal for me. Use the donation in anyway you’d like, certainly towards a spell checker if others really want one. I just wanted to let you know that it was inspired by your good work here, not by the spell check idea :)