Thanks, I read the html-linked content. He talks about the "mental effort" required to make a micropayment and how that's a hindrance to the technology. I agree

Thanks, I read the html-linked content. He talks about the "mental effort" required to make a micropayment and how that's a hindrance to the technology. I agree in that I wouldn't want to take the time to "OK" every payment. But that doesn't kill the entire concept. It seems what we need is a very, very simple payment model. Suppose, for example, I tell my browser(s) that I am willing to pay up to one cent for an article from the Wall Street Journal. When somebody from HN posts a pointer to a Walt Mossberg review of Apple's latest gadget, the link appears in some distinctive format, like a green-colored link (or with a '$' suffix, etc.) When I click the link, my wallet is debited one cent and the article appears. There's no extra effort on my part, except for an occasional wallet reload. This would seem like a technically feasible approach that avoids the mental effort of going through with a separate purchase step. OK, not everybody is going to be technically astute enough to set themselves up with whatever wallet technology is used...but this is just another problem to be solved. Maybe PCs and netbooks come with built-in wallets preloaded with a few dollars or euros. Maybe wallets are set up via multi-level-marketing, so the tech-savvy set up their friends and family. Maybe something else. Point is, I don't think it's an impossible problem. We just don't have the right models yet.