"$17 does not strike me as a lot of money". True. Obviously Paul hasn't pledged yet. :-)
microPledge is only a few days post-launch, so success stories are low in numbers just yet. But of course we look forward to them coming in slowly but surely.
That's pretty sweet! Good link -- I'll keep that in mind. (Though it doesn't do two of the things Paul was after: open a better file-select dialog, and do local data processing on the file before sending it.)
For better or worse -- better, IMHO -- Buchheit's spec on his blog entry rules out Java. Quote: "Unfortunately, Java applets don't actually work, and after 11 years of not working, I'm not expecting that to change."
My experience is contrary to that. I've deployed applets to the general public with success. (No, not 100 percent, but the same can be said of javascript and flash.)
