, Instructions to Authors

General policy

Introduction

is a project of a web server to publish paid services so that a client using virtually any personal computer connected to the Internet can use them in his or her web browser.

The services are provided by Authors. An Author may be any kind of person: an individual, a group of individuals, a company, a private or a public organization, etc. The Authors create the services, and specify their price. The income that gets from the clients is shared between MWOL¹ and the Authors on a 50/50 basis.

Commitments

is committed to enable more people around the world to produce with little effort, and at little cost, documents of high quality.
is committed to enable an Author, or a group of Authors, to publish with little effort a piece of software and work, make it usable from any web browser, and be paid when clients use it.

¹ is a concept developed by Satimage-software. In this page, we use the acronym MWOL to refer to the owner of .

Criteria for publication

All services are subject to rigorous review by 's team. The Editorial Board checks the programs, the interfaces, and the contents. Primary criteria for publication at include the following.

a service should at one step or another deliver a visual document (graphics, text, or else) of a specific kind. However this is not compulsory,
the service's interface should be convenient, intuitive, written in a clear language, and easy to use,
the service may bring a useful feature to many, or a unique feature to a few, anyway it must make some sense economically,
the service's price should be significantly lower than the price of the competing paid web services which might exist,
the software specific for a service should not interfere adversely with 's servers nor with other software,
the service should not include anything which might offend a person or a community of any kind.

What you can submit

The system allows several kinds of submissions that we describe below. Some of them do not require any programming (you work in a web browser), the other ones require that you program on a Mac OS X machine.

You can submit the translation of an existing service into your mother language.
You can provide a specialized input or knowledge through one of the special services named meta-services: in a web interface, you enter some material, that finally publishes as a new service.
For instance a maths teacher would provide a set of questions and answers in order to publish a new multiple choice test entitled "Pythagoras Theorem", that any student can take online.
You have an idea for a service, but you are not a programmer. You know how it should be: you are able to describe how the interface would work, what methods would be used to process the user's input. You can provide a specification for that service, that is, a text to describe the service that you have in mind which will be enough for a programmer to program it for .
provides material to help for that, such as some examples of specifications, and the technical support is available to help.
You want to program for , but you do not have an original idea: ask for the specifications submitted by the Authors in the situation just above. If one of them suits you, program it into a new service using the SDK (Software Development Kit) that we provide for Mac OS X.
You have an idea for a service, and you have the programming skills: submit a full-fledged service, that you will program using the SDK (Software Development Kit) that we provide for Mac OS X. The SDK does not require that you program in C or Objective-C¹. Instead, you will use scripting languages: javascript and AppleScript, and also XHTML.

¹ However your service may use any FORTRAN, C, C++ etc compiled program of yours.

Multiple Authoring

provides the possibility for a service to be authored by a group of Authors. Sharing the authoring consists in specifying one percentage for each Author, all percentages for the service summing to 100. The list of the Authors with their respective percentages in the authoring of a service is what is called the service's sharing pattern.

When a service is authored by a group of Authors, one of them is the group's representative, whose mission is both to interface the group with MWOL and to specify the sharing pattern.

Authoring in a meta-service and translating an existing service as described in the section just above are situations where multiple authoring applies.

Another case is if you would like to submit a service which would make use of material that you do not own: you can propose an agreement to the material's owners consisting in sharing the authoring with them.

Intellectual property

When you submit a new service, you can submit any material provided it is original material. will not check that you are the authorized owner of the resources that you use for your service. By submitting a service to , you assert that, either all the resources that you use are yours or public, or you have made an arrangement with their respective owners, who agree.

Generally, you accept the responsibility to take all the steps which might be necessary to manage the rights or any intellectual property items which might be attached to your service, and you accept that does not accept any responsibility in that matter.

Publication sequence

To have your service published at , the steps are the following.

Let know about your intention: write an e-mail (see the address in the Contact section),
- write that you have read this document http://www.myworksonline.com/en/mwo_instructions_to_authors.html
- present what you would like to submit. Whenever it makes sense, this includes specifying the price(s) for your service and/or the sharing pattern between multiple Authors.
  The Editorial Board will review your proposition and let you know of any problem. For example, if some service very close to your proposition is already in the works, you will know.
- specify in what language (English, Chinese, etc.) you will first write your service,
- specify in what other languages you will provide translations for your service.
We shall provide you with the material and the links appropriate to your project.

For instance, if you propose to provide a full-fledged service, you will be provided with the URL for the SDK (Software Development Kit), and you will be able to use the SDK to make a new service for .
When your service is ready, send it to : write an e-mail (see the address in the Contact section),
- attach the files which make your service as described in the documentation,
- write explicitly that you would like to publish your service online and make it available to all,
- write explicitly that you are the one and only Author for that service, or specify the list of the Authors with their respective percentages (the percentages must sum to 100.)
This allows to publish your service. Depending on what kind of contribution you are submitting, publishing may imply specific steps to test or check it.
You will receive instructions to register as an Author (this applies also to a group of Authors.) Once you are subscribed as the Author for your service, your Author account's credit is incremented each time a client sends in your service a request which implies payment, and you start receiving periodical payments.
As long as you do not register as the Author of your service, clients may purchase in your service, the payments for your service will accumulate, and they will wait for you until you register as appropriate.
Depending on your particular situation, you may have to take specific steps which are required to allow you to receive money, or which are implied by your receiving money. Authors assume solely the responsibility of taking those steps, and they agree that cannot accept any kind of responsibility in that matter.

Language and translations

is committed to make the services available to the largest fraction of the planet. The system makes it quite easy to translate any service into all languages - most often a service is translated using a web interface. It is the interest both of the Authors and of the users that this possibility become effective and that each service be available in as many languages as possible. This implies translating existing services into new languages, and that the translation meet the highest quality standards.

The process for providing translations is the following. In a first step, the Author submitted his service in his own language, or in his own language and English or French. MWOL publishes the service or the two services as they are. Providing a service also in English or French while none is your language is more work, yet we recommend to do so since that makes it simpler to have more testers try your service out.

As soon as the service is online, the system computes, and sends to the Author, a recommended sharing pattern to use for the translations, based on an automatic analysis of the textual and programmed components of the service.

In other terms, the system proposes the respective percentages of the Author's share for the translated service that the translator and the original Author or group of Authors will receive.

This enables the Author to initiate translations in whatever languages he chooses to do so. To that effect, the Author would collaborate with translators, and define a multiple Authors group with them, applying the sharing pattern as proposed by the system. Often, the translator should rather be familiar with the matter that the service handles.

After a given period (by default: 3 months) or when the Author decides so, whichever occurs first, the sharing pattern for that particular service becomes public and the service becomes available for translation in the languages not yet provided.

When a service is available for translation, a person (or an organization) can propose to translate the service into their mother language. Offering to translate a given service implies that you accept the sharing pattern attached to that particular translation.

By default, the translated service will assume the same price(s) as the original service. Exceptions may include cases where the translated service implies a specific localization.

Payments

How much you will receive

Each time a client makes a purchase in a given service at , the community of Authors for that particular service as a whole is granted a share equal to half of the net money that MWOL receives from that client for that particular purchase.

Ideally, when the client clicks, for instance, in your service, you would finally get $0.50 and MWOL would finally get $0.50 as well.

MWOL and you will indeed receive equal amounts, but that amount is less than $0.50, for three reasons at least.

clients may pay through a variety of channels such as online stores or instant payment providers, and each one may imply specific fees.
Usual values for that fee is around 10%. However higher values may be met.
in order to facilitate our clients' regular use of our services, we may sell packs, where a facial value (the price that the client pays) includes a discount with respect to the rights to purchase that the pack provides.
For instance, we may market a pack named Family Pack, which would provide an amount of rights to purchase at of $35 (for instance, 35 clicks on your PURCHASE $1.00 button), and set its price to $29.50 only.
When the owner of such a pack clicks PURCHASE $1.00, he is really spending less: in the example, $1.00 x 29.50 / 35 = $0.843.
We keep the price of a pack not lower than half the amount of rights it provides.
some sites may be interested in making some of 's services available directly in their pages, for instance services specifically appropriate for their visitors or their subscribers. We may choose to work with such sites, as it may increase drastically the traffic for the services, and their popularity. However this implies paying a fee (usually, a fixed fraction of the price that the clients pay) to the owner of the page where that traffic comes from.
The fees depend much on the amount of traffic expected. Values between 10% to 50% are not unusual.

Be aware of these facts when you specify your price, and remember that you can change your service's price at any moment.

How and when you will receive your money

When you submit your contribution, you subscribe as the Author for your service (this applies also for a group of Authors.) When you subscribe, you specify - among other practical information - a minimal amount to reach before we pay it to you: this is because transferring the money implies fees to pay to the (third-party) secure payments provider, and the fees may include a fixed amount. For instance, $50 or $100 are reasonable thresholds.

Whenever the amount is reached, your credit is automatically paid to you. Then, depending on your location on the planet, you may have to wait up to 2 weeks or more until you receive your check, unless you have opted for a wire transfer, which is faster and more expensive.

Timetable

An experimental server is already available as a proof of concept, that you can visit at www.myworksonline.com.

If you would like a free temporary user account to experiment with the site for good, ask in an e-mail to the address provided below.

The plans are to have the final server(s) up, running, and public by the beginning of 2007, in English and French. At that time, the richer the site, the more will become popular, and the more still more Authors will join us.

Contact

For any matter relative to , write an e-mail to .

mwo(), Instructions to Authors