You can now easily register the accompanying shareware program of Bruce A. Pokras through the Kagi payment service using their REGISTER program. Kagi is located at 1442-A Walnut Steet #392, Berkeley, CA 94709-1405 USA. Their E-mail address is sales@kagi.com. Their World Wide Web site is located at http://www.kagi.com
By registering through Kagi using the REGISTER program, you do not have to worry if my address is still current, and you can choose from a number of different payment methods. If you decide to keep the program, you launch REGISTER and fill in the electronic form.
REGISTER has blank fields for Name, E-Mail address and postal address. You enter the appropriate information into these fields. Below these fields is a scrolling list of a number of my programs and the various shareware licensing options and costs for each option. You should select either a single user license or a site-license (site licenses are especially useful for schools which want to legally put the program on all the Macs in the school computer lab, or on all the Macs throughout the school). Kagi also included a field for any bonus amount that you would like to send me (wasn╒t that nice of them?). However, you are under no obligation to do so.
If you are registering several of my programs, REGISTER keeps a running cost total in US dollars as you select shareware fees. The final option in terms of services is a request for a postal receipt, i.e., a postcard confirmation to be physically mailed back to you. This option costs an extra dollar. However, if you provide an E-Mail address, your receipt is normally sent to you via E-Mail for free.
If a program requires that you provide an 8-digit Serial Number in order for me to provide you with a Password, click on the "comment" balloon next to the name of the program that you are registering, and type the Serial Number in the field that is provided. The diagram, below, shows the "comment" balloon for one of my programs. You should click the "comment" balloon which is next to the name of the program that you are registering.
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Below the licensing fee selections are the numerous payment options; Check, Cash, Invoice, VISA, MasterCard, American Express, First Virtual.
Checks MUST be payable in US dollars. The processing fee for non-dollar checks is a bit more than the typical shareware fee so that right now, accepting checks in other currencies is a losing proposition.
"Cash" has a variety of options. The currencies currently supported are: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Portugal, Sweden, Singapore, United Kingdom, and USA. The conversion rates are shown for each currency. REGISTER automatically converts the total US dollar amount into the selected currency and performs some rounding.
"Invoice" creates a form that can be submitted to a company's Purchasing Department. It includes all the standard wording for an invoice along with the appropriate tax information for companies in the USA.
VISA, MasterCard and American Express are of course credit cards that can be used by anyone in the world. Fields appear requesting the name on the card, the card number, and the expiration date. There is extensive data checking on the card number to help eliminate data entry errors, and the date is also checked to make sure it is useable.
Before the form is printed, saved, or copied to the clipboard, the credit card data is "encrypted" into a set of data that looks nothing like a credit card number. The string "credit card" will not appear on the output. The encryption scheme is not strong enough to require an export license but is provided for those who wish to pay their shareware fees via E-Mail in a manner that is somewhat more secure than plain text.
First Virtual is a system for paying for goods over the Internet. Information on how to find out about using the First Virtual Internet payment scheme is included in the REGISTER application when this form of payment is selected.
The bottom right corner of the REGISTER screen has four buttons; PRINT, COPY, QUIT, and SAVE. The output from the form is formatted into a standard layout and the appropriate headers and footers are added to the user entered information.
PRINT prints the form. PRINT also encodes all of the user entered information into a set of barcodes and prints these barcodes following the text. The barcodes enable Kagi to quickly enter the user information with no error rate. So that you understand what information is included in the barcodes, the characters encoded in the barcodes are printed beneath the barcodes. You can compare the text information with the barcode information. If you are paying by credit card and wish to print directly to your fax modem for faxing the form to Kagi, Kagi╒s fax number is (510) 652-6589. Registrants from outside the US should add the US country code to the number.
COPY transfers the form to the clipboard as text only. COPY also has a dialog that lets you know that COPY is specifically for including the data into an E-Mail message. COPY should NOT be used for fax or postal mail since it does not include the barcodes.
Finally SAVE allows you to save the file as either text only for E-Mail, or as a TeachText document with barcodes for printing some other time or at some other location.
REGISTER comes with Balloon Help that provides useful pointers if you are unsure about how to use the REGISTER program.
Finally, for your safety and convenience, there are numerous checks to make sure that the entered data makes sense and that the required data has been entered.
