We’ve been improving Beeminder at a brisk pace lately. First, just as you can... »

Remember our elaborate SOS clause? It describes in excruciating detail what to do if unforeseen circumstances cause you to drive off your yellow brick road. Well, we’ve since realized it suffices to just believe people. If you don’t want us to “just believe you” — it does have the danger of... »

My mom recently lost $5,000 to my brother in a commitment contract gone wild. That was started in part as an experiment early in Beeminder’s beta period before we’d thought of things like the exponential pledge schedule. Believe it or not, it was actually a pretty positive outcome: my mom gradually lost a tiny bit of... »

Let’s talk about some novel ways to use Beeminder! Whenever we hear about one of these I want to slap up a big smiling picture of the user in our “new favorite Beeminder” frame. First though, this entire post is a thinly veiled excuse to point out that OHMYGODGUYS Fog Creek likes us, they really really... »

StickK popularized the idea of the anti-charity as a commitment device. Another Beeminder competitor, Aherk, offers to publish embarrassing photos of you on Facebook to ensure you don’t fall prey to akrasia. Another clever idea — proposed by Jennifer Hamon on Akratics Anonymous — is to set up a... »

At the risk of launching a thousand rants from the old neckbeard guard, it’s hard to imagine what writing code was like before git and GitHub came along. GitHub has made it really easy for people to collaborate on projects, and gives you some nifty stats to boot. For some people, those shiny graphs are enough (and if that’s you, by all means, try out tenXer). But if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that... »