We’re so proud of our full-page feature in the Southwest Airlines inflight magazine this month that we’re reproducing it here (with permission):

Beeminder

This new online tool forces you to shape up — or pay up.

Here’s how Beeminder co-founder Bethany Soule describes the Web-based, incentivized task tracker: “When I met my co-founder, Daniel Reeves, he was in the doldrums of dissertation writing. That’s when we started concocting a series of incentive schemes and productivity hacks called the Voluntary Harassment Program. It was so effective that he finished his Ph.D. that year and then asked me to marry him. After that, we built a simple website for friends that, paired with small side bets, became indispensible for tracking all sorts of goals. The project evolved into Beeminder. It’s a motivational tool where you pledge money to stay on track to meet any goal. We show your progress using a digital yellow brick road, and we integrate with popular fitness and productivity sites to help you keep pace with your achievements. The way we motivate you is simple: If you miss a milestone, we take the money you pledged—which can range from $5 to several hundred dollars. We’ll even let your Twitter followers know you’ve fallen behind. Most goals are fitness-related, but some use Beeminder to boost productivity at work or fulfill lifelong goals like learning to play guitar. We use it to guarantee at least one improvement to the site each day. We’ve made more than 600 since we launched, and we’re just getting started.” beeminder.com





(Funny story about how that write-up happened. The journalist had heard about GymPact, but couldn’t find a phone number to call them anywhere. In his searches he happened upon us, and our phone number in the footer, and la! Lucky for us. So, yeah, we hate to tip off GymPact in case this happens again, but you should probably add a phone number, Pact Rats!)

Roundup of Other Press

We’re also delighted to be featured in various lists of tools for sticking to your new year’s resolutions:

And here are highlights from other coverage since our last Beeminder Buzz Blogging, in mid 2012:

And for completeness, here’s everything else we know of since mid-2012! Jake Jenkins, and again at a NYC Quantified Self Meetup, A Woman of Less Substance, MetaFilter, Portland Monthly Magazine (in actual print!), Reduce Keystrokes, WeUseThat (which we reblogged ourselves), Business Insider picked up on the WeUseThat buzz, RescueTime (from when we integrated with them), Best Vendor, Katja Grace (with concomitant Hacker News buzz and which we reblogged), Hacker News buzz about the Beeminder API, Julian Friedman, PDX Training blog, Daily Tekk (just a tiny mention), Track Yourself (which places Beeminder at the intersection of “goals” and “money”), Phil Newton (WordPress plugin for Beeminder), Josh Estelle of Google on GmailZero, Productive Superdad’s productivity tools, Pinterest, DayScore (cites Beeminder as inspiration), Loic LeMeur uses Beeminder, About Project Management, Beeminder on Reddit, Tadek on beeminding physical inbox zero, American Express: 17 best tools for building new habits and goals, Daniel Reeves at a Portland Quantified Self Meetup, Dreamwidth.org, Hunch.com, wonderful article about Beeminder on the Russian Lifehacker by Dmitry Gorchakov, and an English translation, ADD forum, Marla Cummins (also about ADD/ADHD), Ich-Besser-Mich (in German), a Spanish podcast, Self-control and Beeminder (in Lithuanian), Pomodoros to stay focused. Not to mention all the links we’ve been collecting of people doing awesome things with the Beeminder API!

UPDATE: A more recent press roundup.