It gives me ridiculous amounts of joy to present a new nifty tool for making (and keeping) pledges. Welcome to this web two-dot-oh filled world, Pledgehammer.
According to any dictionary a pledge is a solemn binding promise to do, give, or refrain from doing something. It is also something given or held as security to guarantee payment of a debt or fulfillment of an obligation. We just put the two together. The idea is very simple. First you make a pledge with a firm deadline and a financial incentive for keeping your resolution. For example, I will not smoke until May 1st 2009 if you want to make one of the most popular new year’s resolutions or I will not invade any Middle Eastern countries until February 2010 if you happen to be the president of a powerful Western country. Pledgehammer then makes your pledge public and asks you how you did upon the deadline.
If you kept your pledge, well done. We’ll be proud of you and probably so will you. But if you didn’t you have to pay up (you had to pick a financial incentive, remember?). However, the money doesn’t go to greedy people behind Pledgehammer. It goes to a charity you pick yourself. So either way the world will be a little bit better. Or a lot better, because who needs people that can’t quit smoking, invade other countries or don’t donate money to charity anyway.
So please make a pledge. And if you spot anything that shouldn’t be there or should be better please let me know. We want to get everything just right for the time when people rush in to make their new year’s resolutions.
Thanks go out to Priidu for his design geniuseness, Malthe for his common sense and advice plus a good many other people without whom Pledgehammer would be just an idea left undone. Merry pledging to you all!

Update 2010: project closed down.