On the other hand, I would consider pledging the money to a charity, and giving a small cut to service that facilitates it.
Also, there is gym-pact.com, which disburses your money to others who do meet their workout requirements.
The app doesn't work this way (pledge money). It's simply a tweet scheduler which charges $5 to make changes every time.
I'm not sure $5 is enough motivation, and if it were significantly more I'd start to question why I was giving this money to the developers of this app, rather than someone more deserving, like the users who are missing out on using the product, or a charity.
I have a folder on my computer with a number of unfinished/unshipped projects. We created Sink or Ship to address the problem of following though and shipping what you started.
Whenever you get some completed projects it would be cool if there was a gallery to check them out.
try this addon feature : create a "gallery" of to-be released projects (don't need to reveal title/details due to secrecy). Possible candidate:
"@ashtonkutcher just pledged a secret project, $5000 to charity if he fails by 10th May. Watch progress here"
Although, I can see a $1 charge for the tweet as a marketing fee so you make SOME money if the planets align and the product ships.
Also, it doesn't say how much it'd cost if I don't ship in time, just "Free if you ship it in time. Pay $5 only when you want to make changes." -- what if I don't ship in time and I don't make changes?
Cool idea, though :)
As for the charity, it should obviously go to further research into procrastination disorders :)
It does nothing towards improving core problems of software development lifecycle planning issues.
I would suggest reading a book like Peopleware, before embarking on public shame or penalties as solutions. These band-aids are almost always self-imposed, and they almost never work.
The truth is, we don't know yet. And we definitely didn't try to solve/improve software development lifecycle/plannings.
We built this for people like us: bunch of friends working on fun projects and trying to get it out of the door.