In the dark, pre-digital age, applying for a grant often meant racing to the post office before closing time on deadline day, hoping to score that precious postmark that let your project qualify.

I heard rumors that there was a special post office near the airport in my town that didn't close until midnight, but I think that's an urban myth, because the only people I know who claim they went looking for the office never found it. For me, at least, it never came to that.

Anyway, those days are gone. I can't remember the last time I submitted a grant application on paper. While they eliminate waste, to say nothing of a mad and last-minute dash through traffic, online applications introduce a whole new harrowing set of emotions.

Forget about persuading a security guard to slip the app under the door; when the online grants are closed, they're closed up tight. Those friendly text boxes that beckoned you for weeks, waiting for your project narrative or budget, freeze you out after deadline — or simply disappear, like they were never there at all.

Then there is the possibility that, just as you've miraculously gathered the last bit of required information, your server goes down. Such was the case for a recent competition held by the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute, where eventually, after the virtual equivalent of battering the door, my application was accepted (alas, only to be considered and rejected).

Or maybe you thought you submitted it — you know you clicked "submit" — but when you check back, your info just isn't there. This is the fear I have for a grant I recently submitted (I know I did) to the Knight Foundation's 21st Century News Challenge. I received an email confirming my submission, but I still freaked out a bit when I logged into the application form again to remind myself what I'd written, and what came up was all blank! The info's just been moved along, right? (That's what I get for turning it in ahead of time.)

Beyond the new forms of punishment for both procrastination and planning ahead introduced by the online application, there's another disquieting development: Funders can easily, and do, comment on or even share your application information with others.

This was impossible with paper applications. In the time it would have taken to produce a separate document copying or commenting on the proposals, funders could just select and announce the winners. And even if they did produce such a document, whom would they send it to? How could they know who, beyond the applicants, such information would interest?

The Internet eliminates all those issues. The Knight Foundation grant, due at midnight tonight (mine is in, right? right?), gives applicants the option of making their proposals transparent from the time of submission, inviting all interested parties to read and comment. Most of the comments seem come from staunch supporters trying to boost the applicants' chances, rather than from neutral observers with ideas to share. But the crowd-sourcing impulse is still a good one.

Also due today (at 8 p.m. EST, ahem), the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory's Digital Media and Learning Competition, underwritten by the MacArthur Foundation, offers its own comments on the contest's progress through a blog written by HASTAC's Cathy Davidson (who happens to have been a beloved professor of mine in grad school).

After announcing the number of hits to the contest website in a post shortly after the contest was announced last August, Davidson egged on would-be applicants on September 30: If you know anything at all about technology, you know it doesn't always work as planned. So why would you wait to submit your online application for the Digital Media and Learning Competition until the last moment? InfoSpherian warns: "Wise technophiles apply early!"

Not many heeded her warning. On October 6, Davidson mused: I realize that, human nature being what it is, people never submit anything before the deadline, but as we begin our countdown, I wonder what it is that makes us need the clicking clock before we can finish?

What, indeed?

Maybe that's why I like publishing online so much. Every day's a deadline in the perpetual digital present. This post's done. Now I've got a little under 12 hours to finish my next application ...