Recently active topics in RescueTime about PC Data Collector

We have released an update to the Windows Data Collector.

You can read about other changes released today at our blog: http://blog.rescuetime.com/2008/02/10...

Bugs Fixed

• Dramatically reduced physical memory footprint for RescueTime.exe. Physical memory should now be around 2 MB (vs 32 MB) during most operations. Physical memory will jump to 11 MB when uploading log files to the RescueTime server, but should drop
  back down to the 2 MB range after the upload completes. Note: Virtual Memory numbers are not affected by this change, which will still report roughly 32 MB, due to the way .Net framework allocates memory.
  
• Additional large file checks to prevent files larger than 1,000K from being sent to the RescueTime.com server.
  
• Removed updater service. This has been causing a number of our users issues and I don't think we are seeing a whole lot of benefit from it. RescueTime will still check for updates upon startup and through the "Check for updates" menu option.

New Features

• URL support for Opera
  
• URL support for Flock

I have been working on a few significant modifications to the Windows Data Collector that I would like to get a handful of Windows users involved with.

If you are interested in helping out, read on.

Windows Data Collector - 0.9.9

Fixes:

* Dramatically reduced physical memory footprint for RescueTime.exe. Physical memory should now be around 2 MB (vs 32 MB) during most operations. Physical memory will jump to 11 MB when uploading log files to the RescueTime server, but should drop back down to the 2 MB range after the upload completes. Note, Virtual Memory numbers are not affected by this change, which will still report roughly 32 MB, mostly due to the way .Net framework allocates memory.

* Additional large file checks to prevent files larger than 1,000K from being sent to the RescueTime.com server.

* Removed updater service. This has been causing a number of our users issues and I don't think we are seeing a whole lot of benefit from it. RescueTime will still check for updates upon startup and through the "Check for updates" menu option.

New Features:

* URL support for Opera

* URL support for Flock

Specific Testing I'm asking for:

* Feedback on the update process. To remove the updater service, there are some scripted commands that run during the update. These commands should remove the RescueTimeStart process owned by the SYSTEM user (which can be seen in the Task Manager). If you still see a RescueTimeStart process running after completing the update let me know. Also, please report any errors or unexpected behavior during the update process.

* Memory utilization and performance impacts after the install. The aggressive memory reclamation that I'm doing does take some processing. On the test systems that I've run the new data collector on I have not noticed any performance degradation and CPU utilization is typically < 1%.

* Opera and Flock URL support feedback. To get current URL's from Opera, I had to deploy DDE libraries which is why you will see a couple of new files in your installation directory.

How to get the update:

* In the directory where RescueTime is installed (default c:\Program Files\RescueTime), there is a file named UpdateServer.ini. Change the contents of that ini file from "www.rescuetime.com/updates" to "dev.rescuetime.com/updates"
* Select "Check for updates" from the RescueTime menu or restart RescueTime with the RescueTimeStart.exe and you should be informed that there are new updates available.

Respond to this forum post with any feedback you have.

Thank you!

We have published updates to both the OS X (0.9.5) and Windows (0.9.8) Data Collectors.

New features -

* By popular demand, RescueTime now has the ability to differentiate between Google “applications”. For instance: www.google.com/reader will now be considered different than www.google.com. We are doing this for the following Google sites:

o google.com/reader
o google.com/ig (iGoogle)
o google.com/notebook
o google.com/calendar
o google.com/talk
o google.com/analytics

* We have added the ability to send updates from the application menu - “Send Update Now”

Fixes - OS X

* Fixed error dialog that would appear when RescueTime.com was down for maintenance or other situations where there data collector timed out when communicating with the RescueTime.com servers
* The Preferences dialog should now properly get focus and become active when opening from the System menu icon

Fixed - Windows

* Fix to prevent log files larger than 500k from being generated.