Recently active ideas in RescueTime

Show a revised DashBoard as a SideBar in FireFox.

Not sure if more info is needed, but basically want a version of the Dashboard that will be useful in teh side bar so I can pop it open at anytime to see what is going on within my "RescueTime."

Just a note to all the Linux folks out there that, while we "proudly support Mac and Windows", we are NOT proud that we don't support Linux. We wish we did.

Our early marketing/PR efforts showed about 6-7% of our visitors were Linux users. Additionally, we think Linux users are more likely to be avid stats-hackers (and thus dig RescueTime). So we REALLY want to support Linux.

Nonetheless, there are only so many hours in the day and we are a team of 3 self-funded guys.

Our sincere hope is that some enterprising young linux geek out there will reach out to us with an interest in building a data collector. Our data collectors talk to a REST web service, so it wouldn't be an overwhelming task for a sharp coder, and we'd be glad to offer a lot of support.

For more info, feel free to contact us. We've got a plea for help up on our API/Developer page:

http://www.rescuetime.com/developers/

I would like to see Firefox/IE/Safari combined into a single category, and then be able to drill into that to see what sites were visited.It is nice to see all of the sites, but there get to be so many little sites that it is hard to see the big picture. Most other applications only show up as a single application (Office Apps, Visual Studio, etc.) rather than displaying which projects/documents you are working in (though it would be nice :) ). I have a good idea of how much time I am spending proportionately on work related sites vs. personal sites, but I have no idea how much time I am spending overall.

I would like to be able to set goals over a period other than "day" and "weekday". Specifically, I would like to say "at least 1 hour per week on tagX".

Just to seed our fancy new GetSatisfaction site preemptively...

One of the concerns we've heard about RescueTime is privacy.

Just wanted to let people know a few responses on that:

1) We're going to roll out a feature that will let you totally nuke some or all of your data from our servers.

2) We don't ask for your name and happily encourage webmail addresses for anonymity if you're passionate about that.

3) We're going to look at AGGREGATE data, but have a pledge to not look at indvidual data (unless there's a bug/error that requires it).

4) I hate to mention it, but there are probably dozens of geeks who have access to your inbox. And Google is recording your search history.

5) We're making it easy to cheat in RescueTime-- if you want to fudge your data, I'll tell ya how to do it (I bet you can figure it out).

6) It's nigh impossible to put on someone's computer without their knowing.

If anyone has any other ideas around privacy, let us know. We're pretty adament about giving our users as much privacy as they want/need.

It would be useful if you could distinguish and tag who you're talking to in instant messenger, rather than just that you have instant messenger focused. (The same way that RescueTime can tell what website you're on rather than just that you're in a browser.)

I use Pidgin to connect to several IM accounts, one mostly for work and one mostly for personal stuff. Sometimes when I'm on IM I'm chatting with my husband (NOT productive) and other times I'm really hashing things out with a colleague (very productive).

Using Rescuetime in my company, I spend some time away from my computer: breaks, meetings, interviews. So the amount of daily time reported in Rescue Time may vary greatly day after day.

RescueTime records a valuable information for me: time of the first login in the morning and time of the last logout in the evening. With these 2 times, I should be able to know the actual amount of time spent in my company (I know even some companies that use the login time of their employee as a "time card", to record the amount of time spent inside the company).

Anyway, I would like to see this information on my dash board. The best is to include it into the bar chart and count the time spent away from the computer, and auto-tag it for example "Away from PC". It would be simply computed as:

(time of last logout of the day) MINUS (time of first login of the day) MINUS (total of time recorded by RescueTime -applications, sites-)

By doing so, the dashboard will display more consistent total time day by day, and I would be able to see the days where I spend more time away from the PC.

I'd like to be able to manually enter computer tasks that weren't recorded by RescueTime. I set up a new laptop this weekend and did some work on it, but I realize now that I didn't install RescueTime, so all my productivity went unrecorded! ;)

If there were a way to make manual records in RescueTime, I would be a happy camper.

I wish we could have more slices in the dashboard view - two just isn't enough sometimes!

..constantly shifting from work to home I need to re-enter the proxy details whenever I log back on at work. A checkbox that enables/disables the use of a proxy would be helpful!

Keep up the good work.

I use RescueTime on my notebook - both at home and work. In corporate network I have to use proxy, of course at home not.

RescueTime data collector should automatically detect lack of proxy or at least try to send updates using proxy and directly (without proxy), if proxy was not found. That would save me a switching proxy on and off when I'm at work / home.

It would be nice with goal that says: "I want to spend more/less than x hours on my computer per day.

Since I work with audio and video, the title of the particular Category - "Fun" - doesn't sound right to me.
Something that you work with for hours a day (and nights) and gives you lots of headaches can't be exactly "fun"... ;-)
Maybe the name of the Category can be just Audio/Video?
What do you guys think?

The weekly summary should be talking not only about the app but also about the category and tag. Even butter, we should be able to tel what kind of data we want to see in this summary and if we want them to be visual or numbers.

On the other side, it would be great to know in the summary how the ranking of apps/category/tag changed, with for exemple: "n°6: iCal (Last week: 2nd)" or with a up/down arrow, green if the app is productiv, red if not.

Hello, I would like to be able to apply tags to all "apps" that match specified regular expression.
At the moment, RescueTime suggests "You don’t have to tag everything. You should really only tag apps & sites that you've spent a lot of time with or that you'll use again in the future." I don't agree. For example, I may spend a whole day researching the life and times of Thomas Nashe, visiting 50-60 different websites in one day, maybe 2 or 3 of which I will return to. I still want to be able to aggregate those 50-60 sites under a single tag.
[Spurious reference to the Long Tail goes here]

This looks the the perfect app. It has everything I need, except that it posts the data to the web. I NEED an app like this, but I value my privacy enough not to send the info off into cyber-space. Any chance of creating a version of RescueTime that logs and processes all the data locally? I would be happy to PAY for an app like that.

Also, often I use my computer (laptop) offline, and I still want to be able to log my usage.

I have read the privacy policy, but blind trust is not enough. I really dont need my data going out into cyber space at all.

I'd like to be able to specify the productivity of "untagged" applications.

I don't really want to create a "not-work" tag for everything. I'd like to be able to say that all time spend in an untagged application has this productivity. This would really improve my productivity and efficient scores and give me a much more accurate idea over time.

Keep up the good work!

How about having a tab called "All Apps" instead of "All Apps & Sites" - This allows us to view our apps usage alone without having to view websites along with it? Else, I believe I will have to go and add another filter called "offline" and tag all my apps again so that I can view just apps.

I think it would be interesting if there was an option to switch the graphs into a timeline mode. Rather than break it down per task / per hour, I think it would be nice if you could see a large timeline (for the entire day or a given time period) instead.

Allow tags to have timeframes attached to them. IE: between 8am and 4pm on Monday through Friday the 'work' tag is automatically appended to all applications (user defined).