Recently active discussions in RescueTime

Hi all,

I've built a little something-something to add time spent in meetings and on the phone to RT.

(Don't let the word "hack" fool you, neither existing RescueTime files NOR the RescueTime application will be touched or tinkered with.)

It's basically an Applescript with a wee bit of shell scripting peppered on, wrapped up as application.

Take a look at my blog:
http://carlo.zottmann.org/2008/02/13/...

Might be useful for some of you. It's useful to me, so it's a success already. ;)

Cheers,
Carlo

maybe I've missed this but can RT log the time from when I logon my computer to when I log off i.e the hours in my 'working day'? That way I can see how much time I'm spending away from my PC and how long a 'real' day is rather than a preset time.

I'm thrilled to be trying out the beta, I've been dying for a service like this for some time. It would be fantastic if you could tag certain blocks of time from websites and apps - say one day you're using Excel for client A and the next, you're using Excel for client B - this way, you can get a snapshot view per client on how you spent your time. Thanks!

Noticed that user.config in:
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\RescueTime.com\RescueTime.exe_Url_iqitukdlg04szbe4dffie0b1txso3v3b\1.0.5.20 contains email_address and password in plain-text.

It doesn't bother me - I'm the sole user of this system but if computer is used by more than one operator this seems like a dubious practice.

Comments?
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We've just published a update to the Windows Data Collector.

0.9.7.21 - 2007/12/05
Bugs Fixed

* There should be NO MORE multiple end times for records. If you notice any log entries with more than one end_time, please let team@rescuetime.com know.
* RescueTime will now recognize when a user has locked the machine (Windows-L) or CTRL-ALT-DEL "Lock Computer" and immediately stop logging time.
* Fixed spelling in the CTRL-ALT wording on the Basic tab
* Fixed issue with missing time when Internet Explorer was not able to resolve URLs.

New Features

* The debug log now contains the name of the log file that is being sent to the Web Service. This should help in tracking down problems since users will be able to quickly identify the log file

I don't remember giving permission to use my data, yet I just saw a Tech Crunch article that shows aggregated data from RescueTime users. Can someone explain?

Article here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/08/...

Can I get RescueTime to just show "Firefox" and not list every single website? This is a big problem for me and if I can't do this then the software is too much work to manage.

I'm impressed by RescueTime, your company, and your revenue model! As a productivity coach, I'm recommending this to all my clients. See my new blog review:

http://www.priacta.com/troblog/rescue...

This article will probably be republished on a major blog soon. Keep up the good work!

So my main machine is a Mac Pro, but I also use VMware for testing sites under IE6 and IE7. And ofcourse I have legacy data in QuickBooks on my windows machine that I need to port over to my Mac too. I haven't installed RescueTime on my Windows virtual machine yet, but I suppose I should. Here's what I'd like to hear from you about: will it double count if I do that? I'd rather have more info on what I am doing inside my virtual machine (instead of just "vmware") but I don't want to have it count my activity twice. Thoughts from your brillian RescueTime peeps?

Hi guys!

Thank you for the great app. I love it! However, I've noticed that newly released Safari 3.1 hangs trying display these flash graphics on Rescuetime dashboard.

I don't know is this Safari problem (I'm sure flash object work fine on other sites), but think you should be informed about this issue.

Once again thank you for your work!

It took me awhile to figure it out but I think i got the knack of it. Efficiency is my perception of spendign my time on efficient VS non efficient tasks. Productivity is measuring myself against everyone else in RT.

The second may not be as useful as the first sicne we have differnet ideas of what means productive. Still, if you score inthe 80s in both you must THINK you're doign something right.

Reading my email is productive only when work related. Reading email is non productive when I'm deleting spam or the plethora of FYI forwards I don't want to receive. Considering email is where I spend most of my time I am not sure I can adequately assess email in terms of efficiency.

Still the tool is good . . . to make the little graph more useful, perhaps it shoudl skip weekends - but then we're back to "week starts on what day?" Bottom line - if my work pattern makes it less useful then I do not use it.

I can see in a large organization setting the same goals and productivity for everyone then you can compare to "rest of MY team"....now THAT would be useful.

new goal layout is cool. Generally I like the new look. I can see at a glance how many days I met my goals AND the average per day. So if my goal is 2 hours per day and I met it 18 of 20 times and my average is 2.1 hours I can say the really good days made up for the ones imissed.

this is a good combiantion

Guy

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.

We just launched a patch release to support our new iGoogle gadget! Now you can keep track of your RescueTime data from your iGoogle page, or anywhere google gadgets are supported.

Add to iGoogle here:
http://www.google.com/ig/adde?source=...

Show off your time data on your blog or web page here:
http://gmodules.com/ig/creator?url=ht...

NOTE: you'll need to get your API key for this to work - check the lower left corner of the Dashboard page how to get yours..

bar graphs for hourly use are more eye friendly.

Good job adding the "rest" in top apps and tagged apps. It makes the leftovers more visual and we have a better idea if they are significant.

We have published an update to the Mac OS X Data Collector.

0.9.4 - 2007/12/04

Bugs Fixed

* Resolved the primary cause for the erroneous "There was an unknown error, some data may have been lost."
* RescueTime will now attempt to send only log files that start with "rt_"
* Better error handling that should prevent an undefiend returnCode

New Features

* The debug log now contains the name of the log file that is being sent to the Web Service

Some of the most requested features from our feedback form have been implemented! Thanks to everyone who's submitting feedback - we hear you.

You can now tag applications or web sites inline from your dashboard page or from the all apps/sites view.

We also added the ability to specify your local time zone in the
Settings tab, as well as the ability to set the first day of the week, either Sunday or Monday, for the calendar display.

More features are coming!

We've published an update to the Mac OS X Data Collector. Let me know of any issues that you find.

0.9.3 - 2007/11/18

Bugs Fixed

* Resolved many more situations that would cause the "Choose Application" dialog. These should be VERY rare now, if you find an application that causes RescueTime to display the "Choose Application" dialog, please let us know.
* Resolved error that would cause the "returnCode" variable to be undefined during transfers that were interrupted by connecting problems
* Firefox and other applications should now properly close when RescueTime is running
* Renamed Firefox and Safari applications should resolve URLs as long as they still start with "Firefox" and "Safari". For example if the application was named "Firefox 2.0.app" it was previously not resolving URLs properly. This should now work.
* Re-enabled Camino browser support that was broken after Leopard came out

New Features

* Added URL resolution for Flock and Navigator browsers
* Better name handling for Java based GUI applications

If you need - the previous version of the Mac Data Collector (0.9.2) can be downloaded from: http://www.rescuetime.com/installers/...