An unofficial blog that watches Google's attempts to move your operating system online since 2005. Not affiliated with Google.

Send your tips to gostips@gmail.com.

January 9, 2008

RescueTime, Attention Monitoring Tool

What would you get by combining Google Web History with Google Analytics? An application that shows where do you spend most of your time on the web using beautiful charts.

RescueTime takes this idea, but also tracks the usage of desktop applications. "RescueTime is a web-based time management and analytics tool for information workers who want to be more productive. [It] doesn't record what apps or sites you have open, but rather what app or site you are paying attention to!"

RescueTime installs a desktop client (available for Windows and Mac) that monitors the web sites you visit and the software you use. The data is sent to a web application that processes it and displays statistics. For now, you can only see the domains, subdomains and apps sorted by the time spent and details for each item, but it would be interesting to see information about navigation paths and individual web pages.

If you don't like the application or you're concerned about your privacy, RescueTime lets you delete your data. It also makes it clear in the FAQ that the application only monitors "the names of the apps and sites you use and the times that you use them."

8 comments:

  1. Thanks for checking out RescueTime. We were recently got seed funding by YCombinator and are charging forward with lots of new functionality. Stay tuned!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks... I guess I should start using this the only problem is that it isn't linux compatible (I work 50,50% on windows linux)

    ReplyDelete
  3. We have timetracker app out (still beta) called Paymo that's crossplatform, with a desktop app for the PC and a widget for MAC. It can be used as a personal time tracker too. Check it out at http://www.paymo.biz

    ReplyDelete
  4. You should check out TimeSnapper - it tracks your Windows applications usage, and records screenshots on a regular basis, so you can also see what you were doing at a given point. Very useful for recovering deleted data from crashed applications.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I find the memory usage very high up to 26,500k.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Try True Time Tracker -- cool time tracking software http://www.truetimetracker.com/

    ReplyDelete
  7. You might want to try Time Doctor.Check out the Comparison of rescuetime & Time Doctor.

    ReplyDelete
  8. well, i saw this similar and better solution called kpimatrix (http://www.suzerein.com) at techcrunch lately. they can be viewed from iphone as they dont use flash

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.