Comments on: Next Gen Productivity Monitoring Software

By: Tony Wright

Tony Wright — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:27:09 +0000

I know this post is almost a year old (time flies!), but I figured I’d chime in from RescueTime:

“For example, I give the service $25 or $50 up front, and after I meet some sort of goal it buys me something off my Amazon wish list.”

We LOVE that idea.

On the API front, we’re JUST launching our first big API push– so I think a lot of cool things are going to be possible!

Oh, and we’re building in LeechBlock style stuff, too. Here is a super sneak peak at a block page: http://www.rescuetime.com/blocked/url/twitter.com

You’ll be able to set up various conditions for blocking (including stuff like “block social networking if it exceeds X” OR “block social networking until I exceed Y in Software Dev time”). My favorite is the “Focus” button inside the client which basically allows you to say, “Block the bad parts of the Internet for me for 1 hour”. We’ll take anything you’ve labeled as super-distracting (or, if you haven’t labeled them, we’ll rely on the rest of our users) and give you 1 hour of focus!

(note: all the blocky stuff and API are coming in the next release– a few weeks!)

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:18:56 +0000

@Edison — Yes, exactly! Once there is some agreement on what this looks like, there are all kinds of widgets and tools that could use it.

By: Edison Thomaz

Edison Thomaz — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:10:13 +0000

Hi Tom – These are great ideas. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. We’ve been thinking of ways to add some of these features to Slife.

Regarding the interruption idea, you could specify which apps/docs represent work and which ones represent “fun”. With this info up in the cloud, there could be some really lightweight widgets that you could put in your blog/social network/etc to indicate whether it’s a good time for you to be interrupted. With an API, you could even intersect this with your IM client and Skype.

Great stuff,

-et

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 04:53:36 +0000

@Leon Hey, glad you like them. Supporting a LeechBlock style feature would be nice, but just recommending it would be a good start. But if you are going to do it yourself, the firewall API on Vista is apparently pretty easy. Blocking the site at that level would block both IE and FireFox.

@SDC Wouldn’t that be great? The IM clients seem like they are always in such a feature arms-race that I can’t believe none of them have added it.

By: SDC

SDC — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 01:34:00 +0000

I especially like the ‘how bad of an idea it is to interrupt me now’ idea.

By: Leon (from TimeSnapper)

Leon (from TimeSnapper) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:33:19 +0000

Amazing ideas! Love the analysis you’ve done and the thought you’ve put into this.

I’d love it if TimeSnapper could reward me with a random gift from Amazon wishlist.

Bringing in some (optional) LeechBlock-style features is something we’ve given thought to in the past, and it may happen yet.

All three are great ideas, and very creative.