Mac OS X only: That new MacBook Air? It’s easy for a thief to hoist. Install theft tracking solution Hidden and you’ll know your MacBook’s coordinates, screenshots, webcam pictures, and other incriminating data. (Update: a “free until January” offer was pulled early). More »
iPhone: Apple’s got a great app that rings or tracks your lost iPhone using its location data, but you can only use it if you’ve shelled out $99/year for Apple’s lame-duck MobileMe service. TekTrak does the same thing for $5. More »
iPhone: If you rest easier knowing you can peek in the where abouts of your adventurous teenagers, Whereoscope is an iOS app that turns your family’s iPhones into real-time location tools. More »
The web doesn’t lack for package tracking apps, and some of them are very clever with their data. Boxoh, on the other hand, is simple, and shows you, on a map, what you usually care about most: where your package is. More »
Where does the time go? Whether you need to know for billing purposes or just want a better idea of how your work day is split up, you can always answer that question with a good time-tracking application.
Photo by judepic.
Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite time-tracking tool, and now we’re back with the five most popular time-tracking applications to help you track the time you spend on projects and tasks of every size. Whether you’re an old veteran of time tracking and are curious to see alternatives to your current system, or you’re new to the premise and curious to see what kind of apps people use, we’ve got five solid tools to showcase.
Built with Adobe AIR, Klok is a lightweight and cross-platform tracking solution. You can create a hierarchy of projects and sub-projects in the task-management sidebar and then track the time spent on each by dragging and dropping them into the workflow for the day. While you can delve into the details of each block of time, simple adjustments like expanding the amount of time you’ve worked on a project is as easy as grabbing the edge of the block with your mouse and tugging it down.
One area of resistance many people have to using time tracking software is a fear that they’ll waste too much time actually plugging information into the system. Manic Time alleviates that fear by actively tracking what you’re doing on your computer to make tagging and analyzing your daily work flow simple. Your day is represented by three time lines: Activity (either on the computer or off), Applications (which were open), and Tags (your personal annotations to your work flow). Mousing over any of the three time lines gives you additional data about that moment on the time line and you can always pull up the statistics window to see your work patterns over time. Check out their video tutorials to see Manic Time in action.
SlimTimer is a web-based tracking solution. Once you’ve signed up for a free account, you can begin creating new tasks you want to track. You track those tasks by flagging time you spend on them in the little pop-out time manager you see in the screenshot above or by keeping the SlimTimer web site open. You can add tags to your tasks in the management section of the SlimTimer site as well as share tasks with coworkers. If you’re concerned about using a web-based tracker and losing control of or flat out losing your data, you can export your time-tracking data or even have SlimTimer email you a backup once a week.
RescueTime aims to be the least intrusive time-tracker you’ll use. Rather than have you log each individual activity you do in a journal-style system, RescueTime monitors the web sites you visit and the applications you use. You can set goals in RescueTime based on a variety of factors, like how much time you want to spend doing certain tasks or how much time you want to dedicate to certain projects. RescueTime analyzes your computer usage and reports back to you on whether or not you’re meeting those goals. RescueTime takes a different approach from most time-tracking tools, so we’d definitely recommend reading their FAQ file for additional insight into how they handle time tracking.
Hamster is a simple time-tracking tool for Linux-based systems. You enter tasks as they occur, and then you can categorize and sort them. When you’re done with a given task, you simply tell Hamster to stop tracking it. You can also set up a reminder system that will remind you to record what your current activity is every X number of minutes. One of the more interesting features of Hamster is the ability to shift how your day is defined. If you’re a night owl and do most of your work after hours, Hamster won’t slice your “day” in half at midnight just because the clock says it’s a new day.
Now that you’ve had a chance to look over the candidates for best time-tracking application, it’s time to log your vote:
Which Time-Tracking Application is Best?(answers)
Have experience with some of the applications in this week’s Hive? Can’t believe your favorite wasn’t included? Sound off in the comments.
iPhone: There are thousands and thousands of iPhone applications, but you hardly have time to keep up with their pricing changes, let alone new releases. The FreeAppAlert web service will keep you updated.
You can set up FreeAppAlert’s site to notify you via email, twitter, or RSS about the newest free iPhone apps, including those making the jump from behind a pay wall. If you don’t want to be bothered with notifications, you can browse the site by date when you’re in the mood to stock up on new apps.
If you find a gem in the archives, make sure to throw a link in the comments to share the wealth.
We’ve seen plenty of personal finance tools designed to help you track what you’re spending, but web site PocketSmith is an impressive new web-based personal finance tool with an emphasis on forecasting your financial future.
PocketSmith is probably most similar to Wesabe since, unlike Mint, you’re responsible for manually adding your financial transactions to PocketSmith. You can upload your transactions in OFX, QIF, or CSV format to PocketSmith, so it’s not as though you have to enter in every line item manually (though you can create manual accounts to do just that if you prefer).
PocketSmith even integrates with Google Calendar so your important cash flow events (bills and deposits) are laid out for you.
When you set your spending goals, PocketSmith helps you track your actual spending versus your projected spending.
The thing we like most about PocketSmith is its emphasis on projections and forecasts, letting you see what you’re aiming for financially.
We haven’t spent enough time with PocketSmith to really make a full judgment call on the application’s effectiveness as a whole (that’s always a difficulty when checking out personal finance apps), but we know one thing for sure: It looks great, and we do like the apps emphasis on future financial goals (dangling the carrot is a very good thing). If you’ve spent more time with it than we have, let’s hear what you think about it in the comments.
Windows only: ManicTime is a detailed time-tracking application for keeping tabs on where your workday goes. Get a handle on how you spend your time with tags, graphs, and reports.
If you were intrigued by previously reviewed RescueTime but were turned off by the idea of uploading all your data to the RescueTime servers, ManicTime offers a very similar set of tools but stores your data locally.
ManicTime runs as a background process and consumes very few resources. When open, ManicTime records which programs are open and what files they’re accessing. Even if you never plugged any input into it, the app would do a very thorough job telling you when you were working and what you were working on. There are three primary timelines in ManicTime: the activity line shows whether you were idle or active, the application line shows which applications were in use, and the tag line is for user supplied information about the work at hand. You can tag both idle and active blocks of time by simply highlighting them and applying the tag.
The ability to tag idle time adds a great deal of functionality to the application: you can tag time spent in meetings, making phone calls, or even time logged at the gym. The tag system makes it easy to keep tabs on what work you're doing for different projects and clients—an especially handy feature for people who spend all their time using a similar set of applications for nearly every task at work. You can graph user specified blocks of time based on a variety of parameters like the basic active/idle cycles, by applications, or tags to see how your time is spent. ManicTime is freeware, Windows only.
Web-based application TrackThis is a veritable Swiss Army knife of package tracking with the ability to track packages from thirteen different carriers and update you in six different ways.
Enter a tracking number into TrackThis and assign it a nickname—like Nick's Naughty Valentine Box 'o Fun—and TrackThis automatically detects if the tracking number is from one of the thirteen carriers it supports. The webapp recognizes track numbers from FedEx, UPS, USPS, and all the way to the freight company CEVA and the international carriers like Canada Post and UK City Link.
Equally as impressive as its roster of carriers is the number of ways it can update you. TrackThis can show updates through its website, or send you updates through email, SMS, RSS, Twitter, or even Facebook messages. So if you really want to see where your mailed item is every step of the way, there’s little chance you’ll be left in the dark. TrackThis is a free service, but does require you to use a Google, OpenID or other compatible service for login. Thanks zyzzva!
