

Critique my app: JotBot, a desktop time-tracking tool - jamesbritt
http://www.getjotbot.com

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webwright
I love the idea behind this, and the site/implementation feel solid-- but it's
a productivity nightmare.

I dunno if you've read Harrison Burgeron (by Vonnegut):
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron>

It's a dystopian future where everyone is equal by bringing exceptional people
of any kind down to the lowest common denominator. To make smart people less
smart, they put buzzers in their ears that went off at random intervals to
disrupt concentration. That's pretty much what you're doing.

There are a lot of productivity studies that support this... Showing that
ANYTHING that takes people out of the "zone" (when they are in it) makes it
likelier that they'll shift to something else than if the distraction didn't
occur. This includes IM, phone calls, knocks at the door, email dings,
whatever.

Would be interesting to run RescueTime at a business before and after-- you
might actually be doing less damage than you cause (i.e. time saved
reconstructing time, nagging people to do time entry, etc., might outweigh the
distraction/derailing that you're causing).

~~~
arnorhs
[whoops, commented on the wrong reply, sorry :-) ]

You have to remember that there are actually a lot of companies out there that
are doing contracting work and working on the hour for various clients. For
those clients you need to show what you're billing them for.

On top of that, it could be for any kind of work - not just programming -
design, engineering work, contractor work (builders etc), electricians, you
name it...

~~~
jamesbritt
"You have to remember that there are actually a lot of companies out there
that are doing contracting work and working on the hour for various clients.
For those clients you need to show what you're billing them for."

This was a real win for us with JotBot. HCS has some clients who, while
generally pretty easy-going about invoice details, sometimes want to know just
how time was spent for this or that bill. So we can now go back and see not
just the time spent on a project, and the specific project categories, but
read the various notes added to flesh out those time records.

Often _I_ want to know just why something took me so long, so it's nice to
have notes written at the time of the activity. The reporting features really
help there.

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jamesbritt
My company, Happy Camper Studios, recently released our first app. JotBot is a
cross-platform time-tracking tool that runs on the desktop.

htttp://www.getjotbot

We started out writing it for ourselves since we hated tracking our time, but
needed to do it, and didn't like the available tools. It's written in JRuby
using the Monkeybars library and Swing, and is, as best I know, the first
commercial desktop app written in JRuby.

All feedback welcome. Thanks.

~~~
doompuma
Based on the screencast, I'd suggest replacing the category field's "are you
sure" dialog with autocompletion and fuzzy matching, like Firefox's address
bar. This would still prevent the accidental creation of new categories by
typos, but with the advantage of not breaking the user's flow.

Also, I was annoyed by the need to request a trial key by email before I could
even get a whiff of the app. I'm willing to endure this kind of bureaucracy
when I'm evaluating something like an IDE, but for a $25 time-tracking app it
feels excessive.

~~~
jamesbritt
We had looked into some autocomplete features, but decided to release first
rather than get caught up in that. It is something we want to add, though.

Your point about needing to wait for the E-mail with the key is well taken.
I'll see if we can think up an alternative to make it less onerous to just try
it out.

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asnyder
I've been asking RescueTime to incorporate something like this into their
application for about a year now. Unfortunately, they haven't quite yet. I
think it would be interesting if you could somehow integrate this into
RescueTime, the two of these products together would make for a really useful
combination, and finally allow me to track my time accurately, and know my
productivity and programs I was using during that time period.

~~~
webwright
This is higher on our list than you can imagine... Unfortunately, we painted
ourselves into a corner a bit by using .NET and had to rebuild our foundation
to do this (and other cool things) on the client side in a light/reliable way.
Should be out in early 2009 (but not like this guy is doing it-- see other
comment).

edit: if you drop me a line (tony@rescuetime dot com), I'd love to run by how
we're hoping to implement this to get your thoughts.

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okeumeni
Great design and nice idea!

Only one thing I will not use this application because of its disruptive
functionality. I understand it is part of the tool; I just don’t handle
interruption very well especially when I’m working. Keep it up and good luck.

~~~
jamesbritt
"Only one thing I will not use this application because of its disruptive
functionality. "

Naturally, I would hope you would try the app in earnest before dismissing it,
but I understand that this approach just doesn't sit well with everyone.
Either way, I appreciate your comment. FWIW though, I'm not a big fan of
disruption, and have been surprised at how well JotBot has worked for me.

We'll certainly keep looking into how to make it less disruptive while still
having it do what it's meant to do: get accurate information on how you've
spent your time.

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MoeDrippins
I have beta tested it and it is a nice program. I even LIKE the "disruptive"
way it goes about tracking time.

However, I've found a free one that does much the same. Personal Time Manager
(look for it on sourceforge). It's kinda-sorta not as slick, but it's free.

Also, as I was beta testing, the support email address kept bouncing mails
back to me.

~~~
jamesbritt
"Also, as I was beta testing, the support email address kept bouncing mails
back to me."

Really? That's no good. :( I apologize; we thought we had that all in place
for the beta.

Was it info@getjotbot.com, by any chance?

~~~
MoeDrippins
No, support@. The only one I could find on the beta web page, although I could
have missed others.

And yes, PTM is a windows app, but it is .net so conceivably mono could
help/work with other platforms. I'm not a .net coder by trade, so I don't know
of the difficulty of cross development issues with mono.

PTM also tracks use of applications by CPU time (or some such), along the
lines of RescueTime, so you can see what apps you've actually used during
whatever task. I don't use nor need that feature, and that might also be
something that can't be reliably ported to other platforms.

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bd
Nice application, wrong workflow. You shouldn't be bugged every x-minutes
polling your state constantly.

It's better to track just state changes.

I use a tiny free application that does exactly this, with minimum clicks
needed.

<http://cratchit.org/TimeTool/index.htm>

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leftnode
Where does it save the data too? What if I'm on multiple computers (ie, work
from home and work), do I have to have it installed on each?

It looks nice, but I'll stick with <http://slimtimer.com> which is web based,
so you can track your time from any computer.

Best of luck!

~~~
jamesbritt
"Where does it save the data too? What if I'm on multiple computers (ie, work
from home and work), do I have to have it installed on each?"

Yes, for now. It uses a local database to store info.

We're working on, for lack of a better term, the "enterprise" version, which
posts data to a remote server.

"It looks nice, but I'll stick with <http://slimtimer.com> which is web based,
so you can track your time from any computer."

I'll have to give that a try. It doesn't look as though it will remind me to
enter information, though, which is my main issue. (And I don't really want to
keep a browser open all the time. Or have to remember not to close it.)

"Best of luck!"

Thanks!

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dchest
It doesn't look _right_ on Mac OS X.

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espadagroup
Is it better than RescueTime especially since it's not free?

