Too close for comfort is right-- it's pretty much exactly the same as rescuetime, only with fewer features, a worse interface, and new tools that let you interfere with your browsing (which I suppose is its distinguishing feature).
This is confusing to me-- why not just have RescueTime implement these features rather than fund an entirely new company? Did I miss something?
--edit--
So I watched the video, and it looks like this is a pretty awesome toolbar. The features are pretty cool. The site/copy is cheesy, though.
My comment about RescueTime and the closeness of their businesses still stands though-- I have a feeling this would be fairly easy for RescueTime to implement.
Several. One is that the time-suck of the Internet is a big problem, which means that dealing with it will be a big business, which means there will be room for many slightly differing approaches.
The other is that we can't "have" people implement features. These are startups, not employees.
Which may open up opportunities for the next round of startups: Workarounds to avoid HR mandated implementations of RescueTime and 8aweek.
In all my visits to client sites in the past 5 years, I would safely venture that 50% of all the time (that I've observed) spent by office workers is spent surfing the internet. I don't know why. Maybe they're bored. Maybe they don't have enough to do. Maybe they don't care. Maybe they lack guidance and direction (my guess).
I've often said that someone should develop a service that feeds selected content to a browser and looks exactly like outlook. The next killer app for bored workers and their PHBs. Would also save health care costs associated with sore fingers from "alt-tabbing" whenever the boss walks by.
It's been done before...I've seen a site that's like a browsing proxy, but it strips out all the stylesheets from a website and then substitutes one that looks exactly like MS Word. So you've got this word-processing document with the text of whatever you're really looking at.
Alas, I can't find the URL.
Also, my site (for casual games) gets nearly all of its traffic between the hours of 7:00 AM and 7:00 PM, Mon-Fri. The most popular time period seems to be Tuesdays from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM. Gee, I wonder what they're (avoiding) doing...
Of course you can't "have" RescueTime implement a certain feature, but you do have clout at y-funded companies, right? I mean, it's in your best interest to push the funded companies into success by suggesting new/complementary features.
The time-suck industry will be an interesting one to watch; I can see why you chose to fund 8aweek. The major problem I see with using a toolbar is that the time-suck, in many ways, is due to internet addiction. And if it's easy to bypass the toolbar, it might not be very useful. Addiction usually wins. Noprocrast fails in that regard, because you can simply launch another browser.
Can anyone share how much they ignore noprocrast?
If you have enough personal responsibility to obey noprocrast/toolbar restrictions, I can see how this would be awesome. But I also think that market is probably small. Snooze is obviously the way 8aweek tries to get around this, but after a while I think it might get annoying. I'll try it, though, and see how it goes.
I mean, it's in your best interest to push the funded companies into success by suggesting new/complementary features.
That assumes that pg (or any other person funding a company) is an oracle of what will make the company successful. The reality is that pg et al. are going to succeed by being good judges of founder character. Once they have the right founders, the founders themselves will figure out what it best to make their business suceed and pg wealthier.
That assumes that pg (or any other person funding a company) is an oracle of what will make the company successful.
In a sense I am, actually, because I know my (or anyone's) predictive ability is no substitute for watching actual users. So I tell everyone: launch quickly, listen to your users, and iterate rapidly. And that rule, so far as it goes, is a recipe for being successful.
Addiction probably won't be fixed by 8aweek, but for alot of self improvement types, like myself, I can definitely see how it'll help me shape my own behaviour.
"Can anyone share how much they ignore noprocrast?"
I ignore it when I'm in the middle of commenting on a bunch of threads (like now), but I usually heed it when I come back to news.YC in the middle of the day. I just wait for it to expire before visiting and checking links...I figure not that much can happen in half a day.
A Greasemonkey script would be a better solution... Even for news.YC, if you have an independent solution pg wouldn't know how likely you are to override the noprocrast setting ;)
I would take on this project if I had any time, which I probably waste now... hmmm... ;)
8aweek works much in the same way, but is its own FF extension to allow for some extra features and ease of install that you can't get through greasemonkey.
I had some limited success with a 10 hours noprocrast timeout. It broke the addiction, at least, so I only check in the morning and night now. You're right though, you really need to find something to replace old procrastination habits with, otherwise you'll just pick up new ones.
I've certainly started visiting Programming Reddit more since visiting news.YC less. OTOH, I don't think it makes up for the full difference, and my startup has gotten the balance of that time. That could be because the startup is more mature and hence more fun to work on now, though.
I had the crazy idea (since my startup is all about casual games) that instead of blocking people from playing games all day, you should just turn their daily work into a game. Carrot, instead of stick. Don't really know how the specifics would work, but it's something I'd like to play with as our game-creation software gets more mature.
That's a neat idea. If it is true that humans are better at solving certain problems than computers, maybe games could represent problems that the computer can't solve easily. Just think if the WoW fanbase were really number crunching!
For the past 2 years I've had great success through editing my hosts file, blocking me from seeing the sties that I tent to get addicted to. It was interesting (and scary) at first. For the first month I would still go to digg 6 times a day, subconciously even though I knew it was blocked.
Eventually it settled in that I couldn't go there, and I haven't wasted time on there since. Its a great feeling and I get way more done.
Editing the host file was a pain though, and was a cold-turkey cutoff. That's where the idea for 8aweek came. We want everyone to be able to control their bad habits, but in a nice feature rich app, and not some hack in your system's files.
Hope you try it out. Let us know if it worked for you and what would help.
"there will be room for many slightly differing approaches"
I agree
Also, although RT and 8AW seem different, assuming they are funded under the same roof, I wouldn't be surprised if they merged. RT will appeal more to busy people/professionals, whereas I see 8AW reaching younger crowd.
Also keep in mind we've only been launched for a few hours now. Being a toolbar provides us the opportunity to do some clever things, which we have planned. So as we roll out these features the differences will be more apparent.
well after much googling I couldn't find any reference to it. Can anyone help me out, it appears my google ninja skills are not up to it for this. Paul you invested in them maybe you can point us in the right direction. I am still not convinced this is a problem.
Employee efficiency is big business. Companies aren't going to fire you for spending a bit of time on CNN or Facebook, but I guarantee you they wouldn't mind getting a bit more of that time back. Every minute gained is a competitive advantage.
trust me companies that monitor their employees online time will fire employees caught surfing to much after a couple of times. The person surfing the net to long is not working and thats the end of the story for these companies.
I really like 8aweek, I am using it right now, and yet I would probably never use RescueTime. Hard to explain why since they are almost the same, but one hits the sweet spot for me in terms of aesthetics and functionality whereas the other does not.
This is confusing to me-- why not just have RescueTime implement these features rather than fund an entirely new company? Did I miss something?
--edit--
So I watched the video, and it looks like this is a pretty awesome toolbar. The features are pretty cool. The site/copy is cheesy, though.
My comment about RescueTime and the closeness of their businesses still stands though-- I have a feeling this would be fairly easy for RescueTime to implement.