GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 535816
Hamster as a RescueTime client
Last modified: 2010-02-08 17:44:48 UTC
RescueTime is a time tracking webpage that has been getting some attention in Planet Ubuntu. You can read about it here: https://www.rescuetime.com https://launchpad.net/rescuetime-linux-uploader/ http://joey.ubuntu-rocks.org/blog/2008/05/30/rescuetime-on-ubuntu/ It really seems simple and informative. It would be cool to use Hamster as a client, that could use the page's settings, upload data and maybe show results locally.
It would also be extra cool just to see how rescuetime works and replicate it... but that could mean much more work as well.
I like the idea of an Epiphany / Firefox plugin or having Hamster to check your open Windows and their titles, but not the "upload to webservice" for privacy issues and of course another project has the same aim https://launchpad.net/rescuetime-linux-uploader to serve as a rescuetime-client (NIH).
Well, there's no reason why uploading to a web should be necessary. But associating several webs or apps to a certain action would be cool. That way Hamster can know that I'm procastinating even if I told it I'm working on something important, because I'm on Ubuntuforums or Totem is my active app.
Why not add a generic system for third-party-integration to hamster. So other services could provide their plugins to sync hamster with some central server. Thats the only thing I currenly miss in hamster, putting the data somewhere in the web and on the way there supporting some timetracking-services would be great. For example there could be a plugin for paymo, they seem to release their API sometime soon: http://blog.paymo.biz/timetracker-client-version-20.html#comment-217 Only supporting RescueTime is not a real option I think. ;-)
Is there any chance of adding this type of functionality to Project Hamster? It doesn't need to integrate at all with RescueTime, but when I used Hamster, the hardest part was remembering to make activities, then change them. The RescueTime idea takes care of that. It records the current app, which you can associate with activities. It would make using Hamster a lot more useful for many people I believe, and isn't that hard. You just get the current process. https://launchpad.net/rescuetime-linux-uploader Rescuetime Linux uploader is also written in python, so maybe you could use theirs? The functionality is the same except for the uploading to RescueTime. I might be willing to try to help, I know a decent amount of python. No guarantees, as I am a student and thus have little time to devote to the project. Daniel LaGesse
Daniel, realistically I don't think we will be trying to get into rescuetime or similar any time soon, and watching running applications and making sense out of it is a totally different story. Hardest part of time tracking is, indeed, tracking time, huh, but really - it's not so hard - just a bit of self discipline, and at the end you get what you give.
marking this as dupe of the other sync bug, as our generic response is that this should be achieved via 3rd party module consuming the D-Bus API *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 545816 ***