GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 639018
Create a fork of the Hamster applet that monitors activities automatically
Last modified: 2011-05-10 15:55:43 UTC
Here's my suggestion: There's not really a good program under Linux that does this. Rescue-time comes close, but it doesn't work really well under Linux. Hamster does a pretty good job at reminding you to focus on what you set up to do. As far as the statistics part goes, though, it's not very accurate if you want to monitor you're actual activities since users get distracted and don't enter what they've been doing instead of what they have set up to do. Since Hamster has already done a great job at displaying statistics of activities it might be a relatively easy task (for a programmer) to create a modification, where the activities would follow the active window. Categorization could come from the type of application running, the specific task from the window title. (i.e.: category: evince, task: User's documentation.pdf) A program like that would be great for monitoring a user's actual habits and increasing productivity, while hamster as it is is still great for other things.
You don't need to fork anything. Just create an application that monitors whatever you wish to track and reports it to Hamster using its API.
Well, I'm not really a programmer. I just wanted to express my opinion that a lot of people might welcome implementing a feature like this (in any way) in case a real programmer agrees and decides to write such an extension in their free time. :-D
There are a couple of Linux programs that monitor activity, but none do it well. KTimeTracker - a horrible interface that I fail to understand. It also initiates a new activity even if something has been active for only a couple of seconds, so there's a lot of spam. If you are like me, and tend to hop around a lot, this is unuseable. gfocustimer - A really old program - 2001 - I couldn't get it to compile. Runs under XWindows and watches the focus, like KTimeTracker. The interface doesn't use nice widgets, but looks more sane. I used to use Spherical Technology Time Tracker (disappeared) under windows. The key problem seems to be linking applications with tasks: you don't just use Gimp for one project or one client, you use it for lots. Spherical sort of did this, but it wasn't brilliant. And it's not just applications: it's windows, and tabs and particular sites in browsers that need to be linked to the activity/task. I think this a good suggestion, but hard to implement in a way that works well.
I think, what you consider the key problem, Jeff V, is easily solvable. The automatic part of the program does not need to handle this. All it has to do is track the name of the program and the file that's open (or simply the window title) and utilize some algorithm that will gracefully handle switching between windows (putting the times together, deleting tracks of negligibly short activities). Matching programs with tasks could then be done by the user by selecting the relevant activities in the overview and doing the appropriate modifications (assigning tags or whatever). I think the real problem of hamster's usability is the user - most of us simply stop entering activities after a while. If someone is so disciplined that they can be relied on monitoring their activities all the time, they don't need time-monitoring applications so much after all.
My experience of Spherical was that there was quite a lot of work involved. When I tried KTimeTracker, I generated hundreds of entries over a couple of days. Lots of those were for very brief periods, which is pointless - if you use an application for 1 minute it's not worth recording. It was the disambiguation that took time: was this use of Gedit for Project A or Project B. Was that use of Gimp for Client X or Y? Hamster has an advantage in that the regular reminders can be used to do some sensible auto grouping, and it's the start of some context. My other suggestion for gathering this context is to have automated screenshots, linked into a movie. All of these together would make for a good record of what you were doing, with the chance to disambiguage when there was uncertainty.
tracking which document/url is open in which apps at which times ... isn't that what zeitgeist can do? i _am_ a programmer and am very keen to progress this somehow - i just want to do it Right. :-) i might be able to lash up a quick dbus link-up between zeitgeist and hamster (i've already done one between hamster and empathy) just to see how it goes.
found this on planet gnome which should be useful: http://freesteph.info/post/2011/04/20/Introducing-Creeper there's also some more good links in the comments on that page.
closing as wontfix. as mentioned before - the app tracking application can use hamster as backend and gain the frontend visuals.
fair enough. for those who are interested, i've made my zeitgeist-hamster link app: http://whyoh.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/python-hamster-and-zeitgeist-ftw/