While most users would probably be able to name the top sites that they’d consider most productive and time wasting, only a handful would surely be able to come up with exact figures for the last 30 days.

That’s where the Firefox add-on Surf Control steps in. The add-on tracks web usage over time and displays information about a user’s Internet usage in a dashboard in the browser. To add to that, it also allows the user to define sites as productive or time wasting, and to block sites completely or after a certain allowed usage period.

The tracking happens automatically. When you open the dashboard of the application, you will see the top productive and time wasting site, the productivity over time, browsing habits of current week and the top sites of the week.

Productive sites are marked in blue, unproductive sites in read and sites that have not been marked by the user as productive or unproductive.

A click on Details lists the top productive and time wasting sites of the week, and how time has been wasted in the last 30 days of Internet surfing (provided that the add-on had been installed for that time).

But the add-on is not only about tracking a user’s web usage over time. It can furthermore be used to limit or entirely block access to selected web sites or services.

Blocking a site outright blocks site access whenever the site is opened in the web browser. You can alternatively limit site usage per day to a specific amount of minutes per day. The very same blocked page message appears when you try to open the web page after the time runs out for the day.

This is obviously not a protection but more of a self-control feature. You can easily adjust the time or unblock sites any time in the dashboard.

When you first install SurfControl you need to add the add-on’s buttons to one of Firefox’s toolbars. This is done by selecting Firefox > Options > Toolbar Layout and by dragging and dropping the extension’s icons to the desired location.

Firefox users can download and install SurfControl from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

The program is offered as a limited free version and commercial versions. ManicTime Free comes without program support and advanced features like password protection, categorization of applications or advanced search functionality.

The free version of the time tracking software tracks and analyzes application usage automatically, and creates charts and statistics about the general computer usage.

When you start the program for the first time, you will see a tabbed interface that is divided into two main areas. The area at the top of the program window displays the current day and a time bar that visualizes computer, application and document usage on the computer. Different programs and documents are displayed with different color sets. Hovering the mouse over them displays tooltip information about the program, time and duration as well as document titles and related information.

The lower half of the screen displays the active application or document (e.g. browser tab) and totals combined (e.g. how long you spend in the Firefox browser).

The statistics tab displays various information like the top applications and documents, top computer usage or day durations.

You can pause tracking at any time with a right-click on the program’s system tray icon and the selection of “Go off the record”.

The information that ManicTime present can be a real eye opener for some users. Maybe you realize that you spend to much time gaming on Facebook or your favorite Flash games site, or watching movies on the computer.

I personally like the fact that the program keeps not only track of programs but also window titles, so that you can for instance see how much time you spend on specific websites in your web browser.

ManicTime is a handy time tracking software for the Windows operating system. Windows users can download all available versions of the software from the developer website. The program is fully compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.

Programs like TimeSheet are designed for users who spend most of their work day on the computer. TimeSheet records the activities on the computer automatically with an option to add activities manually as well.

All activities are recorded into the default project which is created on first startup. One of the advantages of TimeSheet is the ability to create and assign projects and tasks to application windows and titles which are automatically recognized once they have been configured.

time tracking software

The ability to recognize application titles allows the creation of specific rule sets. This option allows it for instance to assign specific Excel spreadsheets to different projects. This principle applies to all programs that display different titles.

A project can consist of multiple tasks which can be defined in the rules. Tasks define specific activities of a project. A basic example would be project A with the two tasks phone calls when a Skype call is made and web development when Photoshop is the active window.

timesheet

Rules can be modified at anytime in the application’s settings. The reporting can be configured to display activities of a specific time frame or a weekly overview.

An export option is available to export reports into Excel. TimeSheet displays a system tray notification whenever the active program window changes. The notification displays the active program name and project / task it is recorded in. Users who do not need that option can turn if off in the program’s settings.

Time spend on projects or tasks can be added manually as well. This way non-computer related activities or activities on other computer systems can be added to the time tracking app.

The program runs in a learning mode by default which will recognize new program windows automatically. The option to create rules for new applications is provided directly in that mode.

TimeSheet is an automatic time tracking software with an interesting feature set. The developer could improve on the export, import and syncing features though.

The rest of the program leaves little to desire. TimeSheet can be downloaded from the developer’s website. The software is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0.

Pageaddict is a time tracking add-on for the Mozilla Firefox web browser that uses a different measuring technique. It records the total time that the user spent in the web browser as well as the time spend on individual websites.

The developer of the add-on has created it to inform Firefox users on their browsing habits. This can help in a self analysis of those habits, maybe to cut the time spent online by reducing the time spend on some sites that are listed by Pageaddict.

It can however also be used to record the times spent on websites for business or educational purposes.

Pageaddict is active right after the installation of the add-on in the web browser. The statistics of the time spent online can be accessed in the Firefox Tools menu or by directly visiting the Pageaddict website.

Tags can be defined to sort websites into categories to make the identification easier. It is for instance possible to create the tags work, research, downloads and entertainment to see how much time is spent on those activities. The websites need to be linked to tags after their creation.

Pageaddict does not store information about the websites that are visited by the user remotely. All information are stored locally according to the developer of the extension. The Firefox add-on can be downloaded from the Mozilla website.

Or what about knowing precisely how much time you have spent on a billable project for that client that demands to know to the exact second? For these time-sensitive tasks, there are plenty of tools to employ to track your time. One of those tools (GnoTime) takes keep track of time to new levels.  Not only does GnoTime keep track of your time worked, it also allows you to keep journals of your activities as well as generate reports and invoices based on your time worked. GnoTime is simple to use and can help you work and invoice more efficiently. In this article you will learn how to install and use GnoTime in order to more effectively bill your clients for your work.

Installation

Installing GnoTime is simple. Most likely you will find this tool in your distributions’ standard repositories, so you can install with a command similar to:

sudo apt-get install gnotime

Depending upon your setup, there may be some dependencies to install in order for GnoTime installation to succeed. You can also fire up Synaptic or gpackagekit, search for “gnotime” (no quotes), and install from there.

Once you have the tool installed you will find it located in the Office sub-menu of your Applications menu.

Using GnoTime

Figure 1

When you fire up GnoTime it might seem like there is little to the tool. Don’t be fooled. Under that simple interface (see Figure 1) there is plenty to offer.

Figure 1 shows a currently timed task running (Timing the writing of this article to be exact). Before I walk you through the process of setting up and starting a timed task, let’s take a look at the configuration of GnoTime.

Figure 2

The first thing you want to do is click on the Settings menu and select Preferences. When this new window opens (see Figure 2) you will notice a number of tabs for configuration.

You can walk through the various tabs and see what configuration options best suit your needs. What you may notice is the lack of configuration options for invoicing. There is a reason for that. The creators of GnoTime were wise enough to realize that different projects would come with different price tags. To illustrate pricing and invoicing, I will walk you through setting up a task.

The first step is to click on the New button to begin setting up a task. A small window will open asking you to give the task a name and a description. Enter the necessary information and click OK.

When you okay the name of the task you will be returned to the main window, where your new task will be listed. You will notice the status of the new task is labeled as “Not Started”. You will need to configure a few details before you start your task.

Figure 3

Right click the new task listing and select Properties from the menu. In this new window (see Figure 3) you will want to go through and fill out all of the pertinent information for this task. In particular you will want to pay attention to the Rates tab. This is where you configure your various rates for your project. Without these configurations, the invoice feature will be worthless. Configure the rates according to the project at hand.

Once you have everything just right for this task, click OK to save and dismiss this window. Let’s see how this works out with the invoicing now.

Figure 4

To show an invoice select the project and then go to the Reports menu and select Invoice. When the invoice window opens (see Figure 4) you can then save the invoice to your hard drive and then view the directory in a web browser for printing. As you can see there are other options available. Of these options, Publish is not quite functional. When you click Publish you will be met with a few possibilities – of which none are viable options yet. The developers are working on getting the publish options working, but for now just click the Save button, view the invoice in a web browser, and print the invoice from there.

Final thoughts

If you are looking for a time-tracking/billing solution for your consultation work (or any other work), you need look no further than GnoTime. Although there are features that are yet to be 100 % implemented, the tool is still very useful.

If you’ve already used a previous version, the most prominent change you’ll notice is the UI differences. I am not a huge fan of changing a UI that already looks and feels good, but they did a great job here, everything is a bit bigger, easier to use, and logically arranged into tabs. My favorite new visual feature can be observed right here in a project’s summary menu, where there is a big “Actual hours vs estimate” representation with a horizontal bar filling up as you go along. Visual stuff like this helps me tremendously, it instills more “panic”, so I will probably get a move on if I see the estimate being overshot soon.

Of course this isn’t a hugely useful feature otherwise, but some great time tracking and usability issues have been addressed as well. You can now reorder your projects using drag and drop, which was something I really missed, now you can push subtasks between main tasks, so if you work in a project oriented workspace (as opposed to a client oriented one), you can easily move subtasks here and there. Another great feature implemented is better exporting capabilities. If you click on a summary you can now simply drag and drop an Excel icon onto the desktop to export to a file (along with comments), but if Excel is open, you can simply drop it in there to open it right away. So simple, yet so elegant, I love it!

Apart from these, smaller issues were addressed, for example renaming was a bit clunky in previous versions, it wasn’t updated automatically, you had to click update for it to get updated, which is not a huge thing, but having it all done without needing to commit the changes can save you a boatload of time when adding a lot of projects.

I’m really hoping a lot more development goes into the app, as I can think of a lot of features that could be helpful. I would welcome some client management options. Since I organize Klok projects on a client basis, it would be great if contact people for all subtasks would be the same as the contact for the main entry by default. I would also have use for a sort of client management page separate from tasks where I could assign a project to a client and the appropriate structure would be created. A wonderful feature implemented is the option to give a project code to a project. I actually do this anyway, so inputting it here too is a great help, but it would be even better if you could set some rules to create these numbers automatically. I know its a long shot, but I actually manage my projects in a mysql database because I have a project management site for my clients, so exporting and interacting with mysql would be awesome, but I think I personify the one and only unit of demand for this feature.

All in all I would recommend Klok to anyone, freelancers, young mothers staying at home, office workers, anyone can benefit from a little time tracking, maybe only for fun to see what you waste time on? On another note, does any of you know if there will be a paid version of Klok? The download link says “Free personal edition”, although there is no payment option. I am guessing there are some plans to add extra features later, anyone have some news on this?

If you want to find out how many hours you spend on your computer in the last three weeks you might want to download and run the portable time tracking software PC On / Off Time. The application can be run from any location and displays the logged in time of a user on the system. While logged in time does not necessarily mean that the user was working it can lead to a solid understanding of a user’s work schedule, especially if the computer in question is located in an office building. It can be used for monitoring usage albeit on a basic level.

Once started the time tracking software displays the usage of the first username of the system. A pulldown menu at the top makes it possible to easily switch to another user that is known on the system.

The tracking hours application presents the hours of a day on the x-axis and the date on the y-axis. The help button in the interface explains how the program is tracking the hours. It is doing so by analyzing the Windows protocol. The application is compatible with all Windows NT based operating systems including Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003.

In case you are wondering about my schedule: I changed the timezone of my computer on August 23. Can anyone beat my score? I know some of you guys have your computer turned on 24/7 which would make such a time tracking software rather useless.

Each project consists of a name and a color. That’s the minimal constellation. Additional data like contact names and email addresses can be added and sub projects can be created. Each project and sub project is listed in the left column and can be accessed with a double-click to change data, add sub projects or write comments on previous time entries.

The time of a project will be tracked when the user drags the project into the Currently Working On area of the application or by clicking on the Work On button in the project’s detail view.

Instead of tracking the time in real time it is possible to drag projects into the weekly view and edit the time manually. A double-click leads to that option which also offers access to the comment function.

Automatic time tracking cannot get better than this. The application is very responsive and it is easy to create new projects or sub projects. Reports are saved in Excel format which is also excellent.