7 ms·

I was not happy with features and UX of other productivity trackers. Most of the time tracking software is made for controlling employees or for billing clients

by ivm 10y ago

I was not happy with features and UX of other productivity trackers. Most of the time tracking software is made for controlling employees or for billing clients and I just wanted an automated productivity measurement. I tried RescueTime before but it was too expensive for its functionality ($72-108/year) and also collected all my tracked data on their servers. There is standalone ManicTime on Windows but OS X standalone trackers lack features and most of them are not automatic. So I started to play with OS X accessibility and got promising results pretty fast. Then there were about 14 months of writing some code once in a week or two and 3 months of almost full time polishing and gathering feedback. Now it's marketing time. Qbserve did well on PH but almost no other sites picked it from there. This week I pitched about 70 journalists and bloggers who write about Mac or productivity apps but the results are not clear yet. I'll be very grateful for advices on how to promote it better and overall feedback. Thank you!

ckluis 10y ago
I’d put the price on your website and not click on a button to buy/try before finding out the price. Also I’d “raise the price” and offer a launch special discount (or not raise the price and do the same).
- ivm 10y ago
  Added price to the site, thanks. It's 25% off currently, I'm going to raise the price in July.
  - theseanstewart 10y ago
    Just something to consider. I wouldn't mention when you're planning on increasing the price. Just that the price is going to go up "soon". Now I know I have a whole month to put off buying it and may forget about it in that time period. That being said, I'll be buying it. It's a great app and well worth the price.
    - curiousgal 10y ago
      Found the marketing guy! Solid advice. Kudos.
    - bronson 10y ago
      > price is going to go up "soon". Ugh, smells like marketing tactics. Whenever I see leading yet vague language, I become a lot more likely to close the tab.
- peternicky 10y ago
  I'm getting very long loading times and still can't see the page. Please fix because I would like to use this application.
jtmarmon 10y ago
this is super awesome. I've been using rescuetime for around two years, and although it's worked great I'd love to see more feature progress. Also there's no 2FA support which is quite scary for something with such sensitive data. I love your dock icon as well. I was trying to build a custom version of that but for my tmux line, but rescuetime's API doesn't provide realtime info. Will you open up some APIs for the data? I'd love to be able to do my own analysis and build my own tools. I'd also like to backup the data to s3
- ivm 10y ago
  Thank you! I'm researching what will be the best way to export data and connect to other apps (IFTTT probably). In case somebody would like to export the tracked information: it's stored in SQLite in the ~/Library/Application\ Support/Qbserve/ and has a very simple scheme of HistoryLog tables for each month that refer to Activities table that refer to Categories and Apps tables.
  - jtmarmon 10y ago
    thanks! that's easy enough :D
  - harlanlewis 10y ago
    Your first comment in the thread was a near-perfect match of how I see the time tracking space. Will definitely hit the free trial. Very interested to see how it progresses. Great to hear you're considering data export. I'd love to display time usage in a tool like Gyroscope (https://gyrosco.pe/ https://gyrosco.pe/), which already integrates with RescueTime and a variety of other activity-specific trackers. Visualizations and stats in Qbserve are great for diving into the details of time spent on the computer, while exports to more generalized tools help show how the big pieces of life fit together.
    - ivm 10y ago
      Thank you for the tip, I will see how we can integrate it with Gyroscope.
deleted 10y ago
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deleted 10y ago
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xoa 10y ago
Looks like an excellent start, and definitely fills a needed niche under OS X. As far as feature feedback, and perhaps for 2.0, one possible addition you could consider for your idle detection or tracking capabilities would be Bluetooth device reads. When I leave my system I take my phone, so in turn that can act as a useful automatic proxy for whether I'm in the area so to speak or not. I use that already to automatically do things like change my away status on IRC or activate the screensaver if I've forgotten and change display timeout. It's a niche nicety and not really necessary but might be worth considering. Alternatively if Qbserve was AppleScript-able enough that could just be handled via scripting same as anything else. As far as marketing if you decide you'd like to just get it in front of a lot of possible seats you might consider picking one or more of the application bundles, particularly "productivity" focused ones, and see about getting it in there. You won't make much money on it directly, but it is a good way to get a lot of people who wouldn't necessarily risk it otherwise to give it a spin without actually giving it away for free, and in turn sell paid upgrades from there. I wouldn't necessarily suggest doing that vs pure organic, at least not for a while, and how much economic sense that'll make for you depends on existing sales and what sort of major upgrade schedule you're considering. It's an option to consider though and can be one of the better forms of advertising, in that it goes right to a naturally more targeted, self-selected audience for low outlay. Qbserve certainly looks plenty quality enough to fit in. Best of luck to you! Edit to add: While you specifically contrast this to business software for controlling employees, nevertheless I think a number of small businesses in particular might find this interesting, more from the employee empowerment/knowledge point of view rather then control. To that end some form of basic multiseat discounts might earn you some more bulk orders (doesn't even have to be much, 5% off 5-10, 12% off 10-50, etc, or whatever makes sense to you). Similarly, things like Educational/Non-profit discounts and Family seats are tried and true ways to get people on the train. ---- Also a small bit of extra kudos postscript: thank you so much for going to the trouble to actually choose a distinct, unique non-word name for your software. The trend of picking single standard words for application names (acknowledging that modern Apple is the originator of evil here) has been incredibly irritating as it makes searching and discussion entirely unnecessarily more difficult.
- ivm 10y ago
  Thank you a lot! I will definitely consider the small business option. We now have educational discounts and the license is also works for the whole family (up to 5 machines).
hjnilsson 10y ago
What is your long-term monetisation plan here then? One-time payment won't last forever, as we've seen from different programs lately.
- ivm 10y ago
  Why not? Thousands of app companies exist on one-time payment for many years, releasing payed updates sometimes. MacPaw is a good modern example.
- jabbslad 10y ago
  Hat tip to the software author for showing some morals and not trying to bleed consumers dry with a monthly service cost for something which is not a service. He has just won some custom from me.
- copperx 10y ago
  You charge for significant version upgrades. The industry was OK with that model for decades before SaaS became feasible. Very soon having a big monthly software bill will be seen as normal. This makes me sad. Don't we have enough recurring bills as it is?
- nicky0 10y ago
  For a solo developer a one-time purchase model can do pretty well. 60 million+ Mac users is a big market. Speaking from experience. A desktop app with no server component doesn't necessarily need aggressive monetisation because at a certain point it reaches feature maturity and doesn't need much more work. It sells itself while the developer works on other things. Of course if you're looking to go beyond a "micro-isv/lifestyle" business and want huge growth it's a different sorry.
vitd 10y ago
You've hit several good points here! This looks really cool. I've never used something like this, but I'm seriously considering buying it. I love the single price up front and the privacy of not sending my tracking data to some unknown server on the internet. My only complaint is that I absolutely hate the name. I don't even know how to pronounce it. "Cube-serv?" "Queue Observe?" Don't make me think. Also, I'd be embarrassed to try to say the word to someone else when telling them about it. "Looks like a really cool app! What's it called?" "Oh, it's um... Q... Uh... Cube..., uh I don't know. I have to go." And even if I could pronounce it, trying to spell it for someone so they can look it up. Ugh. Forget about it.
- ivm 10y ago
  Haha, yes, we had some doubts about the name's UX but nothing better was found. It's cube-serve in my opinion, an observing cube. Well, I'm not a native English speaker... :)
  - Sean1708 10y ago
    You could make the IPA form (kjuːb-sɜːv) part of the logo design, I always think that looks pretty cool.
    - ivm 10y ago
      :D Sounds interesting but I don't know how many users know how to read this...
      - kentt 10y ago
        I would guess that most people don't. I certainly wouldn't feel confident.
        evincarofautumn 10y ago
        On the other hand, using IPA more widely would help more people know about it. It is the standard in linguistics—although that’s not necessarily a sufficient argument, as it might be too technical for a general audience.
podgib 10y ago
Do you have a timeline for Firefox site tracking? I'd definitely buy this to replace RescueTime if it supported Firefox
- ivm 10y ago
  I hope I can convince Firefox team to report page URLs to OS X accessibility. Or maybe I will try to commit it myself.
  - mweibel 10y ago
    Do you have a issue or feature request open? I'd be happy to add a plus one:-)
    - ivm 10y ago
      Not yet, sorry.
  - lensi 10y ago
    Timingapp.com is able to track Firefox urls somehow.
- r00fus 10y ago
  I must say, I use FF all the time. Of course, all my work is on FF tabs, so it's still useful to track distractions.
- mescalito 10y ago
  I used desktime and they seem to provide an extension for urls, couldn't you do something similar?
  - ivm 10y ago
    Probably. We just need to release some other features and fixes first.
buremba 10y ago
I looks nice and clean. I have used only 3 hours but I have a feedback for the application and website database. It can recognise popular Macbook applications and websites but the current database doesn't seem large enough. Can we tag applications & websites in "Neural" tab as productive or distracting? I think it would be great if you could just open-source the database and let people contribute it so that everyone can benefit from that.
- TJTorola 10y ago
  In the details tab when you click on a particular entry, you can modify that entries productivity category, more so there is a checkbox to send that info to the developers. I believe this is the functionality you are looking for.
- ivm 10y ago
  Thank you. Database includes the most popular apps and sites and it will grow in future. Unrecognized domains and apps are sent by users on categorization but you can opt-out by unchecking "Submit..." or disable it completely (in Settings). Check out the help and privacy policy for more details: https://qotoqot.com/qbserve/help/ https://qotoqot.com/qbserve/help/ > Can we tag applications & websites in "Neural" tab as productive or distracting? You can add any site, application and even windows to any category. Select the activity you'd like to change in the Details tab to see the popover with settings for this activity.
fuzzywalrus 10y ago
Have you used the Application Timing? https://timingapp.com/ https://timingapp.com/ It tracks visited sites (on all browsers) + allows you create pools for projects + applications and what directory the file you're working on. Long as you keep your assets in a single folder, you're always tracking to which project. Items can be in multiple pools so you can go by task vs project time. I've been using this for about a year for personal use. While it doesn't look as pretty or divvy up tasks between "neutral", "productive" and "distractive' that's something you can define if you wanted. I'm not trying to be harsh but just based on the product site, I'm not exactly compelled to give up Timing although your application does look nice.
- ivm 10y ago
  Yes, I used it for a while to see what kinds of trackers exist on OS X. But I rarely need to know the path or track a specific project. Productivity of sites and chats is more important for me since I want to know stats of my procrastination.
donatj 10y ago
I'd love to have the ability to filter productive/distracting on a finer basis than domain alone. If I'm on github.com/mycompany/* it's productive, if I'm on github.com/someuser/somerandomlibrary it's probably neutral/slightly distracting. If I'm on github.com/donatj/* I'm probably distracted with personal projects I shouldn't be poking at work.
- ivm 10y ago
  I think I'm going to add custom filters to solve this and probably iTerm tracking.
  - donatj 10y ago
    I don't know if it would be possible, but if you could add referer tracking as well... somehow... For example a link I clicked from hacker news is almost certainly distracting.
    - ivm 10y ago
      Yes, StayFocusd does it this but it's a browser extension. I can build one for Qbserve but right now it's not a priority, sorry. Added it to possible features though, thank you.
knowtheory 10y ago
Hey! Tried it out, bought a copy :) The thing i'm noticing most (and i can hack around this probably) is that there are some things that are productive in certain contexts (monitoring twitter after launching/announcing a thing) and not in others not (twtittering while i'm supposed to be writing code, or letting myself get distracted by twitter while waiting for something to build). Would you consider some notion of rule sets scoped to some notion of "what i'm supposed to be doing"?
- ivm 10y ago
  Thank you! It will be hard to implement since the "smallest tracking unit" is activity - a website or a window. I also can't see how to implement it without making everything too complex (the app's UX is too complex already in my opinion). You can try to use a different browser since domains are bound to browsers. Like using productive Twitter in Safari and distracting Twitter in Opera.
  - knowtheory 10y ago
    Yeah! I dig it. So, I honestly wouldn't change anything about the interface, except to wrap the entire thing in an outer shell with something that represents what GTD software might call a context. And depending on context, different rule sets apply. Anyway, that's just a suggestion, don't mean to stomp on your notion of product, what you've got is a great start and a neat coupling of product experience and interesting engineering! I especially like the ambient info display in the app icon. Seeing whether the app is bordered in green or blue every time i tab up the app switcher is a great piece of design.
mkolodny 10y ago
I'd buy it right now if I could buy it through the Mac App Store - I have a bunch of credit there.
- ivm 10y ago
  Sorry, it's not working in a sandboxed environment that is a must for the Mac App Store.
tehno 10y ago
> $ brew cask info qbserve > Error: No available Cask for qbserve Would be nice if you'd do a PR to get your app into Homebrew. It's just much easier to find, install and update apps with Cask.
- ivm 10y ago
  Thanks for the tip, I'll do it!
- adidalal 10y ago
  Just added to Homebrew Cask, feel free to `brew cask install qbserve` (I'm one of the maintainers of Homebrew Cask)
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Thank you!
ambicapter 10y ago
I added a category and it shows up in categories but not in the dropdown menu for a specific activity? OS X 10.10.5
- ivm 10y ago
  There are actually 3 dropdown menus based on productivity selection. So if you've added a productive category, select "Productive" tab first and then it will appear in the dropdown. If it's missing from there then it's probably a bug.
  - ambicapter 10y ago
    Oh I get it. Is it supposed to be reading tabs in Safari? Because it really depends on the website whether or not I'm being 'productive'.
    - ivm 10y ago
      Yes, it should show all the domains you used in Safari separately.
      - ambicapter 10y ago
        Okay, and if it doesn't? I'm using the trial right now.
        ivm 10y ago
        Please re-check the accessibility access in the system settings: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18391 https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18391 If it still fails to get the tabs, please contact me: https://qotoqot.com/contact/ https://qotoqot.com/contact/
primitivesuave 10y ago
This is a really nice app. I work with kids (age 8 - 18) and they seem to be the most unaware of the enormous amounts of computer time eaten up by games and trivial activities. I'll definitely be sharing this with them! I was able to figure out all the features simply by experimentation, but a tour might be helpful to guide through the process of adding a new category/website/app. There are obviously going to be niche cases that you can't get information on with this app (I might be working on a personal project and there would be no way of knowing), but for 99% of people this seems to be what they would need. I second the suggestion below about allowing more detailed domain name matching, since github.com/mycompany is productive while github.com/anythingelse is usually not. Overall it's a beautiful product and well-executed idea, I appreciate the 10 day trial and I'll definitely be purchasing it. I fell to 19% productivity as I was writing this comment so I'm going to get back to work :)
- ivm 10y ago
  Thank you! The top priorities (after fixing small issues) are custom window/URL matching and then data exporting.
  - primitivesuave 10y ago
    Hadn't thought of exporting, that would actually be really cool because I'm sure there are many ways to analyze one's productivity and glean useful insights (e.g. what times of the day are most productive, which apps are the biggest distractions, etc)
nspassov 10y ago
Hi, downloaded the app and definitely giving it a try at work. Had not thought about using an app to track my activities but I think it may be useful for tracking my time at the office and also just for fun (I like looking at the stats). So far I think it looks pretty good for version 1.0. Will probably have more feedback after a few days.
DenisM 10y ago
Make a 3 minute video of typical use pattern? I'd watch that.
spoinkaroo 10y ago
Where do I find the student / 5 person discount? I am a student and interested in purchasing.
- ivm 10y ago
  Please contact us: https://qotoqot.com/contact/ https://qotoqot.com/contact/
poorman 10y ago
It would be awesome if you could correlate this with songs playing on Spotify. Allow me to explain. I'm listing to Spotify all day while writing code, listening to playlists like "Discover Weekly" or the "Radio". I find that some songs often make me much more productive than others. With all the data you collect, you could easily determine what songs are playing while I'm "productive" --such as while an editor (Atom) is open for a period of time. Then, those songs could get added to a "productive" playlist that I can use later when I need to really focus. The problem currently is that we don't know what songs are playing when we are super productive because the truly great songs making us productive don't distract us, and thus never get added to a playlist as "productive" songs; they just keep playing in the background acting as a muse.
- ivm 10y ago
  This is an interesting idea but sorry, it's too much for the app to become a separate feature. We will have export in future and you will be able to match data from Qbserve and data from Spotify to see which tracks create the flow for you.
- raihansaputra 10y ago
  Cross the data with last.fm scrobbler? (Connect your spotify to last.fm, sync timestamps with data from tracker)
1dayitwillmake 10y ago
This app is awesome, i love it already - best of these i've ever used. Would be nice if we could set the idle to < 5 min. Also sorting the columns when clicking as well
- ivm 10y ago
  Thank you, please check the settings for the idle time adjustment.
1dayitwillmake 10y ago
This app is awesome, i love it already - best of these i've ever used. Would be nice if we could set the idle to < 5 min. Also sorting the columns when clicking as well

by ivm 10y ago

ckluis 10y ago

I’d put the price on your website and not click on a button to buy/try before finding out the price. Also I’d “raise the price” and offer a launch special discount (or not raise the price and do the same).

ivm 10y ago
Added price to the site, thanks. It's 25% off currently, I'm going to raise the price in July.
- theseanstewart 10y ago
  Just something to consider. I wouldn't mention when you're planning on increasing the price. Just that the price is going to go up "soon". Now I know I have a whole month to put off buying it and may forget about it in that time period. That being said, I'll be buying it. It's a great app and well worth the price.
  - curiousgal 10y ago
    Found the marketing guy! Solid advice. Kudos.
  - bronson 10y ago
    > price is going to go up "soon". Ugh, smells like marketing tactics. Whenever I see leading yet vague language, I become a lot more likely to close the tab.
peternicky 10y ago
I'm getting very long loading times and still can't see the page. Please fix because I would like to use this application.

jtmarmon 10y ago

this is super awesome. I've been using rescuetime for around two years, and although it's worked great I'd love to see more feature progress. Also there's no 2FA support which is quite scary for something with such sensitive data. I love your dock icon as well. I was trying to build a custom version of that but for my tmux line, but rescuetime's API doesn't provide realtime info. Will you open up some APIs for the data? I'd love to be able to do my own analysis and build my own tools. I'd also like to backup the data to s3

ivm 10y ago
Thank you! I'm researching what will be the best way to export data and connect to other apps (IFTTT probably). In case somebody would like to export the tracked information: it's stored in SQLite in the ~/Library/Application\ Support/Qbserve/ and has a very simple scheme of HistoryLog tables for each month that refer to Activities table that refer to Categories and Apps tables.
- jtmarmon 10y ago
  thanks! that's easy enough :D
- harlanlewis 10y ago
  Your first comment in the thread was a near-perfect match of how I see the time tracking space. Will definitely hit the free trial. Very interested to see how it progresses. Great to hear you're considering data export. I'd love to display time usage in a tool like Gyroscope (https://gyrosco.pe/ https://gyrosco.pe/), which already integrates with RescueTime and a variety of other activity-specific trackers. Visualizations and stats in Qbserve are great for diving into the details of time spent on the computer, while exports to more generalized tools help show how the big pieces of life fit together.
  - ivm 10y ago
    Thank you for the tip, I will see how we can integrate it with Gyroscope.

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xoa 10y ago

Looks like an excellent start, and definitely fills a needed niche under OS X. As far as feature feedback, and perhaps for 2.0, one possible addition you could consider for your idle detection or tracking capabilities would be Bluetooth device reads. When I leave my system I take my phone, so in turn that can act as a useful automatic proxy for whether I'm in the area so to speak or not. I use that already to automatically do things like change my away status on IRC or activate the screensaver if I've forgotten and change display timeout. It's a niche nicety and not really necessary but might be worth considering. Alternatively if Qbserve was AppleScript-able enough that could just be handled via scripting same as anything else. As far as marketing if you decide you'd like to just get it in front of a lot of possible seats you might consider picking one or more of the application bundles, particularly "productivity" focused ones, and see about getting it in there. You won't make much money on it directly, but it is a good way to get a lot of people who wouldn't necessarily risk it otherwise to give it a spin without actually giving it away for free, and in turn sell paid upgrades from there. I wouldn't necessarily suggest doing that vs pure organic, at least not for a while, and how much economic sense that'll make for you depends on existing sales and what sort of major upgrade schedule you're considering. It's an option to consider though and can be one of the better forms of advertising, in that it goes right to a naturally more targeted, self-selected audience for low outlay. Qbserve certainly looks plenty quality enough to fit in. Best of luck to you! Edit to add: While you specifically contrast this to business software for controlling employees, nevertheless I think a number of small businesses in particular might find this interesting, more from the employee empowerment/knowledge point of view rather then control. To that end some form of basic multiseat discounts might earn you some more bulk orders (doesn't even have to be much, 5% off 5-10, 12% off 10-50, etc, or whatever makes sense to you). Similarly, things like Educational/Non-profit discounts and Family seats are tried and true ways to get people on the train. ---- Also a small bit of extra kudos postscript: thank you so much for going to the trouble to actually choose a distinct, unique non-word name for your software. The trend of picking single standard words for application names (acknowledging that modern Apple is the originator of evil here) has been incredibly irritating as it makes searching and discussion entirely unnecessarily more difficult.

ivm 10y ago
Thank you a lot! I will definitely consider the small business option. We now have educational discounts and the license is also works for the whole family (up to 5 machines).

hjnilsson 10y ago

What is your long-term monetisation plan here then? One-time payment won't last forever, as we've seen from different programs lately.

ivm 10y ago
Why not? Thousands of app companies exist on one-time payment for many years, releasing payed updates sometimes. MacPaw is a good modern example.
jabbslad 10y ago
Hat tip to the software author for showing some morals and not trying to bleed consumers dry with a monthly service cost for something which is not a service. He has just won some custom from me.
copperx 10y ago
You charge for significant version upgrades. The industry was OK with that model for decades before SaaS became feasible. Very soon having a big monthly software bill will be seen as normal. This makes me sad. Don't we have enough recurring bills as it is?
nicky0 10y ago
For a solo developer a one-time purchase model can do pretty well. 60 million+ Mac users is a big market. Speaking from experience. A desktop app with no server component doesn't necessarily need aggressive monetisation because at a certain point it reaches feature maturity and doesn't need much more work. It sells itself while the developer works on other things. Of course if you're looking to go beyond a "micro-isv/lifestyle" business and want huge growth it's a different sorry.

vitd 10y ago

You've hit several good points here! This looks really cool. I've never used something like this, but I'm seriously considering buying it. I love the single price up front and the privacy of not sending my tracking data to some unknown server on the internet. My only complaint is that I absolutely hate the name. I don't even know how to pronounce it. "Cube-serv?" "Queue Observe?" Don't make me think. Also, I'd be embarrassed to try to say the word to someone else when telling them about it. "Looks like a really cool app! What's it called?" "Oh, it's um... Q... Uh... Cube..., uh I don't know. I have to go." And even if I could pronounce it, trying to spell it for someone so they can look it up. Ugh. Forget about it.

ivm 10y ago
Haha, yes, we had some doubts about the name's UX but nothing better was found. It's cube-serve in my opinion, an observing cube. Well, I'm not a native English speaker... :)
- Sean1708 10y ago
  You could make the IPA form (kjuːb-sɜːv) part of the logo design, I always think that looks pretty cool.
  - ivm 10y ago
    :D Sounds interesting but I don't know how many users know how to read this...
    - kentt 10y ago
      I would guess that most people don't. I certainly wouldn't feel confident.
      - evincarofautumn 10y ago
        On the other hand, using IPA more widely would help more people know about it. It is the standard in linguistics—although that’s not necessarily a sufficient argument, as it might be too technical for a general audience.

podgib 10y ago

Do you have a timeline for Firefox site tracking? I'd definitely buy this to replace RescueTime if it supported Firefox

ivm 10y ago
I hope I can convince Firefox team to report page URLs to OS X accessibility. Or maybe I will try to commit it myself.
- mweibel 10y ago
  Do you have a issue or feature request open? I'd be happy to add a plus one:-)
  - ivm 10y ago
    Not yet, sorry.
- lensi 10y ago
  Timingapp.com is able to track Firefox urls somehow.
r00fus 10y ago
I must say, I use FF all the time. Of course, all my work is on FF tabs, so it's still useful to track distractions.
mescalito 10y ago
I used desktime and they seem to provide an extension for urls, couldn't you do something similar?
- ivm 10y ago
  Probably. We just need to release some other features and fixes first.

buremba 10y ago

I looks nice and clean. I have used only 3 hours but I have a feedback for the application and website database. It can recognise popular Macbook applications and websites but the current database doesn't seem large enough. Can we tag applications & websites in "Neural" tab as productive or distracting? I think it would be great if you could just open-source the database and let people contribute it so that everyone can benefit from that.

TJTorola 10y ago
In the details tab when you click on a particular entry, you can modify that entries productivity category, more so there is a checkbox to send that info to the developers. I believe this is the functionality you are looking for.
ivm 10y ago
Thank you. Database includes the most popular apps and sites and it will grow in future. Unrecognized domains and apps are sent by users on categorization but you can opt-out by unchecking "Submit..." or disable it completely (in Settings). Check out the help and privacy policy for more details: https://qotoqot.com/qbserve/help/ https://qotoqot.com/qbserve/help/ > Can we tag applications & websites in "Neural" tab as productive or distracting? You can add any site, application and even windows to any category. Select the activity you'd like to change in the Details tab to see the popover with settings for this activity.

fuzzywalrus 10y ago

Have you used the Application Timing? https://timingapp.com/ https://timingapp.com/ It tracks visited sites (on all browsers) + allows you create pools for projects + applications and what directory the file you're working on. Long as you keep your assets in a single folder, you're always tracking to which project. Items can be in multiple pools so you can go by task vs project time. I've been using this for about a year for personal use. While it doesn't look as pretty or divvy up tasks between "neutral", "productive" and "distractive' that's something you can define if you wanted. I'm not trying to be harsh but just based on the product site, I'm not exactly compelled to give up Timing although your application does look nice.

ivm 10y ago
Yes, I used it for a while to see what kinds of trackers exist on OS X. But I rarely need to know the path or track a specific project. Productivity of sites and chats is more important for me since I want to know stats of my procrastination.

donatj 10y ago

I'd love to have the ability to filter productive/distracting on a finer basis than domain alone. If I'm on github.com/mycompany/* it's productive, if I'm on github.com/someuser/somerandomlibrary it's probably neutral/slightly distracting. If I'm on github.com/donatj/* I'm probably distracted with personal projects I shouldn't be poking at work.

ivm 10y ago
I think I'm going to add custom filters to solve this and probably iTerm tracking.
- donatj 10y ago
  I don't know if it would be possible, but if you could add referer tracking as well... somehow... For example a link I clicked from hacker news is almost certainly distracting.
  - ivm 10y ago
    Yes, StayFocusd does it this but it's a browser extension. I can build one for Qbserve but right now it's not a priority, sorry. Added it to possible features though, thank you.

knowtheory 10y ago

Hey! Tried it out, bought a copy :) The thing i'm noticing most (and i can hack around this probably) is that there are some things that are productive in certain contexts (monitoring twitter after launching/announcing a thing) and not in others not (twtittering while i'm supposed to be writing code, or letting myself get distracted by twitter while waiting for something to build). Would you consider some notion of rule sets scoped to some notion of "what i'm supposed to be doing"?

ivm 10y ago
Thank you! It will be hard to implement since the "smallest tracking unit" is activity - a website or a window. I also can't see how to implement it without making everything too complex (the app's UX is too complex already in my opinion). You can try to use a different browser since domains are bound to browsers. Like using productive Twitter in Safari and distracting Twitter in Opera.
- knowtheory 10y ago
  Yeah! I dig it. So, I honestly wouldn't change anything about the interface, except to wrap the entire thing in an outer shell with something that represents what GTD software might call a context. And depending on context, different rule sets apply. Anyway, that's just a suggestion, don't mean to stomp on your notion of product, what you've got is a great start and a neat coupling of product experience and interesting engineering! I especially like the ambient info display in the app icon. Seeing whether the app is bordered in green or blue every time i tab up the app switcher is a great piece of design.

mkolodny 10y ago

I'd buy it right now if I could buy it through the Mac App Store - I have a bunch of credit there.

ivm 10y ago
Sorry, it's not working in a sandboxed environment that is a must for the Mac App Store.

tehno 10y ago

> $ brew cask info qbserve > Error: No available Cask for qbserve Would be nice if you'd do a PR to get your app into Homebrew. It's just much easier to find, install and update apps with Cask.

ivm 10y ago
Thanks for the tip, I'll do it!
adidalal 10y ago
Just added to Homebrew Cask, feel free to `brew cask install qbserve` (I'm one of the maintainers of Homebrew Cask)
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Thank you!

ambicapter 10y ago

I added a category and it shows up in categories but not in the dropdown menu for a specific activity? OS X 10.10.5

ivm 10y ago
There are actually 3 dropdown menus based on productivity selection. So if you've added a productive category, select "Productive" tab first and then it will appear in the dropdown. If it's missing from there then it's probably a bug.
- ambicapter 10y ago
  Oh I get it. Is it supposed to be reading tabs in Safari? Because it really depends on the website whether or not I'm being 'productive'.
  - ivm 10y ago
    Yes, it should show all the domains you used in Safari separately.
    - ambicapter 10y ago
      Okay, and if it doesn't? I'm using the trial right now.
      - ivm 10y ago
        Please re-check the accessibility access in the system settings: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18391 https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18391 If it still fails to get the tabs, please contact me: https://qotoqot.com/contact/ https://qotoqot.com/contact/

primitivesuave 10y ago

This is a really nice app. I work with kids (age 8 - 18) and they seem to be the most unaware of the enormous amounts of computer time eaten up by games and trivial activities. I'll definitely be sharing this with them! I was able to figure out all the features simply by experimentation, but a tour might be helpful to guide through the process of adding a new category/website/app. There are obviously going to be niche cases that you can't get information on with this app (I might be working on a personal project and there would be no way of knowing), but for 99% of people this seems to be what they would need. I second the suggestion below about allowing more detailed domain name matching, since github.com/mycompany is productive while github.com/anythingelse is usually not. Overall it's a beautiful product and well-executed idea, I appreciate the 10 day trial and I'll definitely be purchasing it. I fell to 19% productivity as I was writing this comment so I'm going to get back to work :)

ivm 10y ago
Thank you! The top priorities (after fixing small issues) are custom window/URL matching and then data exporting.
- primitivesuave 10y ago
  Hadn't thought of exporting, that would actually be really cool because I'm sure there are many ways to analyze one's productivity and glean useful insights (e.g. what times of the day are most productive, which apps are the biggest distractions, etc)

nspassov 10y ago

Hi, downloaded the app and definitely giving it a try at work. Had not thought about using an app to track my activities but I think it may be useful for tracking my time at the office and also just for fun (I like looking at the stats). So far I think it looks pretty good for version 1.0. Will probably have more feedback after a few days.

DenisM 10y ago

Make a 3 minute video of typical use pattern? I'd watch that.

spoinkaroo 10y ago

Where do I find the student / 5 person discount? I am a student and interested in purchasing.

ivm 10y ago
Please contact us: https://qotoqot.com/contact/ https://qotoqot.com/contact/

poorman 10y ago

It would be awesome if you could correlate this with songs playing on Spotify. Allow me to explain. I'm listing to Spotify all day while writing code, listening to playlists like "Discover Weekly" or the "Radio". I find that some songs often make me much more productive than others. With all the data you collect, you could easily determine what songs are playing while I'm "productive" --such as while an editor (Atom) is open for a period of time. Then, those songs could get added to a "productive" playlist that I can use later when I need to really focus. The problem currently is that we don't know what songs are playing when we are super productive because the truly great songs making us productive don't distract us, and thus never get added to a playlist as "productive" songs; they just keep playing in the background acting as a muse.

ivm 10y ago
This is an interesting idea but sorry, it's too much for the app to become a separate feature. We will have export in future and you will be able to match data from Qbserve and data from Spotify to see which tracks create the flow for you.
raihansaputra 10y ago
Cross the data with last.fm scrobbler? (Connect your spotify to last.fm, sync timestamps with data from tracker)

1dayitwillmake 10y ago

This app is awesome, i love it already - best of these i've ever used. Would be nice if we could set the idle to < 5 min. Also sorting the columns when clicking as well

ivm 10y ago
Thank you, please check the settings for the idle time adjustment.

1dayitwillmake 10y ago

This app is awesome, i love it already - best of these i've ever used. Would be nice if we could set the idle to < 5 min. Also sorting the columns when clicking as well