Web Based Time Tracking – Software for Geeks #2

As part of Software for Geeks on-going series, earlier I wrote about Web based To-Do List Software. In this post, let us review about Web based time tracking software. For geeks to be ultra efficient and productive, it is very important to cut down the time spent on activities that are not aligned with your goals. If you track daily activities either manually or using some software, you will be surprised to find out how much time your may be spending on activities that don’t need such attention. Take a test drive of the following two free online time tracking software and pick the one that suites your need.

1. SlimTimer

• If you like simplicity, you should try SlimTimer. The user interface is very clean and has only the necessary items required to track your tasks and time.
• Open the slimtimer either in a sleek browser pop-up or on the browser side-bar.  Click on a task to start the clock and click again to stop the clock. This displays both the cumulative time spent on a particular task and the current running time. Click the check-box next to the task once you area completely done with the task. It sends the updates about the time to the server every 10 minutes.
• When a task is running, you can create a tag for the current running time-slice of that particular task. So, within one task you can have as many tags as you would like. This is much useful than trying to organize it with the Project, Client, Task hierarchy.
• There are lot of additional features available such as sharing your tasks with others, generate powerful reports etc.
• The most simple and extremely useful feature is that it displays the running timer and the task name on the browser window title.  So, when you minimize the pop-up, you can see the timer running on the task bar in the format of |time|task name. In the following screen shot, “Site Layout Change” task is selected. In the browser window title, it displays “|11:36|Site Layout Change”. When you minimize the window, you can tell how much time was spent on your current task without opening this window by looking at the task bar.

Fig 1:  SlimTimer Window

2. Toggl

• You can maintain the Project, Client, Task, Time relationship usingToggl. Before you start the timer for a task, you should create a project and associate with a particular client. Please note that the client is mandatory. So, you can create a client called ‘Myself’ to track your personal projects and tasks.
• This also opens up a sleek browser pop-up from where you can start your timer for a particular task by clicking on it. This pop-up displays all the projects and their associated tasks, which can get little cluttered if you have too many projects/tasks. You have the ability to search for a specific task directly from the timer pop-up window.
• This has additional features to effectively collaborate between different teams and customers. There is also a desktop version of Toggl available for windows only, which requires .NET framework 2.0.

Fig 2:  Toggl Window


On a final thought, I strongly recommend that you give some serious thought about the way you spend your time everyday. Track your time for a week, using one of the above web based time tracker and review where you are spending your time. Eliminate all the time-wasters and focus on completing projects and tasks that are meaningful to you and aligned with your goals.

Web based To-Do List – Software for Geeks #1

I will be posting “Software for Geeks” series on an on-going basis. Every post in this series will be about a specific type of software. Let us review the following five different free web based to-do list software in this post.

Geeks have several new technologies to explore and cool gadgets to play with. Managing the tasks and the list of things to do effectively is a boring and important part of Geek’s life. Take a test drive of all of these five softwares and choose the one that best fits your needs. Just testing these software and exploring their features is the fun part.

(1) Remember the Milk

Apart from adding the tasks directly from the UI, you can also send an email that will create the tasks automatically. This feature is very handy if you have the ability to send emails from your mobile. You can also create multiple lists/categories. For e.g. If you are using GTD productivity framework, you can create @Errands, @Home, @Work lists.  When the task is due, it can send reminders to email, SMS or IM. You can also share the tasks with somebody else.  Remember the milk has lot of features and you may have to spend few minutes to really understand how to use the application.

You can manage the tasks from the browser even when you are not connected to Internet. When you connect back to Internet all your offline updates to the tasks will be synchronized automatically to the server. This is done using the Google gears.
(2)  Ta-da List

If you like simplicity, you should definitely check this out. This is a very simple and easy to use to-do list. Nothing more and nothing less. You can create a task online, group them in lists, email the lists and share it with friends.
(3) Gubb

Gubb has very colorful UI. Like other to-do list software, this also lets you create list, share and email list. This also has the ability to assign a due-date, request a copy of the list from your email and set different color for every list. Apart from giving different color to every list, you can also rearrange the list on the home page.
(4) Bla-Bla List

Like Ta-da list, Bla-Bla list is also very simple to use. This has only the features that you really need to use. The UI is little boring and dull on this one. This uses adobe flash player.
(5) iGoogle

I just wish Google develops a full blown task management software. If you use iGoogle, a simple solution is to add the very simple and functional To-Do list gadget provided by Google on your iGoogle home page.
As a final thought, getting things done was never about the tools or the software. You can be very effective just by using pen and paper to manage your tasks. So, don’t get trapped into using the different fancy features of all the web based to do softwares, as many of those features are time wasters. Just use the features that you need the most and focus on doing your tasks and get it done.

There are several other web based To-Do List software available. Which is your favorite one and why?