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Project Hamster is time tracking for masses. It helps you to keep track on how much time you have spent during the day on activities you have set up.
Check screenshots category for more visuals!
Whenever you change from doing one task to other, you change your current activity in Hamster. After a while you can see some statistics of how many hours you have spent on what. Maybe print it out, or export to some suitable format, if time reporting is a request of your employee.
On the right side you see some categories and some links, i think you will find your way!
Oh, and subscribe to RSS feed to be the first to know, when there is some new stuff!
Regarding technology, Hamster is built in pyGTK, using Glade for layout and SQLite for data storage.
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opi said,
April 13, 2008 @ 8:52 pm
One thing: key shortcuts. Give me ability to switch between event a (work) and event b (say, reading RSS) without clicking, and it will give me a some valuable data.
Toms said,
April 13, 2008 @ 8:54 pm
Hi Opi!
Current hotkey to access activity list is Super+H. You can adjust it in gconf.
opi said,
April 13, 2008 @ 8:58 pm
I was thinking more “virtual screens” hotkeys. So we could define META + SHIFT + 1 is task 1, and so on. For people like me, who don’t like to take hands off keyboard this would be a god send.
Toms said,
April 14, 2008 @ 2:18 am
Just found and fixed regression that disabled keys for the panel popup window. Normally, you hit Super+H (or your configured hotkey) - that focuses the entry window, where you can start to type ahead name of your task, and when done - hit enter and hamster’s gone. Living a mouseless life!
Regression is fixed in latest version (as for the moment 0.1.7.1). Grab in the usual place: http://code.google.com/p/projecthamster/downloads/list
As for binding specific tasks to keyboard - i think it’s a bit of an overkill, let’s keep things simple!
Dennis Fisher said,
April 17, 2008 @ 12:04 pm
Perhaps a Gnome Do ( http://do.davebsd.com ) plugin would be suitable for the specific task request?
Toms said,
April 17, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
Hi Dennis!
Created a bug for Gnome Do plugin
http://code.google.com/p/projecthamster/issues/detail?id=55
We will certainly get there
digisus said,
April 17, 2008 @ 1:08 pm
Hi! That is a perfect little app, thank you very much! You would not believe that I was thinking just a few weeks ago how nice it would be to have such a small applet in the panel for project tracking. Cool.
digisus said,
April 18, 2008 @ 8:38 pm
Sveiks!
Anyway, hamster v1.6.1 works nicely on 32bit Gutsy but the newset version says it cannot resolve the dependency to libcairo2, although it is installed. Maybe just a packaging issue? Anyway, excellent tool!
(I just realized you are Latvian. But eh, I am not. I just lived in Riga for one year… nice country
Toms said,
April 18, 2008 @ 9:19 pm
digisus - it is packaging problem, and you can help - here are instructions:
http://projecthamster.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/halp-packaging/
Shawn said,
April 22, 2008 @ 7:20 pm
Actually, that virtual desktop comment is quite a good idea.
If you had a virtual desktop for all windows associated with a particular task, tracking the time working on that task would be as easy as tracking the time on that desktop.
Don’t know how feasible it would be to track virtual desktop changes, but it should be easy to do it the other way around - set up hamster to automatically switch to the correct virtual desktop when you switch tasks.
Y’know - set hamster as a taskbar applet, and whenever you start a task, if a virtual desktop does not yet exist with that name - make a new, blank desktop and switch to it. Whenever you switch back to a task you put on hold, swap back to that virtual desktop.
With some sort of API plugin, folks
Toms said,
April 22, 2008 @ 8:00 pm
Hi Shawn!
We could maybe set active task from the virtual desktop name. It might be worth a preference…
Ok, filed a bug: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=529401
ksi said,
April 23, 2008 @ 5:09 pm
May be Hamster could track not only virtual desktop change but active application window change? I’m searching for this application for a long time but never seen some thing like.
Toms said,
April 23, 2008 @ 6:05 pm
Preved
Tracking currently active application is the other approach to time tracking.
Although it is doable, the resulting log would clash with the manual approach, thus user would have to choose mode in which the time should be tracked.
I’m a little concerned that we could easily get into featuritis here.
Could you maybe tell, why are you looking for an app that would track when and for how long you have been staring into firefox window and what could be the practical benefits from it?
ksi said,
April 23, 2008 @ 7:11 pm
Привет
Actually I’d like to know how long I use IM for example. I can’t change task every time when I open IM window to read message or write an answer. But I think that it can be about 10% of work time in the worst. Firefox case can be the same if I check for GMail or read RSS.
If I will know how long I use my working instrument (Eclipse, terminal, etc) it will be very usefull. And I’d like it to be counted automatically.
Toms said,
April 23, 2008 @ 7:31 pm
In that case, maybe Timeline is what you are looking for:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-doc-list/2008-April/msg00064.html
ksi said,
April 23, 2008 @ 9:55 pm
If it would be more finished - yes. Actially somethink like Wakoopa is needed.
Brian said,
May 1, 2008 @ 9:23 pm
Another interesting feature might be to prompt the user to enter an “old fact” for the last X (configurable) minutes if no activity has been logged during that time. This is the approach the DailyBilling Yahoo widget (http://widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/dailybilling) takes, operating more on a timer basis instead of requiring the user to proactively indicate what they’re working on.
Bart said,
May 8, 2008 @ 10:00 pm
Hi.
Hamster is cool and helps me a lot.
One small idea: What about a tooltip for the panel when you move your mouse over Hamster that shows the list of all tracked tasks of the actual day?
Good work! Go on
digisus said,
May 9, 2008 @ 2:33 pm
Hi Toms!
Re: packaging… I would suggest to promote and focus on Hamster for Hardy and beyond, people will upgrade sooner or later.
Feedback: I just found out that hamster keeps on tracking the project even if I shut down the machine, have lunch, come back and boot it again. For me personally that is unexpected behaviour because when I am not sitting in front of the machine then I am obviously not working on a project. I suggest to change the default to “not counting when PC is switched off”.
Otherwise, hamster is a cool, unobtrusive and useful applet
tm said,
May 10, 2008 @ 3:48 pm
Hi digisus,
Regarding packaging, i fixed the problem by creating a virtual box.
Regarding stopping tasks on close - there is nothing unexpected if you look at hamster as an app that does just what you tell it