Windows only: Productivity Meter is a time tracking tool from Fruitful Time, makers of the task manager we reviewed earlier this year. Once installed the software sits in the background and keeps tabs on your activity. Productivity Meter tracks the active versus idle time, how your active time is split among applications, which applications were used the most, and which websites you browsed and for how long. You can review the stats for the last day, week, month or a user defined block of time. One of the most useful features is the ability to tag programs, windows, and domains. It would be entirely useless to many users—myself included— if the program simply told you when you’d been using a web browser and time spent on certain domains. I use a web browser for nearly all the work I do on my computer. By using the tag function I can tell Productivity Meter which domains I access for certain tasks and jobs. It’s tracking for how much time I spend doing Lifehacker-related work became significantly more accurate when I tagged all the domains I use. Another concern was that with a triple monitor setup and a huge number of windows open at any given time it wouldn’t accurately track what I was really focusing my time and attention on.
YackTrack is a comment tracking service. If you’ve ever wondered who is talking about a blog post or news article you can enter the URL and see who is talking about it and where. YackTrack currently tracks comments on Blogger/Blogspot, Digg, Disqus, FriendFeed, Google Blog Search, Google Reader, IntenseDebate, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, TypePad/MoveableType and WordPress blogs. Additionally there is a “Chatter” function that lets you search for key words instead of single URLs. On the time saving side of things it’s possible to set up a bookmarklet to help you search YackTrack and you can turn a search term into an RSS feed to plug it into your favourite reader and stay abreast of new comments. YackTrack [via Download Squad]
Boris wanted to build a light box for his sister, who suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder, a disorder brought on by lack of exposure to bright light in darker winter climates.
My sister suffers from seasonal affective disorder, also known as winter depression. A commonly prescribed therapy is light therapy – about thirty minutes of bright light in the morning. Bright in this context means more than 10 000 Lumens. You can of course buy commercial light-boxes, but I wanted to construct one by myself.
He neglects to point out that commercial light boxes can run $200+ and that building you own is a really economical choice. By repurposing a wooden filing box from Ikea, buying some compact fluorescent bulbs and some basic light sockets he was able to craft a very serviceable light box for his sister that exceeded the 10,000 Lumen requirement by nearly 6,000 Lumens. Lightbox Construction [via Make]
