The New Flock

I like trying out new browsers and when Flock came along a while back, I tested it out. It was similar enough to Firefox for me to feel comfortable using it immediately, but it had some cool bells and whistles.

One cool factor was that you could post to your blog right from the browser, without being on your blog editing interface. Since I have several blogs I thought I’d give it a try. Perhaps it would save me time.

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Firefox Download Day

I pledged to download Firefox 3 today to help Mozilla create a Guiness World Record by being the largest one day download in history. I don’t know what the current record is, but Mozilla wants to top it.

So, if you want to be a part of history, go to the Firefox 3 Download Day page and download and install Firefox 3. But make sure you’re wearing sunglasses because it’s really shiny!

Try this if the other link doesn’t work — they’re having some techinical difficulties.

RescueTime: Easy Time Management

Because I work from home and am paid by the hour, I needed something to help me keep track of the time I spent working on projects. I’d been using Xnote Stopwatch successfully for some time, but often forgot to start it when I began working or stop it, when I moved on to non-project related tasks. I was forced to guess how much time I’d put into projects at the end of the day.

I then heard about a time management software program called RescueTime which was then in private beta and signed on to be a beta tester. After a few days or maybe weeks I was invited to help test RescueTime and found it to be exactly what I was looking for.

You sign up for an account and download a small application from the website. The application sits in your system tray and collects data on which application or website you are actively using and it periodically sends that information to your RescueTime dashboard. On the dashboard you can “tag” the applications and sites you visit with terms like “work”, “fun”, “volunteer”, etc. RescueTime then presents you with a graph that shows you how much time you spent on each category.

You can also set goals and keep track of your goals on your dashboard as well as view your productivity after rating your tags for productiveness.

The folks behind RescueTime are continuously working to make it better and are responsive to user feedback in an almost uncanily rapid time frame. Once I sent feedback through their little user feedback box and within a few moments received an email response from them.

I like it when software works the way it says it will.