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Looking for a project time tracker/nag tool that keeps me writing billable notes

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TaoPhoenix:
I'm going a little off road here, but I think one of Anand's tools could be useful here. I think he's got one that tags notes to titlebars of some apps, so then you can jam other notes there, and use it in combo with all this stuff.

David.P:
Could you supply a link, Tao?

tomos:
THat would be Stick A Note from Anandcoral.
Haven't used it myself.

David.P:
I see, thank you. This tool by Anand seems to be for taking notes that can be fixed to document and program windows. However, it doesn't seem to have the ability to nag, and to take time stamps.

This is btw the titlebar time tracker that I have been using for many years now, Rayflectar Project Timers



The program's output is very basic and looks like this.


--- ---Timer Name = 123456, My Project
Total time = 022:01:06 <hhh:mm:ss>
Keywords used = 123456, Google Books, Archive.org
Timer Creation Date = 2014.05.27 09:05 AM
Last Updated = 2014.08.10 09:50 AM

Timer History (max depth = 100 active days)
Format (comma separated): Date, Running Total <hhh:mm:ss>, Day Total <hh:mm:ss>
2014.05.27, 000:00:04, 00:00:04
2014.05.30, 000:25:26, 00:25:22
2014.06.10, 001:04:48, 00:39:22
2014.08.09, 022:00:28, 03:32:04
2014.08.10, 022:01:06, 00:00:38
As a result from the discussion, the perfect time tracking program in my view would be a tool like Project Timers that additionally can be set to  bring up a text box at certain intervals where you can write down what you have done in the last half hour or so -- the latter of course exactly as Anuran does:

Of course, both parts of the information, the time tracked with regard to the current project (based on window titles) as well as the notes you have taken, should be presented and saved together in an easy to handle format, in order to be able to track, view and export what you have done at what time in which project, and how long everything has taken.

For a working tool like described above, and with prospects for further development, I would easily donate in the three digits range, because this would enable me to bill so much more and better that it would probably pay for itself in like a week's time.

TaoPhoenix:

I know I tend to be a bit of a left foot around here, but here's a couple thoughts.

Depending on which side of "three digits" you mean, it starts to drift away from "donations" to bargaining on a full sale for custom software. Leaving the "who has what role" stuff for elsewhere, just being pragmatic, if you have most of the pieces of a custom tool you want, what about going to a "programmer for hire" site like oDesk and just commissioning it?

I have done that a few times, to generally decent results. They're best at what seems like this kind of "raw level" tool creating, and "three digits" could get you really close to what you want. I did something similar, which I then gave to NANY - a bunch of partial tool components when then you think about because I kept finding you keep wanting "one more feature".

I'm a Humanities fella, so this is a guess, but this feels like a pretty simple concept, just requiring a bit of work that I have begun calling "Coding Lunches", to differentiate from the "Coding Snacks" here. But the coding itself doesn't feel that hard, just that it has a lot of little wrinkles to look at. It's not some kind of (insert Star Trek technobabble here) "Multi-threaded real time visual space scanner and interpreter" or whatever.

If you want something that will tremendously improve your life, more than a quick thingie that just does something cute, sometimes the price jump to really get a/some dev partners compensated can really work.

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