In this article, Les Harris takes a look at Project Hamster, a recent addition to the GNOME Desktop that helps you track your activities over time.

Time Tracking with Project Hamster

According to their entry on GNOME Live, Project Hamster is “time tracking for [the] masses.” It aims to be a tool which enables users to quickly and accurately keep track of the amount of time they spend on their activities over time. Project Hamster is a relatively new module for GNOME, having been brought into GNOME officially for the 2.24 release. Now that GNOME 2.26 is upon us, it is an ideal time to take a closer look at this interesting project. This review will be covering hamster-applet 2.26.0.

Taking the Hamster Wheel for a Spin

Hamster is a panel applet, so it must be added to a panel in order to use it. Its interface is very streamlined. In the panel, it displays both the current activity that is being tracked, as well as the amount of time spent on the activity. The displayed information acts as a button; when clicked it stays depressed and Hamster’s user interface pops up.

The current activity can be selected in the text entry at the top. The entry includes a drop-down list of all defined activities along with their categories. If the user wants to start an activity that isn’t already defined, he simply enters a name for the new activity in this area. Hamster provides an overview of all the activities tracked for the current day. This allows the user to see what they have been doing at a glance. It’s possible to edit the start and end times for each activity in this list using a small edit icon that appears in each row. Under the overview list is a breakdown of the time spent on each category of tasks for that day, which could be a useful feature. Rounding out the main user interface are two buttons: the first lets one add an activity for any arbitrary date and time, and the second brings up the activity overview window, which is discussed later.

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Original link: http://gnomejournal.org/article/...