Time Tracker v2.0 Early Review

When you spend as much time in front of the computer as I do, you’ll find a deep need to discover how much time you actually take going about your various online tasks. There’s never been a free online service that’s been able to help me with this - until now. Time Tracker (now in version 2.0) is a free online time management application, which simply put, is a to-do list with a timer.

On the usability front, it’s amazingly simple, yet effective. Before starting your task, e.g. blogging, all you have to do is just enter a unique name for the task and start the timer. At the end of the task, just stop the timer. Simple as that. And until you actually mark the task as complete, you can start and stop the timer as many times as you want - creating multiple time slices in the process. Notes can even be added to individual time slices - which you can preset to be prompted to you every time you start or end a time slice.

Additionally, the AJAX interface provides a clean drag-and-drop system of sorting individual tasks. You can choose to nest tasks within another overall task, which inherits the time spent on its child tasks. It’s a pity, however, that only one-level nesting seems to be supported at the moment. Edit: My mistake. Multi-level nesting is supported.

But no Web 2.0 app is perfect first time round, and the same goes for Time Tracker. For one, while tagging of tasks is supported, there doesn’t seem to be any way to use those tags at the moment. There’s no grouping or sorting by tags, or even listing of completed tasks by tags. In fact, there’s currently no (very) simple way of editing or deleting your time slices. Changing start and end times is done through a nifty Javascript analog clock, but after a few uses, you’ll wish you had a simple input form instead.

The lack of any sort of statistics or reports is also another drawback. While Time Tracker allows you to record how much time you spend on daily activities, there is still no way at the moment to view the total time spent on any one activity, any one month, or any one tag. Of course, even highly robust to do lists like Remember The Milk lack this ability, but given the “time” nature of this web app, I’d have expected this capability to be available from the start.

Thankfully, its creator seems to be ready to provide - with promises that these minor issues will be sorted out as soon as possible. I’ve not used it long enough to know what kind of time line we’re talking about, but I’m definitely willing to wait. The only remaining issue gnawing at me is the lack of a sustainable business model for this web app. I highly doubt it can be ad-supported given the completely utilitarian nature of the application, so one of the few remaining ways forward seems to be premium subscriptions.

But even this model seems inappropriate. After all, most Time Tracker users aren’t asking for much more than what it already provides. So, unless a free account restricts usage on the basis of the number of tasks rather than features, users aren’t going to be willing to pay. But the prospect of paying just to add more tasks to time track isn’t very “cool”, to say the least. So, the best way IMO is to go the way of 37 Signals. Push a simple, yet robust free app out, and make them upgrade to your next level (a.k.a. more comprehensive and feature-heavy) pay-for app only if they need a more advanced feature set.