Press Release

For Immediate Release

Contact: Robert Walker support@tunesmithy.co.uk

Activity Timer - Keeps track of the time spent on projects.

Robert Inventor has released Activity Timer 3.1.

You can use this program to keep track of the time you spend using the pc keyboard or mouse. It is ideal for those who work at home and want to keep track of the hours they work - or for those who work on several projects at once and want to know how much time they spent on each one.

You can also show eye protection alarms. These act as a reminder to rest your eyes, look away from the screen, blink and so on, and help releive the tiredness in the eyes you can get from long sessions at a computer montor. Depending on what you need, the options include an unobtrusive progress bar type border around the screen, musical alarms, splash screens, right up to a screen saver that takes over the whole screen and interrupts your work until you press escape. The splash screen options can use any image on your computer, and there's a web page option which can be used to display movies too for the eye protection alarm.

You can also show alarms as a reminder to stop work at the end of a session, for instance after 90 minutes. These again can be a flashing border, musical alarms, splash screens or the screen saver again.

The project times can be exported as databases in csv format. You can also show the time worked on the projects by day, or week, for any time period. There's also an option to save a detailed break down of all the sessions worked for each project during the day.

The program comes with an automatic backup utility which you can use to schedule daily backups.

Features include:

• Keeps track of the time you spend working on any project
• Pauses count of hours whenever mouse or keyboard is inactive for more than a set period of time
• Auto ends the session if idle for even longer - when you leave the computer running and go away for five minutes say. Auto restarts as soon as you start to use the keyboard or mouse again.
• You can set the time when each day rolls over to the next
• You can set it to start whenever you start the computer
• You can set it to run as a tray icon (in the area next to the system clock), so that you can show it any time with a right click on the icon
• You can set it to pop up whenever you move the mouse into a selected corner of the screen as a quick way to show the times at any time or to change project
• Year 2038 compliant - the current build of Activity Timer will work fine until the end of this century.
• Makes a comma separated database with details of the hours worked for every day worked, to open in a database program.
• Will show a summary report of all the time spent on every project, and make a combined database showing the total time spent on all the projects for each day worked.
• You can set it to run minimized. When minimized you can see the time so far in the current session in its title bar (see screen shot above). You can also change the project or set it to working or not working with a quick right click on the icon.
• You can show its icon as a pie chart for the amount of time in session so far - with complete circle set to the complete session (preset to 90 minutes)
• Flash icon or screen when time is up, or play tune
• Eye protection reminders to take one or two minute eye breaks several times an hour as recommended by eye doctors. You can play a short tune for the break, or flash the icon or screen as a reminder. It's a reminder to blink to moisten the eyes, and to relax the eyes by looking into the distance, e.g. out of a window.
• You can translate all the text in the user interface into your own language. Unicode is supported so long as you run it on Windows XP or later.
• Vista compatible.
• Automatically switch projects when you open a document with a particular title or start a particular process
• Automatic backups - Projects | Automatic Backups
• Show details of when you worked on every project during the day. Also change which project any time period was recorded for - or change a recorded rest period to an active period or vice versa
• Similarly show and modify details for earlier days
• Easy to add new projects - just enter its name into the box and press the New Project button and it is done
• Free with splash screen. Low price if you pay to remove the splash.
• Straight forward layout. Easy to use. Small download size.

More advanced features include:

• Automatically pause when you open a document with a particular title or start a particular process (shareware)
• Automatically disable all alarms when you open a document with a particular title or start a particular process e.g. when media player is running.
• Show the total hours worked for each project between any dates - or the hours worked in each week during the time period. Week for the purposes of the time period can start at any day of the week. (shareware)
• Show costs for the work done based on an hourly rate. You can also show a break down of the total hours for the entire period for each project, and the totals for each week. (shareware)
• Option to treat short breaks or changes of project of say less than one minute as time worked on current project
• Treat screensaver always as idle time when running even if there is mouse or keyboard activity - e.g. useful for password locked screen savers.
• Random skin feature (shareware)
• Click and drag number changes - click on any number in the user interface (the number itself, not the spin button next to it) and with the mouse button held down, drag up or down (out of the text field) to change the number
• Distinguish tasks for projects - This is useful if your projects typically have various sub-tasks - Projects |Distinguish Tasks for Projects .
• Report time worked for any period - Reports | Days worked for Date Range
• Report time worked per week for any period - this is useful if you need e.g. to quickly bring up a report of the time worked for each week for the last four weeks for each project - Reports | Days worked for Date Range
• Show cost equivalents for the times, calculated at user set rate per hour - Reports | Options for Days worked for Date Range
• Option to show tables in Activity Timer before you show them externally - Reports | Show tables in Activity Timer first
• Show a splash screen for the end of session or eye protection alarms - which can be any image, or a web page, which means you can also include movies for the end of session or eye protection alarms - just embed your movie in a web page and you can then use it as an alarm - Alarms | Configure Splash - eye protection
• Show progress in the screen border for the eye protection and end of session alarms. This is particularly useful for the eye protection - as you have a progress type indication of how long to rest your eyes for - Alarms | Eye Protection Alarms - (More version of the window) | Show alarm progress in border. (with Flash Screen switched on)
• Prevent monitor power down and screen saver when the leisure time windows are visible - this is useful if the leisure activity window is e.g. watching a movie on your computer Alarms | Disable Alarms for Window Titles | More
• Support for Wine under Linux - now tested under Wine and programmed to deal with particular issues that arise in Wine.

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The installer is freely distributable. You can include the installer from the download page on any CD compilation. See the download page for a screen shot.

Pad file (xml)

Activity Timer download page.

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