I discovered QS recently when I got the idea to track my time and locations. This site and whole movement is just mind blowing.
I’d like to start tracking some bits of my life and I am looking for recommendation for apps/tools from people who have experiences in this field. I briefly looked at some apps/tools from the QS list, but none satisfied me completely (at the first look anyway), hence here goes my questions.
it should also be able to learn names of some places (geofence) like office, home, Tesco supermarket, etc.
Time - in coordination with the above, I’d like to know how much time did I spent where - in the locations (home, office, supermarket), but also how much time do I spent in public transportation, car, outside the city…
Activity - by this I mean just short notes attached to the time tracking - I want to know how long, but also WHAT I did… e.g. just label some time periods like “morning exercise”, “transportation to work”, “trip to nature” etc.
(To track my time/activity on the computer, I plan to use the http://www.rescuetime.com/ which looks really great.)
These two/three things should work together and witch as little input from me as possible (automation).
Money expenses… would like to track where and for what I spent my money. I am interested in overall categories, but also I would like to be able to drill down a little bit e.g. do see how much I spent for fruit&vegetable vs. sweets in december vs july. Budgeting would be nice. I am from Czech Republic so Mint is not for me, need something with manual input, although if something is capable of learning barcodes or recognizing receipt items from photo, it would be awesome.
I am willing to pay for good apps/devices and I am not bound to any single platform (iPhone vs android…). One requirement is that the data is exportable to some open format (xml, csv,…)
I dont really need the app/tool/soft to do the analysis and/or visualization, just collecting the data would suffice, if it is exportable.
I looked at some apps like http://www.thedailytracker.com/ or http://daytum.com/ but my worry is that unless the location and time tracking is largely independent on my input I will not have the discipline to keep tracking manually…
I gratefully welcome any suggestions, ideas, recommendations and opitions…
I think the article alluded to him using his phone, so maybe MyTracks or a similar type of app. I personally prefer to use a standalone gps receiver, with my 747A+ still going strong after about four years of use. I tend to only record new trips, although I sort of regret not just recording everything. My tracks are converted and stuck into Google’s Fusion Tables - seen in action here.
Latitude might be an option with this one, or some code to analyze the tracks from #1. FourSquare or similar check-in services might also provide insight, and you can allow them to auto check-in.
It sounds like the mobile app and website “Expensify” are exactly what you are after. Another nice thing, unlike when I last tried Mint, is that Expensify allows you to select different currencies. I would imagine this would be useful for you.
I’m not certain if this was useful, but hopefully these suggestions can point you in the right direction.
I wanted a way to compile real data on my daily commute time in a way that I could then use that data to make a more accurate prediction of my commute time and get to work exactly when I intended to. I talked to a friend that does iPhone app development who liked the idea. The result is an app that I’m really crazy about called Daily Commute. It’s free in the app store: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/daily-commute/id499636507?mt=8
Or visit the website: http://www.valleyrocket.net/dailycommute/
Hope you find it helpful!
Would love feedback.
This gives me the data for later analysis of time (2.) and correlate location with other activities and logs - I plan to use google maps api and learn myself some python to do some statistics and map visualizations…
(4.) As for logging expences, I am currently using Expensify ( https://www.expensify.com/ ) which is mostly fine, but the main issue for me is, that it saves all my data in the cloud (servers of the company) which I really dont like. So I started to look for alternatives, and OneTouch Expenser ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.blrdroid.expenseapp&hl=en ) and Expense Manager ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.markushi.expensemanager ) both look nice and usable with the ability to work without cloud and export data to csv. However problem with all these expense trackers is, that they only save date and no time to the transaction. So I am actually considering to use Tap Log even for the expense manager…
GPS timing can be more of a problem than many realize. Most GPS receivers only provide time down to a few seconds accuracy, but many applications need a much greater degree of precision. I have completed a few GPS time synchronization projects http://www.timetoolsglobal.com/information/gps-time-synchronization/ which required microsecond accuracy, which can be quite hard to achieve. Dedicated GPS timing receivers are required for these applications.
However the other apps, I replaced them with My Logs Prohttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pdr.app.mylogspro
which is a general logging app, that lets you create your own forms/templates for logging and logs everything into SD card to CSV file. No cloud.
So I have all logging happening only locally on phone, I dont want to share my data with any company.
I am synchronizing the data via BitTorrent Sync to my home server and I process it from there…
