Show HN: Hyperlogs – Easy time tracking | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Hyperlogs – Easy time tracking

hyperlogs.com

51 pointseibrahim46 comments

It drives me nuts when the "screenshots" aren't screenshots on this type of project. It's a complete blocker to me signing up.

I can't tell what this product actually does within 30s of opening the page. Maybe I am not your target demographic but no indications of how the software works without a login is a turnoff.

I agree. We want to add an explainer video and better screenshots and all that jazz, but we are still pre-beta, well beta at midnight. It's all on our roadmap. Right now, we are trying to focus on core functionality, testing, validation, feedback, etc...

Your landing page has several product screenshots with all the details masked out, except inside the small feature highlight circles. It would help if the details (of some mock data) were visible.

Access to a demo account with no signup required would help too.

Thank you for this feedback. We have a "demo account" on our roadmap which will make it easier for visitors to play around with the app without any signups. But I hope you give it a spin and let us know what you think. thanks again.

Demo account is cool and all but it still doesn't explain why the details are blurred out from the "screenshot"

Because we are iterating on design a lot during the beta so we will end up having to change the screenshots all the time.

I have also noticed that’s a trend on a lot of websites now and I see the benefit of it as the website owner but I can also see your frustration as a user.

What does this screenshot is supposed to tell? http://www.hyperlogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/hyperlog...

Also logo is a copy of Slack logo with H on it

FYI, your favicon logo is an almost exact replica of Slack's logo, colors and all.

[1] https://slack.com/

Is your product DCAA compliant? As a small government contractor, my employer is required to use a DCAA compliant time tracking system. Anything that is not, is a non-starter. Please consider making the answer to compliance questions easy to find, even if you have to answer in the negative initially.

We are not DCAA compliant but that is a great idea. We are based out of Washington DC, so DCAA compliance might be something to look into. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

PS: We are also creating an FAQ section and will include a question for DCAA compliance.

Maybe an example of what invoicing is like and what integrations it has would help. Maybe an example of what insights it will have over my time management.

Thank you great feedback... it's on our todo list - this is just a beta.

You should state on the site that it's a beta/work in progress so people don't think it's a finished product and leave because you don't offer a feature they want yet.

Exactly. It talks about integrations but then doesn't seem to have any?

Is there even a polished design? Masking the screenshots suggests maybe not?

As for the design, I would encourage you to sign up, I am sure you will be very surprised with what you'll find. The app is VERY polished (for a beta).

We are spending a lot more time on the app than we are on the website. That will change soon, but this is why you are perhaps finding the website's content to be insufficient yet.

Thanks!

Not enough information to sign up, sorry. If the app is really polished, take a screenshot and add it to the launch site maybe?

Thank you for the great point. We made the change.

How does this compare to toggl [0]?

[0] https://toggl.com/

Also curious how Hyperlogs compares to Toggl? I use Toggl for my DevOps consulting company and it works well.

I believe toggl is confusing. It allows you to add time in a very unstructured way. Hyperlogs and much simpler and streamlined app. Its intuitive enough. You get it, get your work done and get out. No guess work, no waste of time figuring thing out.

That all said, you should give it a shot. Sign up and try it, it is free for one user.

I tried out hyperlogs and don't really see that it provides any features over existing timesheet entering solutions yet. It looks good so far and I'll be interested to see how you progress.

I disagree that it's more streamlined though. toggl's killer feature is the ability to switch between tasks with 1 click as I'm performing the work. For mine this is the big distinction between an after-the-fact timesheet data entry app like hyperlogs and an actual time-tracking app like toggl.

The majority of my interaction with toggl is via the desktop app and chrome plugin, any competitor without these integrations is a non-starter.

This looks cool! The thing that would convince me to switch from what I'm already using would be seeing what the invoicing workflow looks like; a bunch of time trackers claim to support invoicing but then either their workflows are really janky or their invoices look extremely unprofessional. I had to try probably close to 10 time tracking/invoicing packages before I found Paydirt, which is what I currently use; seeing a side-by-side comparison to some of these other services would be very helpful.

Time tracking and invoicing already takes up a bunch of my, well, time, and to be honest I'm not willing to just try another one out for a bit without seeing more of how it works. More information on the landing page would be a huge start.

Thanks, this is our first beta... we will build out invoicing and it is going to kick ass... signup so we can get your email and spam you when we get it built :)

It’s confusing to me for the name of the product to bear a purely superficial resemblance to HyperLogLogs without any discernible relation.

Is this a Java/JavaScript Ham/Hamster joke?

I have no idea what HyperLogLogs is - never heard of it probably because I try to stay as far away as I can get from anything remotely related to java :)

It is a very cool algorithm for estimating the cardinality of sets! Look it up!

The reference to Java/Javascript Ham/Hamster was to give examples of two things which share syllables, but are actually completely unlike each other. Ham doesn't come from a hamster and Javascript only borrowed Java's name, not its features.

Oh, okay! It’s just chance. It’s your lucky day!

It’s a probabilistic data structure which estimates cardinality with O(log(log(cardinality)) space, hence the loglog.

Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperLogLog

plasticchris is right, it was because its name was similar, nothing more.

You need to add https to the site, also the site makes it look like there's an app to download but i guess there isnt?

We don't have a mobile app at the moment and our responsive story is not fully flushed out. We wanted to focus on core functionality for this beta and we will take it from there. We are just getting started :) . Thanks for the feedback.

oh i meant even a mac app, so i dont have to have yet another tab permanently opened all day (i have 3 perma-tabs for gmail as it is :P)

We are actively looking into the Mac/Windows app wrapper story (Like Slack's or Quickbooks etc). Stay tuned.

OP - this is built with Ember, Rails, Postgres. Hosted in docker at Digital Ocean.

I think the website is pretty snazzy and is illustrative. Is this a WordPress template? If so, would you recommend any managed WordPress hosting site - WpEngine? Our performance on Siteground with Cloudflare has been less than stellar.

Not OP but also I've heard Cloudways is good for managed WP hosting https://www.cloudways.com/en/

I've used WPEngine and haven't experienced much issue myself. Their support has been good and pretty helpful with managing tricky mysql situations.

yes it is a wordpress template. it is hosted in azure. so far it's holding up - even with frontpage HN traffic.

I have used dreamhost for other sites but the performance is so-so... Not bad but not great either...

another option but more hands on is a digital ocean droplet - it's also a little more pricey.

I expected it to be a tool involving logs.

> Research shows that businesses lose a staggering average of 15% to 30% revenue in unlogged time-entries.

Doesn't this just mean that their services are 15-30% cheaper? If those time entries are properly reported, won't their clients just be more hard pressed to find cheaper alternatives?

At least this the exact argument that is used against salary increases.

I would be good to see the details. Currently this does nor say more than any other time tracker. I would be interested in something which would force me to tell it every X minutes whether I'm still working on a previous task or did I change to something else etc.

Noted. Thank you.

Please, for the love of God, stop messing with scrolling. JUST STOP.

Scrolling? What are you experiencing exactly?

The landing page has soft scrolling or something like that. I'm pretty allergic to anybody hijacking scroll.

No time tracker is easy enough when compared to automated tracking [1].

1. https://wakatime.com

Thanks welder, wakatime is a great tool. That being said it is specific for the tech/development community. Hyperlogs is profession-agnostic. For instance, Hyperlogs could be used by a law firm, accounting firm, construction etc.

Thanks for your feedback!

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