I just happened to be on the server, doing a little maintenance this morning and I noticed the bubble count on the admin. page was 499,998. I refreshed and it was 500,003. What are the odds? We are running a contest for the 500,000th bubble and I happen to be there to witness it.

The database tells me the lucky 500,000th bubble belongs to James, a 2nd day trial user from London. James now gets a free account for life. Congratulations James! And congratulations to the BubbleTimer community for tracking over 7 and a half million minutes. That's a lot of minutes!

As a side note to the contest, while digging out the 500,000th bubble, the database also told me there have been 628,105 bubbles created, even though there are just over 500,000 in the database. This tells me that roughly 20% of the time we change our mind over what to bubble. What a fickle bunch we are!

Since bubbles can go away, there are two interpretations to the contest. There is the 500,000th bubble stored in the database, and the 500,000th bubble ever created. I had the former in mind, but by the latter measure, we have a different winner, and in fact, we had a winner a month or so ago before the contest even started. How's that for a little psuedo time travel

Alas, we can't know who that winner was because when I checked the database it turns out that the 500,000th bubble is part of that fickle 20%. It is gone, having been replaced by another bubble. Whoever you are, Mr. or Mrs. 500,000th bubbler, we salute you along with James.

I've always made it a point to only say nice things about competitors. I go out of my way to recommend competitors when I think they can solve someone's problem better than I can.

I regularly recommend the Emergent Task Timer PDF to people looking for something more free form or inexpensive than BubbleTimer. I recommend Harvest to big teams, and Moleskine notebooks to people on the go without an iPhone. I just recently endorsed another developer here in Chapel Hill when a prospect mentioned he was going to interview him for the project I was in the middle of pitching.

Today however, I'm going to make an exeption to my rule and say something negative. Until recently I've recommended RescueTime to people that felt bubbling their time in 15 minutes was too manual. RescueTime is a Web application but has some software you install on your computer as well. It works by watching your activities, recording how much time you spend using each application, even recording how much time you spend on which documents and which Web pages. RescueTime is not right for everyone, since it only captures your activities on the computer, and unlike me, not everyone is glued to their computer for every waking moment (that must be nice!). But for people who spend most of the time they want to track working on the computer, RescueTime was a very good option with some truly excellent reporting capabilities.

RescueTime started out with more or less the same goals as BubbleTimer, to help people become more productive and aware of how they are spending their time. Lately RescueTime has taken what I consider to be a very sinister turn, positioning their software as a way for employers to track employees time use. It must be working for them because they are ratcheting it up with a new product that takes it to another level. Their latest offering completely abandons the facade that they still care about helping people be more productive and only allows the employer to see the results.

"Employee monitoring can't be seen/paused by the user."

"Reports on how people are spending time can be seen by the manager only."

Unlike many professions where ethical decisions must be made everyday (police, politician, judge, lawyer, clergy, teacher), we in the software business are often (though not always) engaged in ethically inert pursuits. I've always found it very easy to steer clear of ethically dubious development, which is what makes this so hard to understand for me. Why are they doing this? The answer they themselves give is because that's where it seems they can make the most money. It's a sad day.

I'm a staunch civil libertarian and defender of the fundamental right to privacy and frankly, these guys are starting to creep me out. In my opinion RescueTime is casting a long, dark shadow on the time management software marketplace that I reject. I disown them. I'm not even going to think of these guys as a competitor anymore. They are dead to me. I put them in the same camp as the makers of spy cameras, key stroke capturing software, and other seedy junk.

I'm interested in your thoughts. Am I out of it? Overreacting? The only one that feels this way? Or do you think these guys are starting to produce unethical software?

Photo by laverrue.

While growing up in Tampa, Florida in the 1980's, all the local McDonald's franchises used to have the phrase, "OVER __ BILLION SERVED" on the bottom of their roadside signs. Every few months the number on the sign would increment and I'd notice and scream out to my startled parents from the back of the car. "AHHH! LOOK! The McDonald's sign changed!"

I was amazed each time. I was amazed that they were keeping track. I was amazed that all the different signs in the city would change within a couple of days of each other. I was amazed that they'd served billions. Was it people or burgers? I didn't know and I didn't know how to find out. (Now that we have Google, I just learned it was burgers.)

Right at the end of my time in Tampa, just before I went off to college, something happened to disrupt the steady increment of billions. This was only the early 1990's but it was a hint at the year 2000 problem to come. McDonald's ran out of numbers. The signs had been made with just 2 digits and they got to "OVER 99 BILLION SERVED" and they were stuck.

Months went by and I'd occasionally find myself wondering when they were going to come and rework all the signs to have a 3rd digit. I imagined the frantic meetings that must be happening at McDonald's HQ about the problem.

A year or so later my answer came, and it was disappointing. McDonald's decided to stop counting, and the new signs they were putting up said, "BILLIONS AND BILLIONS SERVED". For the next few years I'd get excited when I'd see a McDonald's that still had an old sign that was stuck at 99 Billion. Today most of the signs have been replaced again and they don't have any mention of billions at all.

Why this trip down fast food memory lane? Because BubbleTimer is nearing a milestone of it's own. 500,000 bubbles served. That's a big one. It's not quite as profound as 1,000,000 bubbles will be, but it's profound none the less. We celebrated 100,000 bubbles earlier in the year, so let's celebrate 500,000 too.

As of this moment, there are 463,823 bubbles or 6,957,345 minutes in BubbleTimer. To put 500,000 bubbles in perspective. That will be 7,500,000 minutes of time tracked with BubbleTimer. That's a lot of time. By keeping better track of where those minutes have gone I really hope BubbleTimer has helped people.

If you are the person that bubbles the 500,000th bubble and you are not a paid user. Then you my friend, are in luck. You'll get a free BubbleTimer account for life. If you bubble that bubble and you are already a paying user, you're in even more luck. You'll get a free BubbleTimer account for life, and a $50 gift card to iTunes, Amazon or Apple. You chose the place.

Thank you all. I couldn't have bubbled all those bubbles without you. Good luck in the contest, and keep bubbling!

Photo by TheTruthAbout...