You are writing email to customer and this is specified in Now… box of LazyCure. Suddenly you have a call from your boss. You press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F12, have a call, after finishing press Ctrl+F12, type “talk with boss<Enter>”. After that, in time log, you can see 2 additional records with correct begin & end time:

13:33 writing email to customer
13:37 talk with boss

So Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F12 is a hotkey for switching the activity and it works on the system level, so LazyCure could be minimized at the moment. By the way, in Options you have possibility to change hotkey on other suitable for you combination (e.g. if this one is already used by other software or if it is convenient for you to use other hotkey).

LazyCure 3.8 could be downloaded from Download page. See also Full List of LazyCure Features.

What does it mean for the end user? It means that LazyCure was tested thoroughly and was found absolutely clean; therefore, it can be installed with no concern by any computer user.

New features:

• Subtasks. Select menu Show->Task Manager and create a tree of projects/tasks/tags/areas which you want to use for grouping activities during analyzing your time logs.
• Possibility to customize hot-key. Now you can use not only Ctrl+F12 but any imaginary combination of keys in order to activate LazyCure window and fix activity switch. Works only in Windows, but if you know how to do it in other OS, I’m appreciate your comment. In order to customize hot-key, go to menu Options and press button ‘…’ under ‘Hot key to activate:’ text.
• Split activities by comma (‘,’). This is the feature which I love very much, because it helps me to save a lot of seconds and make time logging process more enjoying. When I forgot or didn’t have an ability to mark activity switch, I specify all activities in one ‘Now you..’ text field via comma and press ‘Done!’ After that the magic happens – each activity appears in time log separately with time equally spitted up. It is not too much accurate, but if I don’t remember actual time of switch activities (or even if I was doing all of them simultaneously), it is accurate enough. And more important – it is very fast.
• Possibility to disable option to switch time log at midnight. Automatic switch time log at midnight is a useful feature, if you practice continuous time logging, like Russian scientist Lyubishchev. But if you log only the current day and it ends after midnight, it is useful to turn off automatic switch at midnight in order to keep all activities in one place. So now we have an option.
• Possibility to close TimeLog Editor, Summary, Task Manager by ESC. All for the sake of speed .
• Possibility to copy data via context menu from Time Log Editor and Activities Summary. Possibility to copy data via Ctrl+C and paste, e.g. in Excel, was always in LazyCure, but nobody knew about it. Now it is possible to do via context menu + small additional improvements of data representation in clipboard.
• Possibility to rename activities on Activities Summary. The feature I was dream about for years. Record activity with mistake, record the same activity without mistake, then go to activities summary, rename misprinted activity – and see the magic.

+ fixes of the following bugs:

• An exception when invalid time is entered on Efficiency tab.
• An exception when activity is longer than 64 symbols on mouse over tray icon.
• Post to twitter is not working.

Quality of LazyCure 3.7 release is proved by 303 green unit tests.

Enjoy!

Download

• LazyCure is working under Linux with Mono framework.
• There is possibility to customize left click on tray icon – open LazyCure form or display list of resent activities.
• Possibility to manage tasks via context menu, F2 hot key for task rename.
• Info about current activity is shown when cursor is placed on tray icon.

There are also some improvements comparing with 3.5 version:

• Switch activity on log off is made an optional feature, turned off by default.
• Last activity logging when computer is shutting down. If you select in dialog box to log latest activity, main form will be active and when you enter activity name and press ‘Done!’, computer shutdowning continues.

Also couple of bugs were fixed:

• At midnight new time log is created but is not switched.
• An exception when linking activity with not selected task.
• Efficiency is not auto-calculated when linked task is changed.

The great difference between previous version is that it is working under Mono framework and that is why available under Linux (tested under Ubuntu, really works!) and MacOS (not tested, but should work. If you have possibility to test this, please, drop a note in comments). Of course it is still working under .NET Framework under Windows.

LazyCure is available at Free Download page.

• LazyCure could be minimized by pressing ‘ESC’ on main window.
• Main window is opened in the same position as it was before closing LazyCure.
• Minimize to tray on pressing ‘X’.
• Activity is switched when computer is locked.
• Button ‘Show Time Log’ added to ‘Efficiency’ tab.
• Two different settings for number of activities showed in tray and number of activities in history.
• After Ctrl-F12 program stays inactive if was visible before.

And thats not all! Welcome grand new feature – Post To Twitter! If you have an accound on Twitter.com and/or would like sometimes to share with your friends what you are doing or have just done – you will appreciate this. LazyCure could be configured in such a way, that after pressing ‘Done!’ button activity name will be posted to Twitter.

In order to activate Post to Twitter functionality, you have to following the following steps:

1. Go to Options->Twitter, check on checkbox and specify your username/password.
2. When you enter activity name on the main window, check ‘post to Twitter’ checkbox and press ‘Done!’
3. Do something good for yourself – your activity is posted to Twitter

I have to say that you should use this feature just for fun – it is not necessary to notify the whole world about every your activity. So this feature is turned off by default. But as for me, I have it turned on, so if I would like to share my great achivements, I definitely click on checkbox before pressing ‘Done!’ .

By the way, you can follow me at Twitter.com/Scorpibear. Oh, and the latest LazyCure could be taken from LazyCure Free Download page.

New features:

• Task Manager is resized automatically in order to show all tasks without scrolling.
• Possibility to delete tasks in Task Manager.
• Notification when computer is shutdown.
• Auto-generated unique activities names, if nothing is specified.
• Switch time logs at midnight.

Bug fixes:

• ‘Now you’ combobox is not active after pressing ‘Done’.
• Activity and Task columns width could not be changed.
• Bottom part of Main form is cut when no Activity Details.
• When edit start, end is changed, but duration should changed – I love this bug fix especially!

By the way, LazyCure 3.4 is the most mature software for time logging I ever seen .

You can get LazyCure 3.4 on LazyCure Free Download page.

One development cycle consists from 5 steps:

1. Bug. Assign a bug to yourself before introducing any code changes.
2. Red. Write a failing automated unit test before you write any code, which reproduces the bug. If unit test could not be created, add test case to LazyCureTest\LazyCure_TestCases.xls.
3. Green. Write code in order to make unit test or test case passed.
4. Refactor. Remove code duplication, verifying that all unit tests still passed. You can repeat 2-4 steps by introducing additional tests, related to the bug.
5. Commit. Commit the code changes, specifying bug id and summary and any other details of maiden changes.

The following criteria is taken into the account when bug to fix is chosen:

1. Priority.
2. Severity.
3. Creation time.

New LazyCure build could be created if there is at least one bug fixed and there are no bugs with priority 9 – Highest.

New minor LazyCure release could be created if at least one new feature is implemented and there are no bugs with priority 7 – High or higher.

New major LazyCure release could be created if at least one major feature is implemented and there are no bugs with priority 5 – High or higher.

The latest version of LazyCure Development Strategy could be found on http://lazycure.wiki.sourceforge.net/Development+Strategy page.