Hate filling out time sheets and trying to figure out how much time you spent on which project and how much time was actually billable? If you don’t’ mind the “Big Brother” vibe, there are two apps that allow you to track your time by monitoring all of your computer (and even mobile) activity. Both Chrometa and RescueTime install on your computer and monitor, track, and time your activity on various programs, web pages.

This is not an all-inclusive feature comparison, however here are a few key points. Both programs do time tracking for equally well. They allow you to categorize time and projects according to web page, program or document title. Although RescueTime takes another different approach: It allows you to categorize activity by a productivity scale: such as Very Productive, Productive, Neutral, Distracting and Very Distracting. For example, ostensibly you would categorize a site like HBOGO as “Very Distracting”. (And if you are worried about revealing all of your private activity, it does allow you to completely ignore certain sites or activities, so that they won’t even appear on any time report.)   Also RescueTime allows you to set goals for yourself, such as “No more than x hrs/day on distracting activities” or “At least x hrs/day on productive activities”. One important caveat however, is that at present RescueTime does not have an data export capability, while Chrometa does. Take note that RescueTime has a free version while the Chrometa’s entry price is $19.99/month.

Both programs are useful if you want to get a handle on your time tracking for billing. But for my tastes, RescueTime is more user friendly