What is Wakoopa?
Wakoopa tracks what kind of software or games you use, and lets you create your own software profile. Ready for you to share with the world. Why? Because what you use on your desktop is who you are!
How does it work?
Sign up and install our small tracker application on your PC or Mac. This tracks what software you use, without being too much of a burden. Every 15 minutes a list of what software you're running is sent to your online profile. Tell your friends about your profile or put a Wakoopa widget on your website or blog. When we notice there is some news about software you use, we put that update in your personal dashboard. New versions or reviews: it's on there. If you ever want to find certain cool applications for the right job in the right category, browse our database! Because we track software, we know what you like or what's hot at this very moment. Simple as that.
Where do I sign up?
Second door to the left, pass the fish-tank and the bearded lady. Or you can just go here.
What about my privacy? Isn't this dangerous?
Very good question! Check out our full explanation here.
Can I disable web tracking?
Yes, you can do so in the settings of your tracker.
Can I export my data?
Yes. It's your data, so you certainly can. Just check here.
How do I delete my account?
You can't! No wait, you can! But... why would you? Don't you love us? :( But go ahead, we won't think less of you.
How do I change the name/developer/description/icon/category of a certain piece of software?
Really simple. Just sign up, go to the software page, and click on the “Edit or complete this information” link. There you can edit everything you want. After you submit your changes, we'll review your submission (to avoid abuse) and put it online immediately.
How do I delete a message on my profile?
Just log-in and click the pink X on the top right of a comment.
What's that "popularity" box on a software page?
This box displays how popular a software item is on Wakoopa. This data may also be representative for the whole software community.
- Rank is measured daily by sorting all software on Wakoopa according to usage, and determining its position.
- Reach is measured on a daily basis, and describes the percentage of used seconds within the total used seconds of software on Wakoopa.
My reported times are wrong! I used software X much longer/shorter than it says on my profile!
This is actually part of our approach to get the best usage information. This could have two reasons:
-
Idle
You didn't touch your mouse or keyboard for longer than 30 seconds. After this time your computer switches into "idle mode", where the Wakoopa tracker doesn't register any software usage. -
Multitasking
It could happen that you use a lot of software at once, switching from one program to the other. This way certain applications run in the background, and those are displayed separately on the right side of your usage page.
However, if you still feel like you're having problem, let us know!
Do you track my usage when I'm offline?
The Wakoopa tracker stores your usage data when you're not online. This data is not stored permanently though, so when you reboot your computer, the data is not available any more.
I don't recognize ever using a piece of software with name X, but it still shows up on my profile
That can be the result of some corrupted data on Wakoopa. We merge and split software often, and sometimes this can go a bit bad. That's why we need your help! Tell us what you think it should be, and we'll happily alter it for you.
Applications like movie and music players get an unfair amount of time!
This is a problem we're very aware of. Most of the time, these types of programs are used in a passive way like watching a movie or listening to your latest Justin Timberlake album. Because of this, Wakoopa thinks the computer is idle (no keyboard or mouse activity) and stops tracking it after a minute or so. We're currently trying to find a way to fix this problem as fair as possible, without devaluating the other tracked times.
If you have any suggestions on this subject, let us know!
My password doesn't work on the Wakoopa tracker for OS X?
This is a known problem with the Wakoopa tracker for OS X: it doesn't work well with passwords with characters that are not numbers or letters. We plan to fix this in version 1.0.7. Until then, you'll have to use a password with only numbers and letters.
What is web tracking and how does it work?
Web tracking is a new feature on Wakoopa which makes it possible to track your usage of web applications as well. Web applications are basically web sites that function like a real software application, only it runs online and in your browser (see also "What is a web application?")
It works pretty simple. Just like we do for desktop applications, we regularly look inside your browser to see what site you are using. The Wakoopa tracker gathers these sites, sends them to the Wakoopa server where we match these sites with our white list of web applications and entries on CrunchBase. If the site is not a web application, we ignore it and completely remove any trace of it from our server. If it is, we add the web application to your profile.
For Linux web tracking, we only support Firefox 3.0 and higher. We're looking into supporting more browsers in the future, but this has proven to be quite challenging.
What is a web application?
Good question! Wikipedia probably has the most extensive definition for this. Our definition of a web application is basically an online service that behaves like a real software application, only it runs online and in your browser. Some examples are Gmail (similar to Microsoft Outlook or Mail), Bloglines (similar to FeedDemon or NetNewsWire) and Flickr (similar to Picasa or iPhoto). However, there are also "new" sorts of applications, for instance social networks like Facebook or social news sites like Digg. These applications use unique features of the web to accomplish things that weren't possible on the desktop.
We don't consider blogs, forums, or other content sites to be web applications. However, this depends from case to case. We're constantly syncing with the guys from CrunchBase and monitoring new applications to keep up with the latest stuff. You yourself can also send us web application suggestions and we'll take a look.
How does iPhone/iPod Touch tracking work?
Tracking mobile applications for iPhone or iPod Touch works by scanning iTunes. When you sync your iPhone, iTunes stores all the mobile applications you've bought on your computer. This is currently the only way to see what mobile applications you have installed on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Unfortunately it's not yet possible to measure actual application usage, but we're always on the look for new ways to achieve this.
The tracker checks your mobile applications every 15 minutes to see if there are any new applications. You need to sync your iPhone or iPod Touch with iTunes in order to make this work!
Firefox 3.0.3 or lower is not tracking any web applications?
This is a known bug that Firefox 3 has with AppleScript. The thing is that this bug only occurs rarely and under specific conditions. It looks like it will be fixed in Firefox 3.0.4, which is scheduled to be released in November.
What OS-es and architectures do you support for the Linux tracker?
We support almost every popular flavor of Linux distributions. We have builds for 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.
Why doesn't web tracking work in the Linux tracker?
UPDATE: as of version 1.1 we have now limited support for web tracking. For now only web applications used in Firefox 3.0 and further will be tracked. We're looking into supporting more browsers in the future, but this has proven to be quite challenging.
Getting the URL from browsers in Linux environments has proven to be quite difficult. Both Windows and OS X offer fairly easy ways to access specific elements in software, Linux however doesn't do so. We've considered offering browser extentions, but this doesn't offer the simplicity we want. If you have any ideas on how to solve this, let us know!
