We recently updated the homepage for Tiktrac, our time sheets web application. While going over the copy we had an interesting idea: why not include a dynamic counter for the total time tracked?

So now you can see the total amount of time recorded by the Tiktrac community. It currently displays 22210 hours, which is almost 1000 days.

That’s a lot of work… maybe soon we’ll have to switch the counter to days instead of hours!

Tiktrac now supports data imports from CSV files. This allows you to import time sheet data from spreadsheets straight into Tiktrac.

Each sheet now has an Import tab, which takes you through the steps to import your data.

Tiktrac’s now got a referral scheme. If you get 10 friends to sign up, you’ll receive 50% off the Standard or Premium accounts for a year!

All you need to do is get your referral URL and hand it out to friends, or even stick it on your blog. You can find your referral URL by logging in, clicking on Tiktrac settings and then Referrals.

We’ve finally updated Tiktrac’s reporting section. What you now see in place of the old report pages is an incredibly flexible system for analysing your Tiktrac sheets in almost limitless ways. Creating your own reports is now possible, as well as filtering them to only show what you need.

Here’s an excellent example for anyone who deals with software: a report to show time spent fixing bugs.

Constructing this particular report was easy enough for my grandma to do it. I added a new report, named it, then added two filters: one to search the task description field for “bug”, and another to limit to a particular sheet.

Here’s how the filters look:

Spend some time experimenting with the new reports feature, and see what you can discover. If you find any really creative ways to use it, let us know so we can share your thoughts with Tiktrac’s fans. In return, we might just give you some incredible discounts on Tiktrac’s monthly fees!

By the way, I’ve also redesigned Tiktrac’s homepage and generally made the whole app sexier. December has been an incredibly busy and tough month. Merry Christmas!

This tip applies to all of our applications. When you see a letter underlined in a link or form button, this means there is an available keyboard shortcut. This type of keyboard shortcut is called an “access key”.

Different browsers handle these keyboard shortcuts in different ways. In Safari (Mac OS), I press ctrl-letter. In Internet Explorer, I’d press alt-letter. Check your preferred browser’s manual to see how it handles access keys.

This screenshot is from Tiktrac:

To open up “Add a new task”, I’d press ctrl-a. The task save form also has an access key, so I can press ctrl-s to save.

Helipad has access keys on common operations, like new document and save document. You can even get straight into the handy search bar by pressing ctrl/alt-f:

If you use your applications regularly it’s worth learning these shortcuts! If you’d like to read more about the technical side of access keys, check out Accesskeys: Unlocking Hidden Navigation.

We’re proud to announce that Ebiwrite, a web application dedicated to translators, has been launched today!

Background and design

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Yuka Mizuno and I’m Helicoid’s copywriter (I also help run the business-side of things). After working on several long translations last year, I wished for a web application created purely for translators.

One of the biggest annoyances I have with translation is constantly looking backwards and forwards between my source text and translation. On a computer this means flicking between windows or tabs, quickly ending up either fed up or with RSI. So I insisted my future husband (Alex, the designer and programmer of Helicoid’s applications) built translators a program that would resolve these issues.

The most basic problem, flipping between source text and translation, could easily be solved by splitting a text editor up into two panels. Alex created a prototype (using Helipad), and we worked from there. After a year of development, we’ve finally finished Ebiwrite.

Last but not least, you might be wondering about how I came up with the name. It’s a subtle pun on the Japanese word for prawn (ebi) and the pronunciation for A and B.

Main features

• Dual-panel editor, focused purely on text. Get rid of neck ache by keeping your source text and translation right next to each other.
• Version control allows you to jump back to previous versions of your translation.
• File uploads, for storing your source or reference material (PDF, Word, images, etc). Images can be used as source text (i.e., scanned text).
• Dictionaries, for building your own dictionary or phrase books. Dictionaries can be shared with the Ebiwrite community
• Profile page and your own URL. Each Ebiwrite account gets a URL, i.e., http://yuka.ebiwrite.com, and a public profile page: http://yuka.ebiwrite.com/profile. You can keep your profile empty if you don’t wish to use it.
• Tags can be used to organise translations and files. Tags also have a unique feature that allows you to build “books” (see Ebiwrite’s help page for more).
• Autosave.
• Search results appear as you type in the search bar that appears on every page.

Screenshots

Pricing & Requirements

• The Personal plan provides 500MB of storage and SSL access for £6.99 per month (GBP, not including VAT).
• The Premium plan provides 1000MB of storage and SSL access for £9.99 per month (GBP, not including VAT).
• The Free comes with 2MB storage.

Storage is determined by the size of translation text and uploaded file size.

Ebiwrite is designed and tested to work with Internet Explorer 7 (Windows), Firefox 2 (Windows, Mac and Linux), Safari 3 (Mac, Windows) and Opera 9 (Windows, Mac and Linux).

Mobile support

Ebiwrite has a mobile version too. Just visit http://youraccount.ebiwrite.com/mob.

Developers

Ebiwrite has a REST API for most of the major features. If you’d like to write something like a Dashboard widget, get in touch and we might reward you!

Future developments

The text editor is currently a simple plain text editor. Ebiwrite’s design philosophy is based on allowing translators to write without the software getting in the way, so plain text was chosen over a Word-style rich text editor. If there’s enough demand for a rich text editor we may add one, but we hope people will enjoy Ebiwrite’s simplicity.

We’d like to add a comments and change tracking system so translators can invite their clients to discuss changes to a translation. Again, this will be developed depending on the community’s requirements.

This article is the first in a regular series of tips on how to get the most out of Tiktrac. If you have any suggestions or questions, please contact us

Tiktrac sheets have several export formats. To view the export options, click “Export” when viewing a sheet. A panel opens like this:

Perhaps the most useful way to export sheet data is Export daily summaries as CSV. This creates a file you can easily open with Excel, Open Office or Apple’s Numbers, which contains the total duration for each day. If you’re in the month view, this will export a duration for each day of the month.

This really helps when submitting time sheets to contractor agencies! In fact, we implemented this feature specifically for contractors.

Using Tiktrac for price plans other than free will require subscription payments starting today.

We allowed free usage for a grace period after beta testing, but unfortunately this is about to end.

If you do not pay, your account will be locked. However, you will still be able to access the data export page and save your data as XML.

To read more about billing or make a payment, navigate to Tiktrac settings (the link at the top-right of the page), then Billing.

Tiktrac has just been updated with some minor bug fixes (thanks for the bug reports Tom and Oriol). We’ve also implement something to help you with billing clients.

Sheets can now be set up to include a “paid” field. It works a little bit like the “done” field.

Additionally, a new table will appear on the Dashboard to display an overview of outstanding work.

There’s more about this feature on Tiktrac’s help page.

We hope this will make your billing process a little bit smoother. It’s already proven useful to us!