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@bentossell Hey guys, sorry about being late to the party – I was taking a break from the internet.
Soo. I see that a big concern is that FocusList ad. Well, we built Escape really to be a marketing gimmick for FocusList. It appears about every 20 times you launch the app. We didn't think it all the way through, and really just wanted to see the reaction – but I'll be watching comments & reviews closely and updating how it works in the next version.
Next, a big issue is that you can configure what is and what isn't distraction. I heard complains from users in Japan about this – as they have completely different set of distracting websites.
Would anyone be interested in contributing if we just open-source this?
@_vojto @bentossell Yes! It would be super awesome if you open-source Escape.
@_vojto @bentossell App is pretty cool and gives you linear view of things and where did you got distracted. Which is awesome. It has a nice UI as well.
Thing is when I downloaded it I spent five minutes searching where can I customize settings to set up what actual distractions are. So if you open source it I bet community would help to make this feature live!
Why does this ask for account details? Why does this try and connect to fbp.rinik.net and api.amplitude.com - of which blocking seems to make the application no longer work? It is never mentioned that it sends data to the cloud or why - and no privacy policy is provided.
@gigitsui Ooops. I'll talk to our lawyers about that. Wait, we don't actually.. Sorry, I'm just joking, but I wasn't expecting it to be on Product Hunt under the spotlight.
To answer your question, it uses Amplitude, but only 1 event – Launch, to track how many active users we have. And there's a signup form (which you can skip) connected to Parse, but it doesn't do anything yet, only creates account in Parse.
We built that because in the future we would love to share anonymized data (with user's consent of course) with researches – but it was all going to depend on whether anybody would like it or not.
RescueTime[https://www.rescuetime.com/] Does a really good job for me - it sends me a weekly report of how I spent time that week and has a good map of which apps/pages are productive and which are distracting.
@ohadisohad I use RescueTime too!
But the problem is it only adds app the time. Not enough.
What kills you is going to Facebook for 4 seconds every 5 minutes. Yes, it adds up to 1 minute over a morning, but it's so much worse than browsing for one minute!
I like to compare this to falling asleep: If you hear a SHORT alarm every 5 minutes, will you ever fall asleep? And if you keep listening to an annoying alarm for 5 minutes and they you get to go to sleep, isn't it easier?
@ohadisohad I love rescue time, but the weekly reports aren't enough. I need a daily report so that I can do better incremently.
"Escape can’t be installed on “Macintosh HD” because OS X version 10.11 or later is required." - Time to update the OS! Also, does Escape include itself in the monitoring? That would be so meta.
I'm borderline scared to download this app. I'm worried it's a "if you don't want to know, don't ask" type of situation.
@imns81 Kind of like avoiding going on WebMD when you're in pain because you'll inevitably discover you have some terrible disease.
@thedannychang @imns81 doesn't help that every diagnosis on Webmd for any symptom is an incurable cancer haha
the number of native apps it tracks is limited. It doesn't track Telegram, Tweetbot, etc. I also am concerned about privacy. is data sent back to Escape?
Interesting little tool but I have two concerns... First, any app tracking what you're doing on your computer is a concern for both your privacy (what's this signup form for?) and your machine's stability :) And second, it's hard to qualify distraction, so there will be a tons of false positives... I don't think that engaging my customers of social media can be considered a waste of time, for instance.
There are many way to make this more useful. If this was connected to a set of productivity tools, with tasks explicitly involving a set of websites, you could better infer that a given website had a negative impact in achieving a given goal.
Downloaded and not recording anything... am I doing something wrong? No way to report problems, no support... no way to update blacklist that I can see.
I usually keep tabs pinned, I wonder how Escape manages that? Ex: I have a separate window of chrome with all social network websites always on, but I use it only a few times a day. How does Escape handle this?
Another problem I faced, I use product hunt from the chrome extension, it doesnt monitor the usage from the extension.
This would work for me if it came with an iPad app since most of my social media and content consumption happen there.
@giridharvc7 I see a lot of Mail opens as well, even if I don't use it at all. Looks like everytime I open Gmail, it shows Mail open as well.
Here's the obvious question... Is Product Hunt registered as a distracting website?
@antoneliasson haha... well if it is then apparently I'd be wasting about 15 hours a day and doing no work 😝
Could you share your "flow"/"palette" when it comes to what other software you use (Focus, Rescuetime,..?), how do they compliment each other; wnad what's the way to maximize the utility of Escape for you? Looks pretty slick and excited to give it a go! Great job, guys!
Thank you for creating this.... It is highly valuable. But I want to ask why we can't block google services. Youtube is also a problem like all the other app.
Thank you for the hardwork.
Interesting. We are doing something similar with our Stackup Chrome Extension, but we categorize the website, and capture/score the time you spend engaged at each website. This can also help you know where you spend your time Good or bad.
@jarizwarts have you read Slack, I'm Breaking Up With You? haha.
Depends on the person though.
As a remote worker and community manager, I need it
@bentossell Welp, I think it's kind of dawning on me that I have a serious slack problem...
@bentossell I agree, this app wouldn't work for me as I'm a social media manager and I'm on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc. during my work hours. Apps looks gorgeous though.
Minimal and clean. Loved it. Want to use this on my Ubuntu machine. Perhaps a chrome/ff plug-in? :)
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