Looking forward to 2019

This is a first for me. In the entire tenure of WhatPulse, I liked to play things close to the vest and let new features be a surprise. One of my WhatPulse resolutions for 2019 is to be more transparent and active. Welcome to the outline of the primary goals for WhatPulse in 2019.

Before I begin; these are projections, not hard promises. ;-)

Applications

A few years ago we introduced application information in the client and on the website. There are now almost 120.000 different applications in the database and it’s overdue for the next step.

We’re going to focus on improving the quality of the application information and create a way to categorize them. With that, you can see how much time you’ve been spending on work tasks, browsing, gaming, etc.

Second, there’s an idea to add metadata to the applications. We only have name and version numbers now, but it would be very cool to get the vendor, its website, maybe a rating and comparative applications.

User Experience

There are a few areas where we can do better with the user experience. We’ve identified a few where we’re going to focus on in 2019:

Client Interface

Let’s be honest; although it’s nice, it looks like it’s from 2005 (which it is! ;-)). We’ve had a new client design waiting on implementation for a while now and it looks like 2019 is the year we’ll focus on it.

Client Database

After having some issues with the client database (mostly the backups), they’ve mostly cleared up. It still can’t take unexpected computer shutdowns very well, which means it can get corrupted when your computer crashes or something else weird happens. We’ll be implementing a new database system which will significantly improve making sure the database keeps intact and have a much better backup if the primary database does indeed get corrupted. Hopefully, no more fresh starts when something crashes.

Website

The new dashboard is a huge step forward in the usability of the website. However, there’s still the old parts of the website where most of the overall statistic tables are located. While the My WhatPulse transition took a very long time, we should be able to transition the rest of the pages much quicker and have them join the 21st century.

Backend Work

Also on the list for 2019, are some improvements to the website backend. This includes a move to the cloud, which means the website will have some maintenance downtime somewhere during 2019. We’ll announce that when it’s planned.

Premium

Because the above goals are pretty ambitious, we also need to focus a bit more on the Premium subscription. While it’s currently bringing some awesome features to your client and website experience; 2019 will bring more of that. This one is going to be kept under wraps for now (to keep it a surprise), but I’ll share the reason why.

Premium was first conceived to help pay for the hosting costs of the website. Right now, Premium is indeed paying for the hosting and gives me the ability to outsource small projects. A very specific feature here and there. Sometimes also some bigger projects, like the new client design you’ll be seeing. Our goals for 2019 are pretty ambitious and we’ve got plenty more awesome ideas in our imagination. To get some real progress, we’d like to outsource more and hire people for specific projects (and not 2 guys doing this on the side).

That’ll cost us, so if we focus a bit more on Premium this year, hopefully, that’ll pay off and we can put more into moving WhatPulse forward.

Starting with this, we’re offering more flexibility on the Premium subscription. You can now also choose a yearly subscription.

Linux Client

Now for a personal pain point. I’m not a Linux person. I like things to just work, without having to put too much effort into personalizing a system, something that Linux provides. It takes me a lot of effort in maintaining the Linux client (which is also why Linux doesn’t do application stats), too much effort. Considering Linux people make up 1.39% of you guys and the effort it takes me to keep it running, is around 3–4 times higher then for Windows or MacOS, I need to make a decision, get help with it or stop offering it.

Consider this an official call for help to maintain the Linux client.

You’ll be responsible for making sure it runs on the different Linux distributions, hopefully improving it and helping me make Linux people happy again. The client itself is written in C++, a little bit of C and uses Qt as a wrapper to speed up development.

If you love stats as we do, are a Linux person and willing to help me. Please contact me and we’ll go through specifics.

Here’s to 2019!

These are the primary goals for us and hopefully, this is going to make 2019 an awesome year for stats. We wish you a very happy 2019 and all the geekiness in statistics you can handle!