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Ask HN: 24/7 video recording of your computer screen useful?

4 points by amichail ↗ HN
Would you like to be able to view whatever you were doing on your computer from the last week say? Wouldn't that be useful?

What about if you could associate tags with key events in the recording? What about if you could search by text shown on the screen? What about searching by app(s)/doc(s) used?

For privacy/security, you could have a way to turn off the recording temporarily and/or limit how long video recordings are stored.

5 comments

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coryl
No, wouldn't be particularly useful for me. Occasionally I forget about a cool article I was reading, but thats what my browser history is for I guess.
ljf
Id often wondered about a true 'weblog' type system but imagined it as text links, which you could choose to comment on as you went, a commented, public, websites visited history. Would make dull reading!

What you suggest sounds more akin to the Livescribe pen. Maybe what they do would be more useful than straight video

exline
unless the search capability is excellent, having 24/7 videos on the computer would not be useful. Without good search, you would have to know the time that you wanted to review. If it was just video, then it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
jawee
I am trying something similar; I have screenshots taken of my screen and stored at a regular interval to a folder. Lately I've just been looking back to see how much I stayed on productive activities and such, but they may be good for some sort of statistical analysis later. I just wrote a few line bash script to accomplish this.
baddox
In-depth statistics would be more useful than video footage or full text search. Things like application usage time, cpu time, but also active window time, number of clicks/keys typed into each app, etc.