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!

A handful of our friends had some issues with a bad actor recently. Someone got a hold of their password and reset their (hard worked) statistics. This prompted us to add the following functionalities:

2-Factor Authentication​

A password alone can be revealed via numerous methods. After all, it’s just a bit of text. If someone gets your password, normally they can do whatever they want to your account. When you add a 2-Factor Authentication (2FA) in the mix, you get an extra step before you’re allowed to log in. It’s not dependent on your password alone, but a time-based code which is generated by a password manager, or an authenticator app on your phone.

Starting today, you can set up 2FA on your WhatPulse account. Here’s more information on how to do just that.

When you’ve enabled 2FA you’ll be prompted for an extra One-Time Password

2FA is in (semi-)beta. We’ve tested it thoroughly, but would like to see some of you use it before we pull off the ‘beta’ label. ;-) Let us know if you have any issues!

Notifications on Login​

The second feature we’ve added is a simple one: get notified when a login happens on your account. You’ll instantly be in the loop when a login happens, so you can monitor activity on your account.

After getting requests to support different social network platforms besides Facebook (plus the fact that Facebook suddenly broke our client login system), we’ve been revamping the login system to support multiple platforms: Facebook, Google, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Enter WhatPulse 2.8.4b1​

For this, the client needed to be changed, which is now in beta. WhatPulse 2.8.4 beta 1 is currently on the updater feed (enable “Include beta versions updates”) which makes use of the new system. We’ll walk you through the process below:

Logging into the client​

Starting 2.8.4b1, whenever you want to log into the client you will get redirected to whatpulse.org to do the actual login (the client will open a browser). You can still choose between using an existing account or register a new one.

Login options​

If you’re already logged into the website you will get redirected to the page where you can authorize your client right away. But if you need to log in or create an account, you’ll see the login prompt. As you can see to the left, you can choose between the native WhatPulse login or the 4 available social network login.

Authorize your client​

When logged in, you will get the option to authorize your client by using an existing computer name or create a new computer name.

*Left: a dropdown of all your existing computer names. Right: input a new computer name.*

Other stuff in 2.8.4b1​

The new login system isn’t the only thing changed in 2.8.4b1, it will also recognise the newer Apple computers (type & year) and it has updated support for OpenSSL v1.1 (which Linux users will appreciate). The next beta version will also include support for MacOS Mojave (10.14).

We appreciate your feedback, let us know in the forums what you think about the new login system!

While this is mostly a maintenance release, I couldn’t keep myself from address a couple of feature requests from you guys. I’ll highlight the major changes below and you can find the entire release notes here.

Security​

Sometimes we just have to talk about security. This is one of those times. WhatPulse takes security and privacy pretty seriously, ranging from backend security controls and monitoring to giving you complete control on whats counted and what’s public. In our 15th years (!!!) of existence, we haven’t had any issues.

This update addresses 2 security concerns that we discovered in the last couple of months.

1 — Passwords One is about your password. We don’t save your password, we save a hash of that password so we can compare hashes when you’re trying to login. We had a lot of portability concerns, because that hashing had to be the same on the website and the clients (Windows, MacOS & Linux). That meant the hashing method was held back by the lowest denominator and therefor wasn’t as accurate as we’d hoped. The result was that it only looked to the first 9 characters of the password. If you have a 10 character password, you’d be able to change the 10th character and still get in. Not that earth shattering, but still not what you’d expect.

So, we centralised the hashing and started using the securest modern hashing method we could find.

TL;DR: logins now looks to more then the first 9 characters of your password. Thanks to Caboose700 for the initial report.

2 — Client to website communication The second item on the agenda is the client to website communication. Meaning stats pulses, logins, account refreshes, stuff like that. This communication goes over HTTPS, so it is by default encrypted over the internet.

An awesome user (who rocks, but wishes to stay anonymous — you know who you are!) reported a way to see into the requests from the client to the website, depending you were in the same network as the clients computer and do some hacking magic. Basically they would be able to see what stats you were pulsing. While this is a corner case and pretty unlikely to happen, but as I said — we need to take security seriously.

This update makes sure someone else can’t look into your pulses (unless you make them public on the website) and enables end-to-end encryption.

TL;DR: The client talks more securely to the website.

Phew, security stuff out of the way. Here’s some more fun stuff.

Easier & Quicker Startup​

There have been a couple of changes which make the client startup faster. But it’s also become easier. Why? For one, the client now saves your local settings to the website, so whenever you reinstall the client (or your entire computer) — the client will now ask you if you want to download your old settings. No more manual work. Also, if you’re installing on a brand new computer, the client will present a setup wizard (not Merlin) so that you can quickly set your preferred settings.

Setup wizard. Click headings to show more quick settings.

Other Mentionable’s​

People with high resolutions on should be happy about this one: the text and images in the client don’t look HUMONGOUS anymore.

Also, sometimes in 2.8.1, the keyboard heat map wasn’t loading. We called its mother and it has promised to load each time now.

I’ll close with this other cool addition, which has had me kick myself on not doing this sooner. All the date picker widgets now have a “custom” option on it, where you can select a custom date range for the period you want to see.

I’ll leave it at that for this post, but if you’d like to see all changes — check out the release notes.

As always, you can use the “Check for Updates” button in your settings page to update your current client, or download the installer and update that way.

The system behind these emails was in need of an overhaul. Because it is so popular, the amount of email it sends has been rapidly growing. This has led to a few quirks in the system. It sometimes forgets to send certain people their email and about 1% of the calculations were off. So, time for an overhaul.

I’m proud to present the new version of the Weekly Update emails, with a new and robust system behind it. Check out the new format:

As you can see it contains the same information as the old format, with a few additions. You can now quickly see how you did compared to the previous week. How cool is that?!

Also, don’t panic — but this new report will start appearing in your inbox on Thursday, instead of Friday. Next Thursday will be the first run.

We’ve also made sure that we’ll be able to add more stats to this weekly gem. Stay tuned!