about:me

Surfing the Web can be a wild ride. You never know where you'll end up, and it's easy to lose track of where you've been. About:me tracks how you surf the Web by analyzing your browsing and download history. This Firefox extension calculates four different sections of statistics: "Most Visited Sites," "Hourly Browsing Activity," "Download Media Types," and "Daily Download Trends." Once this addon is installed, just enter "about:me" in the location bar, and it will take you to a personalized page full of data and graphs. All the graphs are interactive: just click on an item to get more detailed information.

You can draw many interesting conclusions from the presented data. For example, if you (like me) spend every waking moment on the Internet,then the "Hourly Browsing Activity" graph (which tells you how many page visits you have for each hour of the day) gives you a good measure of your average sleep patterns. As an insomniac, my page visits peak at 1 A.M. and remain high until 3 A.M. The "Most Visited Sites" listing can tell you a lot about your work efficiency. If Twitter tops your list during work hours, you (or your boss) may want to optimize your time better. This offers functionality similar to the older MeeTimer, a Firefox 2.0-3.0 extension which times how long you spend on procrastination sites, and actively discourages time-wasting.

More data would be nice, but if you look at the list of possible new features, the developer plans to add many intriguing analyses. In fact, this add-on is a prototype for a feature which will likely be included in some future version of Firefox. If you're looking to preview an upcoming feature of the browser--or just want to learn some fun facts about your browsing habits--give about:me a try.

Note: This link takes you to the vendor's site, where you can automatically install the file into your Firefox browser.

--Gabe Gralla