Wakoopa essentially emerges as an application that’s entered the realm of socialism on the web. What this application allows you to do is share with the world what software you’re using and become a nosy tech by snooping on what other software people are using too.
Wakoopa offers a straightforward registration; once you register on the site, you’re asked to download a small program called Wakoopa Tracker (Windows 98, 2000, XP, Vista, and Mac OS X). This app sits in your taskbar (Windows) or menu bar (Mac OS X) and tracks which applications you’re using. Every once in a while, it sends that data on to the main Wakoopa servers, which then complies a list of software from every user and creates a top 25 list of the most utilized software’s.
Eventually, people can find you on Wakoopa and see how often you use various apps. It defines “use” by it actually being in the foreground and you interacting with it; it doesn’t count it as being used if it’s running in the background. This is actually a good thing, as there are many applications that run without you knowing about them. Dock and SystemUIServer are apps that are always running, albeit always in the background. Now the stats here may be really predictable (most of us will have most of our time logged in our respective web browser), but it’s intended to be fun, not necessarily useful.
Wakoopa as a social website
There is no doubt in my mind that of course, Wakoopa is a social website, which means that you can of course find your friends on there and view their app-usage stats. Wakoopa even has something called “Teams”, which essentially allows you to form groups with things in common that people can join. Wakoopa will then aggregate the usage stats for everyone in the team to find out how many hours are being used up on their common apps. (I say we find out which web browser is used the most…)
Not only does Wakoopa allow you to find info about users, but each application gets its own page as well. On an application’s page, Wakoopa will list the latest version of the app, a description, and a link to the app’s website. It will then aggregate how many hours it has been used by all members of Wakoopa, and how many Wakoopa members are using it. And, my favorite idea, it allows Wakoopa users to rate and post their own reviews of these applications, so you can really get a collective idea of whether that app you want to try out is good or not.
Wakoopa is a great application that allows you to quickly and effectively view software usage, updates, and new versions. You can connect with friends and integrate your desktop with all of its services as well. We’ll have to give the person who came up with this idea a 3 out 5 star rating, since the concept behind this application and the way that it gathers information and compiles accurate lists is astonishing, however, its uses are limited and quite frankly, as a social media website it’s in need of a few more uses for interaction rather than simply wanting to find out what your buddy uses to surf the web.
