This post has been over 6 years in the making but im glad I can finally write it.



Way back in [March of 2010](https://www.mikecann.blog/myprojects/windows-7-taskbar-monitor/) I wrote about a new tool I had developed with the snappy name "Windows 7 Taskbar Monitor". It was a little tool that used Windows' Performance Counter to show you what the current CPU, Memory and Network usage is:

[![taskbar-monitor-sceenshot01](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/taskbar-monitor-sceenshot01.gif)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/taskbar-monitor-sceenshot01.gif)

The cunning thing however is that I piggybacked on the new (at the time) "progress" value that you could get which would give you a nice visual indication of the current value for each monitor:

[![taskbar-monitor-screenshot02](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/taskbar-monitor-screenshot02.gif)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/taskbar-monitor-screenshot02.gif)

To my surprise this little tool has more than justified its effort to create. I have used it every day for the past 6 years and has been an invaluable tool in working out "what the hell is my computer doing?" sort of problems.

Over the years I haven't really changed it much and 4 years ago I even open-sourced it: [https://github.com/mikecann/Windows7-Taskbar-Monitor](https://github.com/mikecann/Windows7-Taskbar-Monitor)

With the advent of Windows 8 and the App Store I thought it would bring greater visibility to my little tool if I could publish it to the store. Unfortunately however Microsoft imposed some pretty strict rules with their store which meant that I couldnt use the progress-tasbar APIs that were central to the app.

Fast-forward a few more years to Windows 10 anniversary edition and Microsoft release something called "Desktop App Converter" (formally Project Centennial). This project would allow you to take just about any existing windows app, then wrap it and convert it so that it was safe to use on the store.

Perfect, this was just what I needed to bring Taskbar Monitor to the store. Well (after a number of lengthy hurdles) I finally achieved it. I totally rewrote the tool to use a more modern Microsoft framework and gave it a new name, Glancer:

[![taskbar-feature2-compressor](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/taskbar-feature2-compressor-1024x638.gif)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/taskbar-feature2-compressor.gif)

[![storescreenshot01](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/StoreScreenshot01-300x169.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/StoreScreenshot01.png)[![storescreenshot03](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/StoreScreenshot03-300x169.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/StoreScreenshot03.png)[![storescreenshot02](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/StoreScreenshot02-300x169.png)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/StoreScreenshot02.png)

The basic functionality is the same, its just wrapped up in a prettier package and has a few more options.

At this stage its just an MVP. I have plans to add a whole bunch more cool functionality and monitors but I just wanted to get it out there first and see what people thought and then hopefully iterate on it as I go.

Ill be using it daily now so very much have an incentive to improve it :)

Currently its totally free but im thinking at some point in the future ill monetize it, probably with a free-trial but perhaps with a "freemium" model.

I also built a website for the project here: [https://www.glancer.co/](https://www.glancer.co/) its a bit basic at the moment but I plan on iterating that as I go.

Anyways, give it a download, let me know what you think!

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/glancer-your-pc-vitals-at-a-glance/9nblggh43gvm](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/p/glancer-your-pc-vitals-at-a-glance/9nblggh43gvm)

Until next time.

Well I took a short break this weekend from Mr Nibbles Forever development to head down the street to [SpaceCubed](https://spacecubed.com/) and compete in the [2015 GovHack competition](https://www.govhack.org/perth2015/).



I had heard of GovHack from one of the [Morning Startup](https://www.meetup.com/Morning-Startup-Perth/) meetings I like to attend every Wednesday here in Perth.

The West Australian government has been running this competition for several years now to try to promote their new open data policy. The idea is simple, get a bunch of nerds together, give them the data and offer some prizes and see what happens.

[![CI-222zUcAAvd7s.jpg-large](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI-222zUcAAvd7s.jpg-large-768x1024.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI-222zUcAAvd7s.jpg-large.jpg)

Well I turned up on Friday evening not knowing anyone and having no clue what to expect. So I grabbed a beer and started chatting.

Some people were in teams already, some people worked together for a day job but it seemed like there were quite a few other people in the same boat as me, new to it, without a team or project or idea. That made me feel a little better, but I still had no clue what to expect.

[![CI_vYWaUEAA1-_P.jpg-large](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI_vYWaUEAA1-_P.jpg-large-1024x768.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI_vYWaUEAA1-_P.jpg-large.jpg)

After a few short speeches the participants were invited to stand up and pitch their idea. All in all there were about 20 pitches. Some sounded interesting, some sounded really wacky such as one team wanted to use the data to become evil-masterminds. One team even suggested that they were going to correlate the prizes against the data and see which prizes were the best to go for then work out and idea from there.

[![CI_Fh1FUAAAv7yd.jpg-large](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI_Fh1FUAAAv7yd.jpg-large.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI_Fh1FUAAAv7yd.jpg-large.jpg)

After the pitches were over, we given 5 stickers to stick posters that had been hastily assembled by the pitchers. I think that the idea of this was to gauge the popularity of the project but im not sure exactly how that affected things in the end.

Also this was apparent the point that you were supposed to be looking to join one of the teams too. I didnt realize this and I spent ages walking around and deliberating while groups of people started separating and disappearing.

The problem was, none of the projects really jumped out at me. The only pitch that grabbed my attention was by a guy that wanted to predict if you are going to win a court case by looking at old case documents, I thought that one sounded pretty interesting but unfortunately I couldn't find him anywhere, and none of the organizers could find him either.

In the end I ended up wandering around for about 30 minutes like a lost lamb as everyone started to form teams. In sheer desperation I started butting into the teams and asking what they were doing and if they needed a developer. After a couple times trying this I was about to give up and go home when I decided to try one more team. These guys were planning on building a app that asked the simple question, should I drive or take public transport to my destination?

I thought this idea seemed simple enough, plus it sounded like something I could help out on, I knew front-end and back-end, had built web and mobile apps before so I signend up.

[![CI_Y6mkUEAAG2fh.jpg-large](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI_Y6mkUEAAG2fh.jpg-large-1024x652.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CI_Y6mkUEAAG2fh.jpg-large.jpg)

I think I got really lucky. They turned out to be a truly awesome bunch of people. There were 7 of us in total: Jake, the team leader and front end developer. Cam, the back-end dude with lots of experience with mapping and spacial data. Kim, the data miner and wrangler. Felix, a young but incredibly bright lad who did a bit of everything (including winning the young-and-up-coming guy to watch out for award). James, and his friend Apara who did the super important job of organizing the project and video. And of-course me, who took the role of tooling / data converter / uploader / production / whatever else needed doing.

It was the right mix of skills, ages and experience and over the next 3 days we had a ball. We were asked at one point by one of the VIPs / guests that was walking around how everything was working, who was deciding what needed doing etc.

Well that was a good question. It all just seemed to come together. One of us would say "oh, wouldnt it be cool if it could do X?" then we would all agree and then one person would go off and get the data while others did others set about converting it and uploading it.

We were told to put a lot of effort into the video as that would be the thing the national judges would use to choose who their winners were (national prizes are separate from the local WA prizes and were worth \$80k). So right from the start we were scripting and planning the video.

It all kind of came together on the Sunday morning when we filmed it all and produced the following:

<iframe width="700" height="500" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hgfu31GtvQk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I am pretty proud that we were able to not only build a working app that uses the various data sets but were also able to produce the video in the very limited time. Hopefully it conveys the purpose of the app well and maybe also shows you a little bit about the team and how much fun we all had.

We weren't quite done tho as we still had to do a live presentation to a panel of judges. We had 3 minutes to show what we had, then a little more time for questions from the judges.

[![2015-07-05 16.52.41](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-07-05-16.52.41-1024x1024.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-07-05-16.52.41.jpg)

Personally I felt that this one probably the worst part of the event. There were 20 teams presenting, we were number 14\.

We had been told that it was supposed to be 3 minutes long however it seemed like the first 3 or 4 teams were going way way over that, 10-15 minutes each.

For some reason they changed their policy half way through so now you had exactly 3 minutes and were clapped off when the buzzer sounded. It seemed a little unfair to us who werent included in the earlier set of presentations.

Also the presentations were plagued with audio / visual difficulties thanks to the fact that we had to continually plug and unplug laptops. Presentation and demos that worked fine on a 15" laptop looked terrible or didnt work when switched to a projector resolution.

So most teams seemed rushed, unorganized and generally let all their hard work down by failing to properly present what they had done. The judges also probably didnt get a good feel for what the projects were about or what the problem was they were trying to solve.

Some teams simply played their 3 minute video then asked for questions at the end. Personally I think this worked much better as there was much less to go wrong, plus you had already spent a whole bunch of time on the video, you may as well let it do the talking instead of you. I wish we had done this.

Nevertheless our presentation went okay, nothing too major went wrong (apart from from projector issues) but we just didn't have enough time to do the project justice.

After all the presentations, the judges disappeared for 45 minutes while they deliberated, enough time to grab a beer, then the awards started.

[![CJJboKPUkAE8Wnm.jpg-large](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CJJboKPUkAE8Wnm.jpg-large.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CJJboKPUkAE8Wnm.jpg-large.jpg)

There were \$35,000 up for grabs in prizes over several different categories. You were supposed to elect which prizes you were going for on your project page, some teams chose to select most if not all of the prizes. [We went for 16 of the prizes](https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/should-i-drive).

In the end we ended up winning 2 of them including the single largest prize: [Main Roads Keep WA Moving Prize](https://hackerspace.govhack.org/prize_entries/main-roads-keep-wa-moving-prize) of $2,500\. In total we won $3,000 between us which was great, not the best but not the worst.

[![2015-07-06_19-07-28](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-07-06_19-07-28.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-07-06_19-07-28.jpg)

For me tho, it wasn't about the prizes (in fact I didn't even know there was any cash prizes when I entered), it was more about getting out there and meeting other like-minded people who wanted to work together and build something new and cool and perhaps learn a thing or two about the WA data along the way.

I think I succeeded in that modest goal 10 fold and am incredibly grateful to GovHack and my team for letting me be a part of it.

[![Team shot](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Team-shot-1024x768.jpg)](https://www.mikecann.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Team-shot.jpg)

With the beta for Inputtie drawing very near Oli and I are adding some final touches to the build and doing those "things we meant to do for ages".  One of those things being the app icon. This is the icon you will see on your shortcuts and in your taskbar area so its going to be pretty visible.



Oli, my partner-in-crime has whipped up 2 different versions with 2 variations on each version. See what you think:

[![](/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/round_304x304.png "round_304x304")](/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/round_304x304.png)[![](/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/roundborder_304x304.png "roundborder_304x304")](/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/roundborder_304x304.png)

[![](/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/square_304x304.png "square_304x304")](/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/square_304x304.png)[![](/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/squareborder_304x304.png "squareborder_304x304")](/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/squareborder_304x304.png)

I personally am favouring the circle icon with the border, however I worry that it looks too much like the Internet Explorer icon.

What do you all think?

Leave a comment below.