SFX Teams:WhatPulse

Introduction

WhatPulse is a small program that runs in your Windows system tray and counts the number of keys that you press and the number of mouseclicks that you...click. Once you rack up a good number of keys and clicks, you double-click the icon in your system tray to "pulse" the keys and clicks to the WhatPulse website. The website keeps track of your total number of keys and clicks, along with some other statistics, and it also ranks you against other users.

The SpreadFirefox Team

Another feature of the WhatPulse website is that it allows users to group together into teams that compete for the top slot on the team ranking page. This list is highly visible because the WhatPulse project currently has over 84,000 active members, 50,000 of whom are members of a team. Many users check the team ranking often, so getting the SpreadFirefox team into the top ten could drive more hits to GetFirefox.com and the other Mozilla websites (other projects like Folding@Home work in a similar way). WhatPulse also has a huge following in Europe (only 26% of WhatPulse users are from the United States), so it should also help encourage international users to download Firefox.

How Do I Get Involved?

Becoming a WhatPulse user is very simple - just follow the instructions below:

1. Download and install the WhatPulse client from this page
2. Register for a free WhatPulse account on this page
3. Start the WhatPulse client (if it isn't started already)
4. You should see a dialog that asks you for a your WhatPulse username and password. You can also enter proxy settings if necessary.
5. Once the dialog verifies your account, you should be ready to go!
6. To make sure keycounting is working, right click the WhatPulse 'W' icon and click "Spawn geek dialog"
7. Type some keys, and watch the key count increase. Double-click the W icon to pulse your keys to the server.

If you have problems with the above process, you can get help at the WhatPulse support forums.

Now, you need to become a member of the SpreadFirefox team.

1. From the WhatPulse main page, log in using the form on the left.
2. This should take you to your control panel. Click "Teams" on the tab bar at the top of the panel.
3. Click "Join a Team"
4. A box should pop up (you may need to turn off your pop-up blocker for this) asking you to type in a team name.
5. Type "SpreadFirefox" (no quotes) and click Search
6. Click on SpreadFirefox in the list that appears
7. You've successfully joined the SpreadFirefox team!

Pruning Policy

It makes a team look better if we have more keys per user, and if our users are active. To make sure that the team doesn't get clogged with users who signed up and never pulsed any keys, any users who meet all of the following requirements will be kicked from the team:

• User has not pulsed in over two months
• User has less than 50,000 keystrokes

Users who meet ANY of the following requirements will also be kicked:

• User has not pulsed at all, or has not pulsed since registering
• User has more than 50,000 keystrokes but has been dormant for over a year

This policy is not meant to kick legitimate users. If you are kicked and still wish to be a member of the team, just rejoin and make sure that you pulse more often. For those who will probably ask, the reason why users with more than 50,000 keystrokes don't get kicked is that many users like to save up their keystrokes over a long period of time and pulse a large amount at once.

Team Statistics

• 10/18/2004 - Team is founded - ~4,000,000 keys - 1 member - Rank: Unknown
• 12/05/2004 - First WhatPulse Team Status Update - 48,000,000 keys - 40 members - Rank: 75th
• 01/03/2005 - Second WhatPulse Team Status Update - 80,000,000 keys - # of members unknown - Rank: 51st
• 02/13/2005 - Third WhatPulse Team Status Update - 112,000,000 keys - 119 members - Rank: 43rd
• 03/23/2005 - Fourth WhatPulse Team Status Update - 165,000,000 keys - 131 members - Rank: 29th
• 07/11/2005 - This wiki page is posted - 358,000,000 keys - 164 members - Rank: 16th
• 08/19/2005 - Just a random day - 364,000,000 keys - 160 members - Rank: 20th
• 09/11/2005 - Another random day - 392,000,000 keys - 164 members - Rank: 19th
• 10/09/2005 - Yet another random day - 418,000,000 keys - 171 members - Rank: 19th
• 10/23/2005 - Updated keystroke graph - 441,000,000 keys - 173 members - Rank: 18th
• 12/11/2005 - Another keystroke graph update - 517,000,000 keys - 185 members - Rank: 15th
• 05/22/2006 - Just an update! - 720,000,000 keys - 186 members - Rank: 16th

A graph, for those who are interested:

We are averaging 1,237,000 keystrokes per day or 14.32 keys per second. At this rate, we will reach one billion keystrokes in about 226 days, on January 4, 2007. C'mon, we can get there faster than that!