logKext keylogger

One my family members seems to lose her work distressingly often, particularly long blog posts she composes in browser windows which then crash. In trying to think up a solution to this problem I hit on the idea of using a keylogger that would record all of her keystrokes, and thus allow me to recover the text. I found just such a program-a freeware kernel extension called logKext. The kernel extension loads at startup and you can access the keylog through a terminal based client, which will write the keylog to your desktop as a text file. What I discovered, however, is that this is not a terribly useful way to recover text, precisely because folks rarely type straight through, rather we often hit backspace or delete to make corrections. So when you look at the keylog you'll find a huge number of <del>s, etc. Nonetheless, in a pinch it will bring back text, and if you were truly serious about it, you could probably run the keylog text through a text factory or similar text processing methodology to automatically remove the <del>'s, etc. As a far more practical solution, I convinced her to stop composing in a browser, but in a text editor with auto-save, and then to cut and paste into the browser after she's finished (though now I'm thinking of getting her going in MarsEdit).

Of course a keylogger can be used for much more nefarious activities (and it is not really detectable in normal operation unless you know it's there), but I pass over those in silence. The logKext keylogger is a free download from FSB Software.

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Source: http://fsbsoftware.com/logKext.html

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One my family members seems to lose her work distressingly often, particularly long blog posts she composes in browser windows which then...

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Andreas

I don't think a key logger is the solution here. As you pointed out, a desktop blogging client would be a good solution, another solution would be a browser that is less prone to crashing.

If she is running Firefox, you can install a Greasemonket script that will automatically save the contents of all form elements, should the browser crash, or the page reload for whatever reason. Textarea Backup script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/7671

March 30 2007 at 8:53 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

sight_unseen

and how do you know if something like this has been planted on your system?

March 30 2007 at 8:08 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Steve J

The GhostWriter element of Spell Catcher works well for this too. Saves the text typed into text files in folders broken down by application. Really neat.

March 30 2007 at 4:12 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jan

She could ask the vendor to incorporate http://livesaver.24inch.org/ I wrote it just to save you from crashing browsers and operating systems. Ultimately, of course, the browsers should do that themselves, but for now, it is pretty useful. Yes, this is a shameless self-promotion, but LiveSaver is Open Source, so I hope you don't mind.

March 30 2007 at 3:58 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Paul D

Actually, Safari saves your form entry text in a file somewhere in your library if it crashes. There's a hint at Macosxhints.com on recovering it.

March 30 2007 at 3:19 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

pplante

Wordpress auto-saves posts, not sure if that helps though.

Google Docs would be a good choice here.

March 29 2007 at 11:37 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

muaddib420

use google docs. http://docs.google.com/

it's free, it autosaves and you can access it on any computer.

March 29 2007 at 10:18 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

David Chartier

Depending on what her workflow is like, you could maybe set her up with a Google Docs & Spreadsheets account, which can post to many of the major blogging engines. She could still use a browser, you wouldn't have to shell out for MarsEdit and Google Docs features auto-saving.

Of course, you might lose some blog-specific stuff like categories or tags, but those can often be overcome by simple plugins that allow for embedding that info in the post itself.

March 29 2007 at 9:03 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

William Brawley

What browser does she use? Maybe she could try a browser that didn't crash so much?

March 29 2007 at 7:36 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Brian

There was another good option on freemacware for tracking keystrokes

http://www.freemacware.com/keytrack/

March 29 2007 at 7:31 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply