Usage Tracking for Windows desktop applications [closed]

Question

I am looking for some frameworks that can be used to collect usage information for Windows desktop application and analyze it. For example, I would like to be able to answer questions like (a) how many times do people use this application in a day (b) which are their favorite menu items, etc.

I looked briefly at Google Analytics and Omniture SiteCatalyst but they seem to work only on web applications.

Answer 1

While tools like sitecatalyst, GA, YWA etc.. are mostly designed around the web, you can still use them, even for desktop apps. Most of them have APIs where you can send/receive data in a specified format (like XML or whatever), or you can do it along the same principle of how those tools work when javascript is disabled: a static image request with the data attached to the source url (you'd just make a request to the server with the data attached as url parameters. You may also need to fake some browser info so the data doesn't get marked and weeded out as a bot).