Hello,

I remember some discussions here about UltraRecall. In the past I did use it but then stopped using it for some reason. Now I see that there is an update to v4 available and I would like to ask if anyone is using it and how do you judge it?

It seems to me that the update price tag is pretty hefty and I would like to know if the new features will justify the update. ( I know this depends but I'm interested in your opinions and experience.)

Thanks a lot in advance!

You would be the best judge. Take a look at the enhancements and the new features (http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?s=8fa012ed0c5e7784f1437f0759625aba&threadid=4090 so you can make an informed decision.

In my opinion, if you are upgrading from v3, you will not find anything dramatic. If you have versions earliier than 3, then yes, I would recommmend upgrading. The promised calendar did not materialize in v4 as previously promised, but I upgraded anyway. For me, it has been worthwhile.

Jon

Even though this update does not bring with it a host of spectacular new features, it does seem as though development is moving ahead at a good clip. There have already been 2 or 3 new builds since version 4 was released and the developers have been hinting that several frequently requested new features, including an enhanced calendar, are likely to appear in the near future. Overall, I'm happy with version 4 and glad I forked out for the update. I find it fast, very stable, and very versatile. It's definitely my PIM of choice.

I, too, rushed to upgrade. UltraRecall has always been a work-in-progress. I was thrilled when the developer took it out of cold storage, and to keep things moving along, I see the upgrade as a chance to thank them in advance. I'll do that gladly.

Cheers, Julie

Thanks to all for your input!

Of course, I did read the list of new features but one of my lessons learned is that features perform completely different "on paper" than "on stage" so it isn't allways possible to make an informed decision only from reading.

For example I was (am) highly interested in cloning. When cloning an element and paste it as a child beneath another element it looks alike in UltraRecall (v3) and MyInfo - at first glance. But when you add a child to the cloned element you will see that the two programms will behave differently. In UltraRecall the new child element is available in all cloned elements while in MyInfo it is only available at the insertion point. And that's a difference that could make your day.

I will not judge which of the two variants is more appropriate (that depends, of course) but it's a most important difference I didn't get form reading a feature list.

So this was my intention for asking here for your experiences with v4. Maybe someone could have reported an improvement in actual working with v4.

What I understand from the posts is that upgrades are mostly done for reasons of loyalty and hope for future develpoment so seems to be no need to hurry up with an upgrade.

Nevertheless, I would like to thank you again for your kind replies!

Some time ago Kinook announced the cessation of further development of URp except for bugs & compatibility issues. When I commented on this on their fourm, they fudged the statement but never came clean on the issue realizing that the announcement was probably bad for business.

However, good for their word, they did fix bugs & updated for compatibility issues. Then they announced v4.

After looking at the 'improvements', I make v4 out to be something less than a major upgrade by any measure. However, it did allow the developers the cover to charge for the 'upgrade'. I wouldn't deny any independent programmer more $$ to help them along but I generally object to charging for a make believe upgrade just to generate funds. That's what I judge v4 to be. Most, if not all, the improvements requested by users over the time I was using the program & was active on their forum (before being thrown off) were basically bypassed or ignored.

However, having said that, UR was a fine, stable, mature program before v4. If I were still using the program I'd probably upgrade to help support the effort & hope for future development despite Kinook's announcement that development on the product was ceasing. I might even have gone for the upgrade even though I don't use the program @ this time just to support their efforts but after the sleezy way they handled their development announcements, I've chosen not to.

This is in stark contrast w Tom Davis' efforts w Zoot & Pierre's efforts w InfoQube. I've supported these & many other such programs financially & in forums over the years just to be supportive. But the folks @ UltraRecall are a different stripe.

I think you made a good decision

Just my .02

--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield CT USA

Somebody is wrong on the Internet, and I must correct them!

http://xkcd.com/386/

Jan, with all due respect, that's not fair.

You write:

Some time ago Kinook announced the cessation of further development of URp except for bugs & compatibility issues. When I commented on this on their fourm, they fudged the statement but never came clean on the issue realizing that the announcement was probably bad for business.

A more charitable reading would be that they changed their minds. Excuse, don?t accuse, as a wise mother (not mine) might say. And no, I don?t want to rehash your exchanges with them back then.

You write:

I wouldn?t deny any independent programmer more $$ to help them along but I generally object to charging for a make believe upgrade just to generate funds. That?s what I judge v4 to be. Most, if not all, the improvements requested by users over the time I was using the program & was active on their forum (before being thrown off) were basically bypassed or ignored.

They made an improvement I requested, which is to automatically import things copied to the clipboard. Many requested for search results to be highlighted. They did that. Many requested HTML export, so you can create a clickable document tree you can put on the Web. They did that. I?ll wager other improvements were also the result of user requests. To say that ?Most, if not all? requests users made weren?t acted on is false.

You write:

I might even have gone for the upgrade even though I don?t use the program @ this time just to support their efforts but after the sleezy way they handled their development announcements, I?ve chosen not to. This is in stark contrast w Tom Davis? efforts w Zoot & Pierre?s efforts w InfoQube. I?ve supported these & many other such programs financially & in forums over the years just to be supportive. But the folks @ UltraRecall are a different stripe.

The UltraRecall people have been forthcoming in more experience, certainly more so than one of your examples. I like and I have used Zoot for years and Tom Davis is responsive if you write him, but he shares almost nothing useful about Zoot?s progress. UltraRecall publishes a roadmap and lo and behold, actually follows it reasonably closely. Where?s the official Zoot roadmap? (Yes, I know recently he?s outlined some promised features in emails on the forum, but he hasn?t posted a roadmap on the Web site) Davis has been talking about improvements of Zoot for years and has yet to deliver in a significant way. The transition to 32-bit Zoot took forever, almost literally. Even when it finally happened, only a few new features were added. More recently, he said a beta for Zoot 6 could be in January. Didn?t happen. Then he said maybe July 15. Hasn?t happened. Now, apparently, it?s imminent. I hope so. When UltraRecall releases an updated version, they tell you what bugs were fixed. I don?t recall Davis ever telling us. I like Zoot and I believe Davis is a good guy, but to say that somehow the UltraRecall people are sleazy in comparison is ridiculous.

I like UltraRecall. It?s a well-made, richly featured, reliable program ? much, much better than most products in this category.

That?s my nickel, and unlike your two cents, it?s not wooden.

Hah, I almost never write in Word but did tonight, so naturally the encoding is screwed up in my post. Apologies.

@ Mark

That?s my nickel, and unlike your two cents, it?s not wooden.

Mark, I hope you're right & I'm wrong because, as I said, I think URp is a fine program & I'm generally very supportive of independent programmers. I just hope you are not being naive as I have been many times over. And, no, I won't characterize your post as I think that would be rude. At least here -- on this forum -- we can ask questions, offer our comments & our opinions w/o being censored.

--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield CT USA

I went away from UR up to a few months ago - I have been a user since Version 1. I've tried every other product of its kind imaginable - and nothing beats UR for data integrity/safety, the ability to store and display anything internall, the ability to mark up items according to a rich tagging/attribute scheme ... and on and on. Yes, the developers are a bit frosty - in other words they are tech heads not marketers - but if you can forgive them for that thaey are straight shooters and trustable.

When these new features come out (http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?s=61dbdc7fe6279563938b1ef901859cd5&threadid=3204

# Enhanced calendar pane
# Keywords pane / tagging improvements
# Ability to hide completed items in tree
# Add columns to Data Explorer pane
# Custom sorting in tree
# Syntax highlighting in text editor
# Revamp the help file / web site / demos

Which I bet will be quite soon - I can't imagine any other personal information integration tool coming close.

I am extremely please with UR.

I occassionally use Mind Manager when I need to "think spacially"

I am trying the new Zoot 6 - but it looks like its months or more away from being prime time.

I use Evernote for Note sharing over the internet.

I've tried to like Personal Brain - I am trying 5.5 beta. But to me it is still merely a link capturing tool with a fancy display. I can't really do any serious work with it. Its like a toy or something.

Connectedtext is intriguing, but not user friendly, really for people who are comfortable working with lots of technical commands and scripts... If Eduardo could make it more non tech user friendly, it could be really interesting - especially as it is a really powerful information organizer with a built in visual navigator...

Cheers, Ian

Mark wrote:

Somebody is wrong on the Internet, and I must correct them!


http://xkcd.com/386/

Jan, with all due respect, that's not fair.

You
write:

> Some time ago Kinook announced the cessation of further development of URp
except for bugs & compatibility issues. When I commented on this on their fourm, they
fudged the statement but never came clean on the issue realizing that the
announcement was probably bad for business.

A more charitable reading would be
that they changed their minds. Excuse, don?t accuse, as a wise mother (not mine) might
say. And no, I don?t want to rehash your exchanges with them back then.

Had the exchanges been thoroughly "hashed," avoiding rehashing might be the better wisdom. They haven't been.

The only "excuse" for banning a poster for criticizing the product is an apology and reinstatement. Prohibiting free discussion of a product - even misguided criticism - is an ineradicable stain on a developer's credibility. Forum censorship is fortunately *not* the norm. The only developers I know who have committed this grievous misdeed are ADM and Opera Software (the browser). I might use or even pay for such a product - but I would never praise it without the strongest qualifications.

Stephen R. Diamond wrote:

... The only developers I know who have committed this grievous misdeed
are ADM and Opera Software (the browser). I might use or even pay for such a product - but
I would never praise it without the strongest qualifications.

Kinook made a huge mistake of announcing that they will only correct bugs from now on, thing that only the most naive and fair business would do (surely, they are very bad businessmen ;-) ).

Jan kept on pushing and asking them to come clean (about at that time removed nonexistent statement) in every new thread that had sth to do with development, when it was obvious that it was closed issue for Kinook (whether they changed their mind or not) because they didn't answer such questions from several users (myself included) in the original thread where the announcement was made. So, from their point of view, Jan became forum spammer ;-)

To add to your list, Milenix (MyInfo) developers removed (didn't publish) my comments when they announced MyInfo v4. They falsely claimed with big letters that they are the first PIM with customizable attributes pane when UR had it for years ... they didn't post my comments, neither removed the false claims nor sent me any email with explanation ...

The age of the Internet has certainly changed the nature of the relationship between producers and consumers. I can sympathize with companies that try to find the right balance of sharing information with customers and not telling them too much... it's the old "You don't want to know how your sausage is made" point. Why Kinook didn't address this issue when they first made and then retracted the statement about further development of UR is a mystery. It seems to me they could easily have put the whole thing to rest then and there. Then silencing Jan's voice was another dumb move... companies need to realize that in this day and age there are many other venues for frustrated customers to air their grievances. Better to let them do so and address those grievances.

Most customers want to believe in the companies they are supporting, and will give them the benefit of the doubt. I think that is why Tom Davis of Zoot is cut so much slack by Zooter-nation. He constantly over-promises on delivery of new versions. But the product works and everyone believes -- rightly or wrongly --that Tom does the best he can as a single-person developer. The fact that he continually improved Zoot (even though it was only a 16-bit application) and never charged an upgrade fee -- I mean, we're talking eight years or so -- also helped. Then, when Zoot 5 (the 32-bit version) finally came out last year, I was glad to pay the upgrade fee. And with the new version, 6.0, just around the corner (we hope), Tom is saying there will be no upgrade fee for those who upgraded to or initially bought 5.0, even though 6.0 introduces a host of additional features. It's for these reasons, I think, that most Zooters have remained loyal.

Steve Z.

I'll a addendum to quant's recap of the momentary drama of UltraRecall. Thankfully, Jan's assertion that the announcement was pulled and replaced to swindle us out of our money (a la ADA) - that the developers were likely unethical and had no intention of continuing development nor bug fixing - was a false premise. The UR developers, clearly not being PR experts nor marketeers, have responded in a more traditional and worthy manner. The developers have demonstrated their commitment with quick bug fixes and have now added the new features that they promised on the roadmap that they announced. They are very responsive in the UR forum. They have an updated "road map" of features that are mostly refinements to their feature rich software.

The UltraRecall forums are still not a place to do "social networking" with the developers. Questions are answered effectively and promptly. Lengthy dialogs are not the norm. (Quant is a most valuable resource in that forum :-) ) The technical documentation of each feature and menu choice UR is thorough. While UR can be used to do simple things easily - UR has a lot of depth.

I can confidently recommend UR to someone looking for mature, stable software with an extensive and gradually growing- feature set that is useful TODAY. If you enjoy being a part of a community that troubleshoots, finds bugs, refines rough features or living on the bleeding edge - I would look elsewhere.

@ $Bill: you quote me as saying:

Jan's assertion that the announcement was pulled and replaced to swindle us out of our money (a la ADA) -
that the developers were likely unethical and had no intention of continuing development nor bug fixing - was a false premise.

I think you'd better find that post & post it here as I don't believe I ever said that. If I did I was wrong.

However, I do remember insisting that Kinook come clean with their intentions so no one -- myself included -- was under any delusions. And whenever some naif came aboard & offered a suggestion or asked for an improvement, rather than see them wait around when nothing was going to happen, I pointed them to what the developers posted @ the time which was: only compatibility issues & bugs were going to be addressed.

I have consistently said that URp is a mature, capable & stable program that is on the list of excellent data gatherers & people should look @ it despite the developers saying that had halted further development.

I didn't make anything up & I haven't made anything up. Prove your statement quoted above or take it back.

Let's at least have some honesty on this forum.

--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield CT USA

Mark, though not agreeing with all you wrote, I was willing to assume good faith on your part in assessing Jan's paqst criticisms of UltraRecall.

Until I read your last line - the gratuitous, snide comment that your nickel isn't wooden, unlike Jan's 2 cents.

Then I wondered what your motive was.

Because it seems to me there's a lot of merit to Jan's criticisms of UR, in addition to the fact that the UR folk treated him very shoddily.

In the process you manage to find fault with Zoot's founder for not being forthcoming on progress unless you ask him.

Let's compare.

We know Tom is Zoot - essentially a one person shop. He doesn't issue a lot of statements on progress. But if you ask him, as you yourself said, Tom responds promptly.

After all these years we still have no idea whether UR is a one person shop, or a dozen staff, or what.

And questions asked are not always answered promptly by the UR folk.

Yes, you are right: the UR folk have been pretty consistent with a road map.

But what was it you wanted from Tom by way of development progress.

Let me see, "I am taking a 16-bit program, rewriting it completely to function as a 32-bit program, in the process of doing which my intention is to eliminate limits to file sizes, etc."

Was that not clear to you?

What more did you want, a lot of dazzling new features because that is usually what development means.

But Zoot already had more features than most 32 bit programs - the development news was getting it into the 32 bit age so it could develop further.

And it took a long time. Because Tom is thorough. He is a skilled craftsman. And oh yes, did I mention, he's essentially by himself.

And today we know that Zoot 6 - not Zoot 5 - is going into beta testing - that it has an outline feature, a built-in browser, and and a self contained email program.

Tom's roadmap may have been updated less frequently than UR's, but in software terms the Admiral's following of his succinctly stated road map has been the equivalent of refurbishing and upgrading the interstate highway system in the US.

It is all new.

Back to Kinook, the UR folk made it clear they were essentially no longer developing the program. You are right that they probably changed their mind.

But look at the way they did it, and how badly Jan was treated in the process. Perhaps they changed their mind because Jan had understood exactly what they said, though it seems they themselves did not. And Jan called them on it.

If Jan had not, we might not have a version 4 of UR today.

But the point is not really whether they changed their mind, or even whether Jan might have urged them in that direction.

The point is that the UR K folk didn't have the decency to come clean they made a mistake, or that they treated one of their most loyal users - Jan - like crap.

Again, the question is begged, why cannot people who operate in public date to admit a mistake, to say they are sorry.

I will point out something else about he K folk - many times there has been criticism, well justified from a consumer point of view, that their help files are not good, and that though they may have technical smarts they have not figured out how to communicate the non-technical side of software.

The point being - we are not all geeks.

Two of the geekiest guys around may be Tom at Zoot and Pierre at InfoCube - I say this judged on all that they have accomplished, Tom over many years, Pierre in a relatively short development period.

These two "geeks" has shown what real communication and collaboration are about when it comes to developing software.

The K guys keep on ignoring legitimate criticisms on their communication style.

Both Pierre and Tom are human beings - we know so little about the K folk. We don't even know where they are. They have made a fetish out of being too private and too close to the chest. That, combined with the vicious way Jan was treated makes me highly suspicious of them

I will choose not to trust UR effort until I see a little more humanity and humility from the world of K.

Incidentally, just reread your assessment of Tom's moving Zoot to 32 bit. It is very unfair. What took almost forever was to finish version 4. His taking Zoot to 32 bit did take a long time, but not as long as you make it seem. And he did at various points make it quite clear what the challenges were and why they were taken so much time.

You say Tom didn't put his road map on the web site. As you and everyone else know, Tom communicates through the Zoo Yahoo group.

That group is not an official group site, like the one UR has on its web site.

Tom seems to prefer working thru the group - the intrinsic democracy and accountability of responding to people in a forum he doesn't control.

Coming back to your shots at Jan. I can tell you straight up that if you ever had a piece of software that Jan was checking out, you would be truly blessed to have a guy who puts his heart and soul into it, and has more patience and understanding of detail than most of us.

For the record, I do not think the UR folk are sleazy - but I think their lack of understanding of good communication resulted in their behaving in a sleazy manner, and thus giving an appearance of being so.

If they chose to start looking at some of the communication oriented criticism they could turn that around.

But it seems to me they have chosen to emulate the reclusive Infoselect Jim Lewis at Micrologic who is known for running an operation that has more communication problems than the GOP on the day after Michael Steele makes statement to the press.

Daly

Mark wrote:

Somebody is wrong on the Internet, and I must correct them!


http://xkcd.com/386/

Jan, with all due respect, that's not fair.

You
write:

> Some time ago Kinook announced the cessation of further development of URp
except for bugs & compatibility issues. When I commented on this on their fourm, they
fudged the statement but never came clean on the issue realizing that the
announcement was probably bad for business.

A more charitable reading would be
that they changed their minds. Excuse, don?t accuse, as a wise mother (not mine) might
say. And no, I don?t want to rehash your exchanges with them back then.

You write:

>
I wouldn?t deny any independent programmer more $$ to help them along but I generally
object to charging for a make believe upgrade just to generate funds. That?s what I
judge v4 to be. Most, if not all, the improvements requested by users over the time I was
using the program & was active on their forum (before being thrown off) were basically
bypassed or ignored.

They made an improvement I requested, which is to
automatically import things copied to the clipboard. Many requested for search
results to be highlighted. They did that. Many requested HTML export, so you can
create a clickable document tree you can put on the Web. They did that. I?ll wager other
improvements were also the result of user requests. To say that ?Most, if not all?
requests users made weren?t acted on is false.

You write:

> I might even have gone
for the upgrade even though I don?t use the program @ this time just to support their
efforts but after the sleezy way they handled their development announcements, I?ve
chosen not to. This is in stark contrast w Tom Davis? efforts w Zoot & Pierre?s efforts w
InfoQube. I?ve supported these & many other such programs financially & in forums
over the years just to be supportive. But the folks @ UltraRecall are a different
stripe.

The UltraRecall people have been forthcoming in more experience,
certainly more so than one of your examples. I like and I have used Zoot for years and Tom
Davis is responsive if you write him, but he shares almost nothing useful about Zoot?s
progress. UltraRecall publishes a roadmap and lo and behold, actually follows it
reasonably closely. Where?s the official Zoot roadmap? (Yes, I know recently he?s
outlined some promised features in emails on the forum, but he hasn?t posted a roadmap
on the Web site) Davis has been talking about improvements of Zoot for years and has yet
to deliver in a significant way. The transition to 32-bit Zoot took forever, almost
literally. Even when it finally happened, only a few new features were added. More
recently, he said a beta for Zoot 6 could be in January. Didn?t happen. Then he said
maybe July 15. Hasn?t happened. Now, apparently, it?s imminent. I hope so. When
UltraRecall releases an updated version, they tell you what bugs were fixed. I don?t
recall Davis ever telling us. I like Zoot and I believe Davis is a good guy, but to say
that somehow the UltraRecall people are sleazy in comparison is ridiculous.

I like
UltraRecall. It?s a well-made, richly featured, reliable program ? much, much
better than most products in this category.

That?s my nickel, and unlike your two
cents, it?s not wooden.

I quite agree Sephen.

As you know, I was naive in giving Eric and ADM the benefit of the doubt when he started to loose his grip on loyalty to his loyal and trusted testors, instead deciding to emulate some of the democratic practices of the Chinese People's Republic.

Apology to Jan and reinstatement, however over late it is, would do much to show the UR folk have some understanding of what they are about.

As for Opera, I agree with you.

Haavard, their forum boss, is a tyrant. He loves geeks and geeks love him. If a non favored person attempts a criticism or even to understand Haavard's modus operandi you get thoroughly crapped upon.

Apart from this forum nazi who perhaps has done more harm to Opera's reputation than anyone or anything else, Opera generally is not responsive.

I find the irony of Opera pushing what it calls "communities" overwhelming, given that it seems to have so little sense of how communities operate.

Re ADM, if either Arne or Eric has the decency to enter public dialog again it'd be worthwhile to find out what the cost of getting development access to their code would be. I recently opened up ADM 4, for which I no longer have the registration code so cannot use it properly, and was reminded of what great potential ADM had.

ADM did metadata far better than anyone else, and when he was at the top of his game, no one was more responsive than Eric.

I believe ADM, with some little revision, is quite capable of blowing MyInfo and UR out of the water rather easily, and giving some competition to Zoot and InfoCube. UR is hard on the eyes. MyInfo still fails to come up with a basic hoist mechanism.

Daly

Actually ADM was the first program I know of with a customizable attributes pane.

ADM's presentation of metadata was far better and easier than UR's.

Both UR and MyInfo have lacked on democracy in forums.

Daly

I have no wish to enter a discussion about UR (which I stopped using some time ago), Jan or the democracy on forums, but I do feel the need to add a little balance to the comments about Zoot.

A lot of people have very positive opinions about Zoot's developer, Tom, and that's great, though the level of sycophancy shown in the Zoot forum gives me the heebie jeebies - it sometimes seems more like a cult than a software forum. However, I don't think that the fact that Zoot is developed by a single person is an excuse for the failings of communication that we experience as Zoot users - or, at least, that I have.

Personally, I have had problems getting Zoot support from Tom (I know others haven't). Tom posts new versions and never documents what has changed. Tom sets deadlines for new versions that he misses (and not by days but by months) - if Microsoft did the same, all hell would break loose.

I am also a one man band, and I would never treat my customers in the same way, and would never use the excuse that it's only me here to ignore customer requests or fail to provide information or miss release deadlines. (Note: Tom has never used this excuse - his followers take up the sword on his behalf). Zoot is a fine piece of software, but nowadays I rarely report bugs, I don't upgrade to any new minor versions (because there's never an indication of what has changed), and I have no expectations of what will come - I use Zoot now because it does what I need it to do now, and that's it.

It probably helps Tom's case that he so rarely charges for any new versions of the software, which is a good reason for gaining a devoted following!

Could it be that ADM was sold to some (Chinese?) company, which for its own reasons, has chosen to withdraw it from at least the english-speaking market? Or, perhaps, like Microsoft, might ADM have used some code or method that was copyrighted?

Daly de Gagne wrote:

And questions asked are not always answered promptly by the UR folk.

You are right, not ALWAYS. But I'm yet to find developers that answer as fast in a consistent way for years. Please, be realistic! Has one of your questions not been answered for days? Was it maybe when you had that big rant here some time ago when you lost some data in UR? ;-)

If Jan had not, we might not have a version 4 of UR today.

Please, again, be realistic. Sure, Kinook spends 100s development hours to prove Jan was wrong.

Let's look at what Kinook did: They announced they were ceasing further development of Ultra Recall, then they retracted that announcement without any explanation. If, in fact, further development was not going to happen, don't potential new customers have a right to know that? When one customer made a point of telling others about this on their forum, he was banned from the forum.

I agree with Daly that it is perfectly reasonable to question the ethics of people who behave this way.

While I doubt that Kinook would go to the trouble of issuing version 4.0 just to prove Jan wrong, Jan's reaction could very well have demonstrated to them that to keep UR viable, they had to keep developing it, and I think that was Daly's point.

Regarding Tom Davis at Zoot, another big thing he has going for him is the advocacy of a credible journalist, James Fallows, no small thing. It is frustrating that Tom doesn't include any information about what has been changed in his minor updates to Zoot, but any time I've written to him directly with a technical question, I have gotten a swift response. And he has never, to my knowledge, censored anyone or tried to. This is why I generally trust Tom and am willing to have patience with the glacial-seeming pace of development.

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

... If,
in fact, further development was not going to happen, don't potential new customers
have a right to know that?

we have the saying "IF the dog didn't sh.t, he would be dead" ...

When one customer made a point of telling others about this on
their forum, he was banned from the forum.

The user was consistently bringing up NON EXISTENT statement. Do you see the difference?

Jan's
reaction could very well have demonstrated to them that to keep UR viable, they had to
keep developing it, ....

Sure, and you believe that? Jan's reaction demonstrated that he didn't understand that Kinook refuses to talk about this issue (which was not fair from Kinook, but there you have it) as they haven't answered several such questions in the original thread. Others got the clue ...

Daly de Gagne wrote:

Until I read your last line - the gratuitous, snide comment that your nickel isn?t wooden, unlike Jan?s 2 cents.

Then I wondered what your motive was.

It was gratuitous. It was a play on the phrase "Don't take a wooden nickel," meaning I didn't think some of Jan's statements were factual, as I explained. He ended his post by referring to it as his two cents, thus the wordplay. My motive was that I didn't want to leave Jan's statements about UR floating out there on the intertubes unchallenged.

Because it seems to me there?s a lot of merit to Jan?s criticisms of UR, in addition to the fact that the UR folk treated him very shoddily.

In the process you manage to find fault with Zoot?s founder for not being forthcoming on progress unless you ask him.

Jan's experience with UR was his experience and he's entitled to it. I've had good experiences with UR.

Jan called UR "sleazy" compared to Tom (and Pierre). My point was that there are plenty of things about the way Tom does business that could be viewed in a different light if you choose to do so. I have no experience with Pierre so didn't mention him, but I have been a long-time registered user of Zoot.

I think it's interesting that you will go to great lengths to excuse Tom's faults but seem less willing to cut UR any slack. The help file is a good example. Longtime users of Zoot know that for years it never even HAD a help file, and many complained about it and it took Tom a long time to create one. UR has a help file, but many find it not very helpful to non-technical users. I don't think it's written very well either, although I appreciate it's detail. UR's current roadmap promises to revamp it, apparently in response to the criticism (http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?s=bc9fd9f5d361f41d3f5010219ee6ef6b&threadid=3204 Yet you still fault them for it. That's your right, but I think it's unfair.

I understand why people say UR's communication style is "cold." It comes off that way to me too. I agree with you they'd be better off if they adopted a friendlier tone and were more forthright about who they are. But I think Tom's communication style is less than perfect, too. Tom isn't a paragon of openess and transparency. I've followed the twists and turns of the Zoot saga for more than a decade and don't think I have any better understanding of what's going on with Zoot than I do with UR. In fact, I think I have less.

You compare the process of improving Zoot to refurbishing and upgrading the interstate highway system, but I think UR is equally complex while also being the more technically accomplished and professional piece of software. You can see UR's commitment to quality in everything from the design of their Web site to their choice of icons. If you feel their treatment of Jan makes you not want to do business with them, that's your right and their loss. My sense is that people have more affection for Zoot because Tom is very generous with his upgrade policy, because they know he's a one-man band and because his style of information management is especially appealing to them, whatever the flaws of his software and his development process.

I like Jan's posts and certainly hope they continue. I don't feel I was taking "shots" at him, the gratuitous nickel reference aside. I just thought his point of view was too one-sided for my taste.

I remember a time when generally speaking questions were not answered promptly at UR - I was understating.

Re my comment re Jan, I wasn't mean to suggest UR spent more money to prove him wrong - what I hoped to convey was that the fuss around Jan, because he dared to call Kinook to task, may have resulted in a different awareness of Kinood. It may have stirred up enough customers to have Kinook realize they had made a mistake.

Never bothering to apologize to Jan or to reinstate him of course.

Maybe Kinook realize that by pulling plug more or less on UR it might be putting its other product at risk, also, or that it would become a one trick pony.

Daly

quant wrote:

Daly de Gagne wrote:
>And questions asked are not always answered promptly by the UR
folk.

You are right, not ALWAYS. But I'm yet to find developers that answer as fast in
a consistent way for years. Please, be realistic! Has one of your questions not been
answered for days? Was it maybe when you had that big rant here some time ago when you
lost some data in UR? ;-)

>If Jan had not, we might not have a version 4 of UR
today.

Please, again, be realistic. Sure, Kinook spends 100s development hours to
prove Jan was wrong.