Yesterday, Milenix released a "private" beta of version 4 for current owners of MyInfo 3.

In my initial tests, one hugely important piece of good news is that the new indexing algorithm has seems to have speeded up program operations immensely. Cutting and pasting operations that sometimes took a minute or more now take only a few seconds. This improvement is a very big deal for me; without it I might have seriously considered walking away from the program.

Disappointing news is that, in the current version at least, rendering of collected web pages and snippets remains so-so at best. Interestingly, if you select a page or block in Firefox, then call the "Send to MyInfo" extension, MyInfo only captures the text. If you select and copy the same page or block, then paste it into a blank topic, MyInfo captures the images as well as text.

I've just begun to play with the other new features, so can't really address them yet. Milenix has acknowledged that some of the promised v4 features have not been implemented in this beta, but say they will be included before release of the official product.

Thanks for the update, Bob. I am still looking at a trial of the old version for dedicated task management. I like the ability to customize columns and use tags, but I am not certain what keeps me from wanting to use it. I guess I am very torn between a dedicated task management program, and a PIM program that has an integrated calendar w/strong task management capabilities, not unlike (drum roll please) Ecco.

I enjoy the learning process when evaluating different programs, because it gets my mind out of the box and helps me to look at my work habits in new ways. But, for me, evaluating new software can be a very intense activity, and my brain can only take so much after a typically crazy day at work. Speaking of intense, I just loaded up do-Organizer, and I thought my brain might explode! It makes UR look simple.

In the mean time, if you have any more thoughts or can talk about any new features in v.4, please share.

--Ken

The limitation of the Firefox extension is known, though I'm not sure if Petko commented that he will be improving it back then when I asked - probably yes.

I liked MyInfo, too bad the development was taking too long. (And not that it's a major factor, but in the end thanks to BitsDuJour, UltraRecall was $20 cheaper, too.)

I have found do-Organizer to be way simpler than UltraRecall. Well it looks complex, but it's just due to a load of modules, after that it's all about clicking the right button on the toolbar. UltraRecall is way more geeky, with options to setup, databases to "design" and some concepts to understand, while with do-Organizer one can start inputting data right now without any further thinking and no harm will be done.

The limitation of the Firefox extension is known, though I’m not sure if Petko commented
that he will be improving it back then when I asked - probably yes.

Indeed. However, the roadmap hinted that web capture would be improved in v4, and I guess I was hoping for miracles.

I still like almost everything else about MyInfo (a ruler bar, please, Petko? the ability to set background colors for individual documents?) so I'm going to stay with it. MyInfo serves nearly all my info storage and retrieval needs beautifully, and the UI is simple and elegant.

For task management and daily planning, I'm sticking with ECCO (another drum roll, please!)

And for web capture... well, I gave Surfulater an honest try, but despite its many strengths, I still find the interface clunky and the command structure non-intuitive. Scrapbook has some appeal but is lacking in power.

So... today I broke down and paid to register OneNote.

By the way, as far as Do-Organizer goes, I like the idea in concept, but gosh, it has the most garish UI I've ever seen. I could not see myself firing up that sucker to make my daily plans each morning; I'd need 3 or 4 cups of coffee just to face it!

Update: Milenix released a new version of the "Send To MyInfo" Firefox extension today. There's some improvement in capturing of graphics, but formatting is still haphazard and many images fail to make the transfer.

Interesting comments you made Thomas regards do-Organizer |vs| UltraRecall.

Anyone know how do-Organizer goes with regards to flexibility / ease of data import / export?

Zargron wrote:

Interesting comments you made Thomas regards do-Organizer |vs|
UltraRecall.

Anyone know how do-Organizer goes with regards to flexibility / ease
of data import / export?

do-Organizer tries to integrate with other stuff, like Outlook, Outlook Express, but it does a dreadful job compared with Ultrarecall, Personal Brain, Omea, and Zoot. Its export facilities are also highly sub-optimal. The development pace of do-Organizer has slowed to a crawl. The pattern I've seen over the years is that the GEMX development team do a spurt of development, then release a product with a lot of ragged edges, then take almost forever to clean it all up...

do-Organizer is certainly an interesting concept, but I wouldn't take it seriously for about another year....

Regards, IJG

It depends on what you need to export.

I have for example found an export of emails great, something I can't see how that could be done for example in about mentioned UltraRecall easily (maybe it can be done, I have never done that and it's not obvious right away).

I can't speak about other export methods as I didn't use them.

But...doOrganizer is based on a third party SQL database. I have downloaded frontend to that database, and now I can manipulate my data anyway I wish. Of course you would better have to know some basic SQL at least. But that would give you an extra power over UltraRecall, where you can't see directly the database, it's only planned for future.
You can also use SQL directly from within doOrganizer, I don't know how complete and easy that is.

I think the doOrganizer development is OK, but Ian might be right as he watched the company over few years, and I only did so over few months. One annoying thing is they introduced a bug with recurring appointments in one of the releases and months later it's still unfixed thus recurring appointments turned to be useless in my case.

One more thing is they boast about first-class support. I had good experience, but quite a few people on the forum didn't, and their excuse didn't sound much believable to me (but that's just my feeling, though well backed up by available data).

Thomas wrote:

But...doOrganizer is based on a third party SQL database. I have downloaded
frontend to that database, and now I can manipulate my data anyway I wish. Of course you
would better have to know some basic SQL at least. But that would give you an extra power
over UltraRecall, where you can't see directly the database, it's only planned for
future.

Ask and ye shall receive: Kinook posted a message today with a link to a SQLLite console that allows you to access the database directly.

http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?s=03244f20cf5e737d26a057459a321290&threadid=2825

My favorite thing about Kinook is that the upgrades and development of the UR platform never seem to stop....Kudos to them..

PIMfan

MyInfo 4 public beta was finally released.

Bob, I am a little ticked with Milenix. They fell way behind their schedule and, in spite of having the blog, didn't provide any information about the delay.

Their are still issues with web pages. Why? It ain't rocket science any more. Others have done it.

I find it could be a lot easier linking to Word and other documents.

There's no hoisting feature -- another no-brainer for this kind of program.

So I'd say they are good on some things, and surprisingly poor on some basic stuff.

Daly

Bob Mackreth wrote:

Yesterday, Milenix released a "private" beta of version 4 for current owners of
MyInfo 3.

In my initial tests, one hugely important piece of good news is that the new
indexing algorithm has seems to have speeded up program operations immensely.
Cutting and pasting operations that sometimes took a minute or more now take only a few
seconds. This improvement is a very big deal for me; without it I might have seriously
considered walking away from the program.

Disappointing news is that, in the
current version at least, rendering of collected web pages and snippets remains
so-so at best. Interestingly, if you select a page or block in Firefox, then call the
"Send to MyInfo" extension, MyInfo only captures the text. If you select and copy the
same page or block, then paste it into a blank topic, MyInfo captures the images as well
as text.

I've just begun to play with the other new features, so can't really address
them yet. Milenix has acknowledged that some of the promised v4 features have not been
implemented in this beta, but say they will be included before release of the official
product.

Daly de Gagne wrote:

Bob, I am a little ticked with Milenix. They fell way behind their schedule and, in
spite of having the blog, didn't provide any information about the delay.

Their are
still issues with web pages. Why? It ain't rocket science any more. Others have done
it.

I find it could be a lot easier linking to Word and other documents.

There's no
hoisting feature -- another no-brainer for this kind of program.

So I'd say they are
good on some things, and surprisingly poor on some basic stuff.

Daly

Can't argue with you, Daly; there are some issues that disappoint me, too.

You're absolutely right about the program's weaknesses in saving web pages, as far as I'm concerned. I'm never sure whether images clipped from a web page will show up in the MyInfo document, or if I'll find big red X's in their place.

Additionally, though version 4 runs a good deal faster than previous versions of MyInfo, by comparison to other programs, it takes a long time both to load and save files.

Finally, I posted a bug report on their forum about MyInfo's annoying habit of stealing focus when you're working in other windows, and got no reply at all.

Overall, I'm still happy with the program, and give Milenix mostly good marks for responsiveness, but there's still room for improvement in both respects.