Forum Posts Feed
Can we talk about Info Select?
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Pages: ‹ First < 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 >
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Aug 31, 2012 at 03:39 PM
FYI Brainstorm works just fine in Windows 7. There are other issues with the software that reveal its dated roots and lack of recent development. Of these, the main problem for me is the lack of Unicode—or at least multiple codepage support.
If you want to discuss more on Brainstorm, a program I keep coming back to regardless of the aforementioned issues, we can start a separate thread.
Wolfgang wrote:
>(( I would like to see
>Brainstorm back - it was a great outliner (could talk OPML like UR) and played nice with
>lots of software including UR - any news on whether someone would like to buy it))
>(((
>Perhaps infoselect could junk their monster, buy Brainstorm and imobilise anyone
>who wants to bolt an email client on to it then market it ready to run on win 7 & 8)))
Posted by razorboy
Aug 31, 2012 at 03:46 PM
gunars wrote:
>>It is hard to believe that the same person/people
>wrote both programmes.
>
>The feature list for IS 10 also had this gem:
>
>By request of
>our customers to simplify Info Select, we have removed the following rarely used
>features: font search, closed file search, image scanning, inserting text in
>images, web based data, spreadsheet, generating DB from deliveries, ODBC, import /
>export (doc, xls, Outlook, Auto mode, HTML), thesaurus, palm sync, presentation
>mode, keyword auto-color, programmer edit mode, space mapper, compressed files,
>file archiving, replace by style color font, dialer, NNTP support, secondary
>backups, external files, intra-topic shortcuts, alt+n key shortcuts.
There must be something weird going on over at Micro Logic. The forum is dead, the owner doesn’t reply to forum registration, tech support knows nothing about any of it, and Version 10 is more or less dysfunctional, and inferior to the previous version, IS 9, also called IS 2007… I wonder if we will ever see another new version.
In fairness, it must be said that one of the problems IS has/had, is that its user base is more or less split between those who want it to do the basics - organize a lot of fairly simple data and instantly sort and recall it - and those who want IS to be The Muther Of All Software, ie., save 88 zillion gronkobytes of infomration, convert everything to everything else, do all the internet and email stuff….... and they want it done on their telephone. Lots of people are using Evernote + other software to get that done.
Fortunately, I am in the “basics” group. For that job, IS is very very effective.
Posted by Slartibartfarst
Sep 18, 2012 at 09:16 AM
Returning to the topic of InfoSelect: I have noticed a few recent posts in the Yahoo! InfoSelect User Group, and in two of them, 2 separate users say they had actually bought and paid for IS10 (the latest version, with which some users seem to be quite unhappy - per the forum), yet had reverted to IS9 (called “InfoSelect 2007”).
I have been a happy IS user for years, currently using IS8 - which admittedly has some limitations/constraints. I have trialled both IS9/2007 and IS10, but have elected to stay with IS8 as it better suits my requirements.
I find it very interesting that someone would buy IS10 and then return to an earlier version. It looks rather like they may have not evaluated the New Thing terribly rigorously before buying it. In my experience, this can tend to happen if you do not have a clear idea - e.g., including a comprehensive checklist - of the functionality (your requirements) that you need to test for.
When Jim Lewis (President/CEO of Micro Logic, the developer of InfoSelect) was leading and engaging the IS User Group to get their feedback preparatory to making final amendments and releasing a ß version of IS10, I suggested in the discussion threads that a classic approach focussed on user requirements might be useful, and that he could take advantage of the opportunity to ask the tame/collaborative users in the forum (an ideal resource for any developer) to tell him what they thought their requirements were, and then develop to meet those stated/published requirements. Everyone in the forum would have been more likely to buy the new version under such circumstances.
Of course, it never happened, and I really have no idea of the methodology employed in arriving at the end result, except that it seemed to be overly concerned with features rather than the functionality needed to meet defined user requirements (there was little such definition). Again, in my experience, it is characteristic of software that has been developed in a relative vacuum - as opposed to being focussed on user requirements - that resultant user satisfaction will tend to be low. That is what seemed to be the case here - e.g., though I have participated in several user groups over the years, I don’t recall ever having before seen such a collection of disgruntled, critical and generally pissed-off users. Not a few of them seemed to feel that their requirements had been ignored in Cavalier fashion, so some of the users became vociferous and criticism was pretty strong and a separate user group was even formed in protest.
Quite extraordinary really. I don’t understand it. It needn’t have happened. It was avoidable. Things could have been so much better. The IS versions up to IS8 seemed to be seriously good PIM software. IS9/2007 seemed to have but marginal improvements, and IS10 seems to have had a lot of good/useful functionality hacked out of it (regardless of user requirements), and to run in less than ideal fashion - even from an ergonomic (GUI) perspective.
I feel rather sad to see IS end up like this. It was *such* a good product.
Talk about wasted opportunity. Users buying the new version and then reverting to the older one. How much worse could it get? OK, maybe it could be a lot worse, but it still seems to me to be pretty high up the scale as things stand.
Posted by Slartibartfarst
Feb 3, 2014 at 02:00 PM
2014-02-04: FYI, I was just reviewing the Yahoo! InfoSelect User Group forum and noticed two posts by Jim D. Lewis (InfoSelect CEO), made subsequent to the above discussion:
(By the way, the RSS feed to this group used to be: http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/InfoSelect/rss
- but it has been changed. The group is now at: http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/InfoSelect/conversations/messages
- if anyone can give me the rss feed to subscribe to that, I’d be grateful.)
__________________________________________________
jimdlewis
Jan 23, 2014
Please update to the current version since the update detection in version 10.00.99 does not work.
If you do not update you will no longer receive update notices.
Download at http://miclog.com/software/Download/info-select-10-download.html.
As always the list of changes is available at http://miclog.com/software/Beta-Invitation/is10releasehistory.html.
Jim
From
__________________________________________________
Jim
Jan 29, 2013
Hi All
I just thought I would share some exciting news with our IS customers.
We are beginning beta of a new web service called EZGURU.
EZGURU helps businesses run better and grow faster by managing “micro-knowledge”.
If you are interested, please visit http://www.ezguru.com .
Jim
From
__________________________________________________
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Feb 3, 2014 at 07:30 PM
>The group is now at:
>http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/InfoSelect/conversations/messages
> - if anyone can give me the rss feed to subscribe to that,
According to http://developer.yahoo.com/rss/
“Every Yahoo group has its own RSS feed. To read it you must either be subscribed to the group, or that group must be configured to have publicly-readable messages.”