ultra recall on bdj today 1/12 $19 standard $39 pro
Started by jimspoon
on 1/12/2013
jimspoon
1/12/2013 6:05 pm
quant
10/28/2013 10:12 am
22111
10/28/2013 12:29 pm
Oh yes, and I call this squeezing the last drops out of the market (as had been doing the askSam people for some years with their doomed version 7).
There's some Brian-not-connected on bits who declares UR "the best (...) in its class and is better than One Note, Evernote and similar offerings by a long way." - of course, this is so outrageously wrong that you could establish a long list of points proving that 1) it always comes down to your individual priorities - what am I willing to give up for some feature I'm in absolute need of, and that 2) the above assertion is a big lie, UR in fact, by its absence of real development, sharply diving from "best in its class" to the bottom of its class, its competitors recouping its formerly strengths element by element.
And of course they don't give any hint WHEN the new features they advertize there will be available, so you're basically purchasing vaporware.
Non-destructive (!) sorting of tree parts would have been a good features, years ago, and will even be if it's introduced in 2020, but perhaps there is a chance to get similar flat lists from some competitor's search function (searching for an asterisk, "in this subtree"), and then sorting the entries within the search results list, in the meanwhile. Some of us need functionality now, not in some distant future.
As for Brian-not-connected's lies, that might be a problem for the respective developers of MyInfo, myBase, Treepad Business/Enterprise, Notecase Pro, InfoQube, Whizfolders, Info Select, Zoot, Connected Text and The Brain - in fact, it would be their business to silence liars like Brian-not-connected on bits, by listing all the missing elements that today make UR inferior to their products, after years of UR complacency, instead of further development.
Btw, people "answering for the developers" on bits ain't even able to make the difference between destructive, and then non-destructive sorting. Bits is for marketing purposes; software users trying to get some knowledge out of it will just get blah-blah they then take for facts.
I'm happy for the longtime UR user quant that UR always meets his demands; mine have developed over time, and one of them being a minimum of "responsiveness" from the side of the respective developer - cf. what I said about secondary content panes, and then what Pierre Paul Landry promptly promised for InfoQube.
So it might be time to not try to bring new users to UR anymore - they would be in for too many deceptions after becoming that UR is not the leader of its class anymore, and has not been anymore for at least 5 or 6 years, but if it misses a feature today, standard is you'll have to live without that feature even in 2020, which is, fortunately, not the case for all of its competitors.
There's some Brian-not-connected on bits who declares UR "the best (...) in its class and is better than One Note, Evernote and similar offerings by a long way." - of course, this is so outrageously wrong that you could establish a long list of points proving that 1) it always comes down to your individual priorities - what am I willing to give up for some feature I'm in absolute need of, and that 2) the above assertion is a big lie, UR in fact, by its absence of real development, sharply diving from "best in its class" to the bottom of its class, its competitors recouping its formerly strengths element by element.
And of course they don't give any hint WHEN the new features they advertize there will be available, so you're basically purchasing vaporware.
Non-destructive (!) sorting of tree parts would have been a good features, years ago, and will even be if it's introduced in 2020, but perhaps there is a chance to get similar flat lists from some competitor's search function (searching for an asterisk, "in this subtree"), and then sorting the entries within the search results list, in the meanwhile. Some of us need functionality now, not in some distant future.
As for Brian-not-connected's lies, that might be a problem for the respective developers of MyInfo, myBase, Treepad Business/Enterprise, Notecase Pro, InfoQube, Whizfolders, Info Select, Zoot, Connected Text and The Brain - in fact, it would be their business to silence liars like Brian-not-connected on bits, by listing all the missing elements that today make UR inferior to their products, after years of UR complacency, instead of further development.
Btw, people "answering for the developers" on bits ain't even able to make the difference between destructive, and then non-destructive sorting. Bits is for marketing purposes; software users trying to get some knowledge out of it will just get blah-blah they then take for facts.
I'm happy for the longtime UR user quant that UR always meets his demands; mine have developed over time, and one of them being a minimum of "responsiveness" from the side of the respective developer - cf. what I said about secondary content panes, and then what Pierre Paul Landry promptly promised for InfoQube.
So it might be time to not try to bring new users to UR anymore - they would be in for too many deceptions after becoming that UR is not the leader of its class anymore, and has not been anymore for at least 5 or 6 years, but if it misses a feature today, standard is you'll have to live without that feature even in 2020, which is, fortunately, not the case for all of its competitors.
quant
10/28/2013 12:48 pm
22111 wrote:
if some other PIM soft manages to catch up (by 2020 maybe?) and then adds on top some features to make up for the hassle to transfer all the info, I'll hapilly switch ;-)
So it might be time to not try to bring new users to UR anymore - they
would be in for too many deceptions after becoming that UR is not the
leader of its class anymore, and has not been anymore for at least 5 or
6 years, but if it misses a feature today, standard is you'll have to
live without that feature even in 2020, which is, fortunately, not the
case for all of its competitors.
if some other PIM soft manages to catch up (by 2020 maybe?) and then adds on top some features to make up for the hassle to transfer all the info, I'll hapilly switch ;-)
22111
10/28/2013 1:54 pm
Correction: So it might be time to not try to bring new users to UR anymore - they would be in for too many deceptions after becoming ___AWARE___ that UR is not the leader of its class anymore, and has not been anymore for at least 5 or 6 years, but if it misses a feature today, standard is you’ll have to live without that feature even in 2020, which is, fortunately, not the case for all of its competitors.
Data transfer: As said before, whenever data transfer seems to get "impossible", have a look at Treepad, of which even the trial version can flawlessly do lots of "translation" tasks, even though it has never been intended to serve just as an almost universal, free data shifting tool. Of course - and I have this mentioned on several occasions in the past - there is always the problem of what you will possibly lose in that "translation" process: Proprietary links (that's why I've said use your own coding and have your own macros process those codes then, very simple technically), and then, clones (which are a big, big subject in themselves, cf. my writings here and over there in this regard); and yes, today it's wishful thinking only that some of these tools would be able to import competitors' trees, processing clones correctly, when in fact, from the technical side, this would be rather easy!
They use standard databases which could be scraped for cloning coding, too, as well as for any attributes, btw. And then, you need this functionality ONCE, and just for ONE such competitor (but which is not the same for all users. So, with regards to TCO - I've spoken about this aspect, too, elsewhere - the price range of Info Select is not that wrongly chosen (cf. The Brain's models), only its pr/treatment-of-customers/taking-away-of-features/crippling-the-expensive-tool and so on is desastrous.
And why not have expensive BUT REALLY GOOD software, and which then includes the possibitily to import correctly from ONE competitor, and all the worse for the additional work for the developer of the "receiving" software, the main problem here being that it's not possible to have the developer do it with easily-adapted scripts, since if technically this would be rather simple, customers cannot accept such a scenario, but of course, these import scripts could then be built up as different add-ons, to be sold on a "main prog plus one such add-on of your choice for 250$" basis (incl. updates for 2 or 3 years, then they will be 100$, but no more than once every two years, intermediate updates being free), additional add-ons being 50$ each - this would avoid unnecessary over-complication of the main program, and many users would accept such a scheme IF there was serious development, which for UR there is not.
Claims of UR superiority, also here from quant: Look, Sir, as soon as you have a better look into the strengths and flaws of competing software, you'll realize that UR's almost-stalled development has given the chance to the latter to recoup what you (and I, at some time in the past) consider(ed) "unparalelled"/"unique" in UR, so today your claim has become wrong with time, and no, I won't do the complete missing-features lists here again, I've amply done them on the UR side when I was hoping yet there would be some serious development.
Just three hints here: UR's tree: free component, instead of some 500$ component, so no bolding/italicizing/coloring of entries, no formatting whatsoever (and yes, different icons are possible, but that's not the same thing). UR's content pane: free and buggy as hell, or you revert to something 10 years old (yes, you can replace its content pane element with an ancient version of the same, but not with something better), and with even much less functionality then (i.e. the "editor" is abysmal) - it's so bad that you cannot even scroll text there with your mouse wheel.
But then, the real problem with UR is that by its philosophy (e.g. absence of "search over different files", and not to speak of its absence of a "replace in whole file" function, which makes it almost impossible to do serious work with it, let alone in a "commercial" environment), it's "one big database for it all", which means dozens of thousands of items (which it is able to hold, thanks to its - again free - SQLite database)...
...and then total absence, from the part of its developer, of "seeing" such big databases, such "monster trees", need some PM functionality, i.e. some additional pane (which could have been the first "tab", as an absolute minimum of service to the customer), and in which the "main tree" would not follow any of your expandings/collapsings done in any of the other "tabs", i.e. in "hoisted" sections of that big/oversized total data respository.
This means, UR EITHER gives you something like an "overview" of your "material", "knowledge sets" or whatever (= by collapsing it all, and then all the worse for your details upon which you will have worked on anywhere at this given moment), OR you can work deep within your data structure (which also makes your "main tree" totally cut up in undecipherable pieces), but it's totally impossible to have both "views" concurrently, or at least by switching back and forth, from e.g. the very first tab and then to your "details tabs".
The problem is, coding of this independence would not be that easy... if it's done, the additional display pane (which would be "total relief", pun intended) would just be a detail coded within 20 minutes, but the developer says, "UR has got enough panes already as it is", so he simply doesn't see, or denies, against better knowledge, the problem... and of course, when you buy UR and start with some 200 items, you won't see the problem either, for some time... ha, ha, ha!
Correction: "Non-destructive (!) sorting of tree parts would have been a good features, years ago, and will even be if it’s introduced in 2020, but perhaps there is a chance to get similar flat lists from some competitor’s search function (searching for an asterisk, “in this subtree”), and then sorting the entries within the search results list, in the meanwhile. Some of us need functionality now, not in some distant future." - well, I'm not the guy to spread lies, so I'd like to add that UR itself does do this, today: Select any parent item, search for an asterisk, check the option "limit search to selected item", then sort by any of the columns there, so finally, you can have a sorted flat view of all the elements of some tree or subtree, even today, even in UR: Another reason for NOT "updating" (yes, buying fresh from bits is cheaper than a real update) my ancient UR license, for foolish hope the UR developer will take some "lesson" from his begging users, even in a distant future.
At the same time, Zoot is a 3-pane outliner, so there's at least a chance to have your mental representation of your material in a much clearer way, over there: It's time I take a real good into this competitor and its brand-new version 6: If my TCO is better than with UR, and there's a big chance for that, Zoot's costing 100$ is "nothing" compared with what I've been enduring with UR, these last years, and what every new UR buyer on bits will have to endure for this oh-so-chep-40$ program from the moment on he'll try to use it in a real serious way.
But then, there are the fanboys luring you into it, as most such programs have their respective fanboys.
And no, I'll not place a link to this on the bits side - let'em make some additional $$ there.
Data transfer: As said before, whenever data transfer seems to get "impossible", have a look at Treepad, of which even the trial version can flawlessly do lots of "translation" tasks, even though it has never been intended to serve just as an almost universal, free data shifting tool. Of course - and I have this mentioned on several occasions in the past - there is always the problem of what you will possibly lose in that "translation" process: Proprietary links (that's why I've said use your own coding and have your own macros process those codes then, very simple technically), and then, clones (which are a big, big subject in themselves, cf. my writings here and over there in this regard); and yes, today it's wishful thinking only that some of these tools would be able to import competitors' trees, processing clones correctly, when in fact, from the technical side, this would be rather easy!
They use standard databases which could be scraped for cloning coding, too, as well as for any attributes, btw. And then, you need this functionality ONCE, and just for ONE such competitor (but which is not the same for all users. So, with regards to TCO - I've spoken about this aspect, too, elsewhere - the price range of Info Select is not that wrongly chosen (cf. The Brain's models), only its pr/treatment-of-customers/taking-away-of-features/crippling-the-expensive-tool and so on is desastrous.
And why not have expensive BUT REALLY GOOD software, and which then includes the possibitily to import correctly from ONE competitor, and all the worse for the additional work for the developer of the "receiving" software, the main problem here being that it's not possible to have the developer do it with easily-adapted scripts, since if technically this would be rather simple, customers cannot accept such a scenario, but of course, these import scripts could then be built up as different add-ons, to be sold on a "main prog plus one such add-on of your choice for 250$" basis (incl. updates for 2 or 3 years, then they will be 100$, but no more than once every two years, intermediate updates being free), additional add-ons being 50$ each - this would avoid unnecessary over-complication of the main program, and many users would accept such a scheme IF there was serious development, which for UR there is not.
Claims of UR superiority, also here from quant: Look, Sir, as soon as you have a better look into the strengths and flaws of competing software, you'll realize that UR's almost-stalled development has given the chance to the latter to recoup what you (and I, at some time in the past) consider(ed) "unparalelled"/"unique" in UR, so today your claim has become wrong with time, and no, I won't do the complete missing-features lists here again, I've amply done them on the UR side when I was hoping yet there would be some serious development.
Just three hints here: UR's tree: free component, instead of some 500$ component, so no bolding/italicizing/coloring of entries, no formatting whatsoever (and yes, different icons are possible, but that's not the same thing). UR's content pane: free and buggy as hell, or you revert to something 10 years old (yes, you can replace its content pane element with an ancient version of the same, but not with something better), and with even much less functionality then (i.e. the "editor" is abysmal) - it's so bad that you cannot even scroll text there with your mouse wheel.
But then, the real problem with UR is that by its philosophy (e.g. absence of "search over different files", and not to speak of its absence of a "replace in whole file" function, which makes it almost impossible to do serious work with it, let alone in a "commercial" environment), it's "one big database for it all", which means dozens of thousands of items (which it is able to hold, thanks to its - again free - SQLite database)...
...and then total absence, from the part of its developer, of "seeing" such big databases, such "monster trees", need some PM functionality, i.e. some additional pane (which could have been the first "tab", as an absolute minimum of service to the customer), and in which the "main tree" would not follow any of your expandings/collapsings done in any of the other "tabs", i.e. in "hoisted" sections of that big/oversized total data respository.
This means, UR EITHER gives you something like an "overview" of your "material", "knowledge sets" or whatever (= by collapsing it all, and then all the worse for your details upon which you will have worked on anywhere at this given moment), OR you can work deep within your data structure (which also makes your "main tree" totally cut up in undecipherable pieces), but it's totally impossible to have both "views" concurrently, or at least by switching back and forth, from e.g. the very first tab and then to your "details tabs".
The problem is, coding of this independence would not be that easy... if it's done, the additional display pane (which would be "total relief", pun intended) would just be a detail coded within 20 minutes, but the developer says, "UR has got enough panes already as it is", so he simply doesn't see, or denies, against better knowledge, the problem... and of course, when you buy UR and start with some 200 items, you won't see the problem either, for some time... ha, ha, ha!
Correction: "Non-destructive (!) sorting of tree parts would have been a good features, years ago, and will even be if it’s introduced in 2020, but perhaps there is a chance to get similar flat lists from some competitor’s search function (searching for an asterisk, “in this subtree”), and then sorting the entries within the search results list, in the meanwhile. Some of us need functionality now, not in some distant future." - well, I'm not the guy to spread lies, so I'd like to add that UR itself does do this, today: Select any parent item, search for an asterisk, check the option "limit search to selected item", then sort by any of the columns there, so finally, you can have a sorted flat view of all the elements of some tree or subtree, even today, even in UR: Another reason for NOT "updating" (yes, buying fresh from bits is cheaper than a real update) my ancient UR license, for foolish hope the UR developer will take some "lesson" from his begging users, even in a distant future.
At the same time, Zoot is a 3-pane outliner, so there's at least a chance to have your mental representation of your material in a much clearer way, over there: It's time I take a real good into this competitor and its brand-new version 6: If my TCO is better than with UR, and there's a big chance for that, Zoot's costing 100$ is "nothing" compared with what I've been enduring with UR, these last years, and what every new UR buyer on bits will have to endure for this oh-so-chep-40$ program from the moment on he'll try to use it in a real serious way.
But then, there are the fanboys luring you into it, as most such programs have their respective fanboys.
And no, I'll not place a link to this on the bits side - let'em make some additional $$ there.
jimspoon
10/28/2013 5:04 pm
What steams me about UR is how earlier versions won't work in the next version of Windows. That is, to continue working with UR when you've upgraded to a new version of Windows, you'll have to pay more money to Kinook for the latest version of UR. Every other PIM I've ever had continues working happily in new versions of Windows. It seems that Kinook is putting some kind of "time-bomb" into UR where it will work only in the current and earlier versions of Windows.
It's a shame, because UR does have some interesting features. I'd have to say the most interesting feature is how you can sync your UR database with external content. Say you have a folder full of text files - you can sync them into your UR database, and you can edit them in UR. Changes you make to those items in UR will be synced back to the text files in the file system folder. And if you edit those text files with some other tool, the changes will be synced into UR. This is a great feature IMHO. I think I've asked this before - what other PIMs can do this? I need to search earlier threads for the discussion we had on this.
Outwiker is interesting in this respect: "OutWiker is designed to store notes in a tree. Such programs are called "outliner", personal wiki, or tree-like editors. OutWiker's main difference from the other similar programs is keeping the tree of notes in the form of directories on disk, and encouraging changing the base by external sources and programs."
http://jenyay.net/Outwiker/English#description
Unfortunately there have been no new versions of Outwiker since last December.
It's a shame, because UR does have some interesting features. I'd have to say the most interesting feature is how you can sync your UR database with external content. Say you have a folder full of text files - you can sync them into your UR database, and you can edit them in UR. Changes you make to those items in UR will be synced back to the text files in the file system folder. And if you edit those text files with some other tool, the changes will be synced into UR. This is a great feature IMHO. I think I've asked this before - what other PIMs can do this? I need to search earlier threads for the discussion we had on this.
Outwiker is interesting in this respect: "OutWiker is designed to store notes in a tree. Such programs are called "outliner", personal wiki, or tree-like editors. OutWiker's main difference from the other similar programs is keeping the tree of notes in the form of directories on disk, and encouraging changing the base by external sources and programs."
http://jenyay.net/Outwiker/English#description
Unfortunately there have been no new versions of Outwiker since last December.
22111
10/28/2013 8:36 pm
Time bomb: They would be able to do this, but UR heavily relies upon MS programming environment (that's what makes it rather pleasant to look at), so this could be another reason, and so what if there was real development, but there isn't! When you ask them if they are willing to introduce global search and replace, they will answer you "no, just open your whole UR database with an SQLite frontend (which btw is, if it's a good one, more expensive than UR), do the changes, and reopen your UR stuff in UR again" - well, do you imagine any secretary doing this, in your office? Do you imagine what will be going on in that same office IF she did, and if she did something wrong, but without her boss discovering this immediately? In particular for outliner files, back-ups are NOT so useful when after the problem, you did lots of work within the database!
Sync with folder: Don't be too much impressed here, they don't "open it within UR", they just display another of their free components within that same frame in which milliseconds ago they had displayed their free and awful rtf editor, or a pic viewer (which is also a point FOR UR). The difficulty lies in the synching not of the content, but of the file name, and of the file position, and here, UR fails. Yes, it can "import" some file list from your file system, but then, don't touch those file "names" anymore (rename, move, both of those files and of their folders or parent folders), "synch" being one-way, and if I see it correctly (could be mistaken here), one-time: What about "new arrivals" in such folders? What about such entries not sorted anymore, in a jointed list, as they were when imported together? What if you disjoint that list, and spread those entries over a whole subfolder in UR, let alone over several such subfolders there? What about "checking for new arrivals" then? Will UR build up a list of those files in your directory that is has already imported, and now just import the "new" ones?
I think these problems cause the fact that many UR users don't use this feature in any systematic way, and manual maintenance of such link collections become easily horrible - that's why I think today that your file system, not your outliner, should be the central part of your "work set", your "work flow". Whenever coding becomes really difficult, UR doesn't make that second step, so don't be over-impressed by the first one. Because of COURSE, perfect monitoring of such things would be possible, and just yesterday, another of the really good synching tools, "PerfectlyFlexible" or what they call it now, "Syncovery", was on sale on bits, and it does this everyday.
Sync with folder: Don't be too much impressed here, they don't "open it within UR", they just display another of their free components within that same frame in which milliseconds ago they had displayed their free and awful rtf editor, or a pic viewer (which is also a point FOR UR). The difficulty lies in the synching not of the content, but of the file name, and of the file position, and here, UR fails. Yes, it can "import" some file list from your file system, but then, don't touch those file "names" anymore (rename, move, both of those files and of their folders or parent folders), "synch" being one-way, and if I see it correctly (could be mistaken here), one-time: What about "new arrivals" in such folders? What about such entries not sorted anymore, in a jointed list, as they were when imported together? What if you disjoint that list, and spread those entries over a whole subfolder in UR, let alone over several such subfolders there? What about "checking for new arrivals" then? Will UR build up a list of those files in your directory that is has already imported, and now just import the "new" ones?
I think these problems cause the fact that many UR users don't use this feature in any systematic way, and manual maintenance of such link collections become easily horrible - that's why I think today that your file system, not your outliner, should be the central part of your "work set", your "work flow". Whenever coding becomes really difficult, UR doesn't make that second step, so don't be over-impressed by the first one. Because of COURSE, perfect monitoring of such things would be possible, and just yesterday, another of the really good synching tools, "PerfectlyFlexible" or what they call it now, "Syncovery", was on sale on bits, and it does this everyday.