At $39.50 - 50% off it's normal price.

I had trialled version 5, and my experience was a "mixed" one: Not bad at all, but several things important for me were lacking. Then, I read this user review:

http://download.cnet.com/MyBase-Desktop-Edition/3640-2065_4-10060413-1.html

And it is a serious one, even if it doesn't give too many details (but as you know, details are often unwanted, so people auto-censurize themselves).

I think that now that Zoot 6 is out and available, there are not that many real reasons to switch from my Ultra Recall to something other that in the end would not be that much better than UR, or is it (now)?

Anyway, I'm intrigued, but my deceptions have been so numerous that today, I'm not willing anymore to trial thoroughly: I've become lazy. Sometime, I try to "sell" things I really think that are worth it, to other people, and for other things, I tend to wait for other people to "sell" me their respective "loves".

The sale is today and (European time) some more 15 hours, up to tomorrow morning, and if I get good arguments why I should buy and switch, I'd happily do.

I'm in the same position. I'm thinking about getting it just because it seems decently powerful and is on sale. Looking at it closer might be a future retirement project. I kind of regret not getting Ultrarecall and MyInfo when they were on sale.

I pulled up my old trial version (6.1.1) and played around with it briefly. I'm not seeing anything that makes me feel like I need to buy it. I'm pretty well locked into the idea of using fields/columns for organizing information (Ecco Pro, Zoot), so I really don't see myself making extensive use of this. It does have a nice spreadsheet view for organizing attachments at the bottom of the page.

Maybe someone else can point out something that makes it a buy. Right now I'm thinking that $39.50 is pretty steep for something I might maybe use someday.

Well I don't know about "switching", but there are a couple of interesting things about MyBase that having me thinking I might pull the trigger on the deal when I get home tonight:

- Longevity: MyBase has been around for quite some time, and I have recently been lamenting the state of the PIM industry as many beloved tools/apps I've used over the years have now disappeared. Development of MyBase continues and for every Agenda/Ecco/Ariadne/Omea/ThinkLinkr/etc out there that has gone, I am encouraged to see MyBase still vibrant.

- Data Safety: I downloaded and ran MyBase and noted seventeen, count'em SEVENTEEN export options. This tells me the developers are pragmatic enough to understand the value of even one piece of a client's data in their application is worthy of a robust export capability. I can sleep better at night knowing my data can be released later if need be...

- Storage: Wjjsoft has put out a beta of a new version that uses a 64-bit storage architecture (SSG-5 http://www.wjjsoft.com/structured_storage.html I think many of us on this forum are/were fans of Ecco, and while the Ecco Extensions help someone, it's 16-bit addressing limitation is an Achilles heel that nothing short of a redevelopment can erase. The SSG-5 storage engine that MyBase will be using in the near future can address a PETABYTE of storage, meaning the odds of me ever overflowing the cup on it are slim and none. In acknowledgement of the potential peformance hit of loading such large data loads, Wjjsoft have incorporated a "load on access" feature that will help keep performance at useable levels. Of course, one user stuffing a petabyte of data into a single file might have missed a few counseling sessions - but that's a different story...

- Regex Support: Enough said. Complicated and geeky to the extreme, but it certainly is not ambiguous. For a very large collection of items, I will depend on Regex to find and filter items to get exactly the items I am seeking.

- Non-Admin Install: To check it out, I simply had to download and extract the zip contents to a directory on my desktop and then run it. No installation required. This is a big deal for those of us working on contrained PC environments where we do not have admin permissions.

- Output Quality: In testing the output options, I created a test outline of items and associated notes. I then used the Export MSWord Outline option to see how the output looked. It exported to Word and after switchingout of Outline mode to Normal mode, all Word heading were used properly (i.e.not just formatting, but assigned heading level). The ability to take an outline with content and quickly get it into a distributable format is key for me as I tend to distribute content I write. This has been one of the sore points of my use of ConnectedText is that a quick and reliable method for getting content out and readable in MS Word is a bit more involved than I wished it was.

- Extensions/Expandability: A well-documented javascript API is available. Having the ability to extend an application beyond original use is something nice to have, depending on your proclivity to tinker with this sort of thing.

- File/Item Encryption: 256-bit AES encryption to secure your info from everyone except NSA.

Some Wishes/Features I Didn't Find:

- Saved Searches: Didn't find a way to create a complex Regex search and then save it for later re-use. Of course I could create a folder of regex expressions and then copy/paste them, but that's a bit more klunky that I would like.

- The Universe is Row-Based: Many PIM tools today let you establish columns/fields that can then be used to categorize related elements and quickly display them in columnar views (Ecco/InfoQube style). It doesn't appear MyBase utilizes this paradigm and instead uses a row/outliner paradigm. This doesn't kill it for me, but common item templating with metatagging of item properties is something I get great use out of when I work in PIMs.

Disclaimer: I have no association with Wjjsoft and have never purchased the application. My observations above are based on me downloading and running the 64-bit v6.2 (beta 2) version. I have exactly two hours of myBase tinkering under my belt - and the above observations need to be viewed in that light.

With that said, at the BDJ price today, I find MyBase a compelling, extendable product for the price, with all of the above notes reasons for me to add it to my list of apps. I will be likely become a new customer when I get home and get authorization from COMWIFEHOMEFRONT....

Thank you so much, PIMfan, for these remarks, all of them on the spot, and some of which I wasn't aware. Your review came too late for me, and with German "summer time" (at the end of October), the new bits day starts at 8 in the morning, not at 9 as I had in mind (will be back at 9 for the winter)... and they didn't prolong for another day.

The review in the link above has been written by a ribbon advocate, so it's to be taken with a grain of salt, but he's not wrong (except for the ribbon), and some months ago, I re-trialled Treepad (the thing in 20 versions from free to enterprise, from the Netherlands, and without a forum or such): There, too, import/export is so good, and so many outlining formats can export/import from the Treepad format, that I have often mentioned TP as your "translation" format of choice, even if neither your source nor your target format would be TP.

Also, TP has got many features that you search in vain in most other programs, but I wasn't able to "touch" it, and it's the same problem with myBase: When you do almost all your work in one program, you look at it the major part of the day, and if it's something "visually as old", that's a real problem, not for everyone, but for the myself, and for that ribbon advocated cited above.

You are perfectly right with your longevity argument (as you are with every other), but that coin has two faces: These programs ARE "old", which is a good thing, but they didn't make the step to buy new components, at some time, in order to present something visually much more appealing (Ultra Recall did rely on MS stuff from the beginning (or at least for many years now), so the look is much cleaner and less "Nineties") - I know that with new components, some readjusting / minor new coding becomes necessary, but that would "pay", in user appeal.

Btw, there is very little development with TP, while there is with myBase, so I don't want to mix up this very different pace of development for both programs.

Also, even for the second content pane we have been discussing in the other thread, I'm not sure that myBase is really able to do it, since from what they say, it's different KINDS of content, all depending from the SAME item in the tree, and then being shown in different panes all depending on that same item, which is something quite different from what we are looking out for, which is concurrent display of two content panes of two different tree items: All those panes in myBase screenshots are to illustrate its concept of "holding together" different kinds of content/links, from its special link list; of course, this is an advanced concept, judging from (for example) MyInfo's link items (one extra item for each external link, and not even a comment field in that special item), but it supposes a totally different way of working, and what about exporting such proprietary concepts then?

All this is not said to invalidate what you've said about myBase, PIMfan, it's just "soft criteria" that hold my back, when in fact the "hard criteria" are quite fine, though.

Among them, as you mentioned, regex search, which can be extremely helpful for smart "tagging" by coded keywords, since if you do the those keywords right, rather short regex search then can replace a long list of twenty "OR" / "AND" elements in Boolean search, and in many cases, such "stored searches" (even if, as in myBase, you must "store" them manually as textlines in some item) would be the better solution than endless cloning of dozens of items.

To finish, I would like to remind a rather important feature most outliners don't have (and which myBase probably doesn't have either, and which every outliner should have to which you switch from another one should have as I see it): Search should display the text context for your found items (when your search was for text within the content): Anybody ever having used desktop search engines like File Locator knows how extremely useful such a feature is, in the absence of any "relevance" functionality in presenting search results.

We are always discussing various solutions that in the end do not even two thirds of what they should do, our choice being bound to deciding upon which features we are willing to do without.

Btw, this (quite rare) "link list" concept of myBase reminds me of Surfulater, and this again makes me wander why Surfulater's developer never really was interested in making his program a real "outliner", meaning to spice it up for general PIM work.

22111 wrote:

To finish, I would like to remind a rather important feature most
outliners don't have (and which myBase probably doesn't have either, and
which every outliner should have to which you switch from another one
should have as I see it): Search should display the text context for
your found items (when your search was for text within the content):
Anybody ever having used desktop search engines like File Locator knows
how extremely useful such a feature is, in the absence of any
"relevance" functionality in presenting search results.

This is very important. I have an idea of a method of notetaking in a continuous stream. An "item" might contain no more than one word or number. But the meaning of very brief note would be evident from the context of the items immediately preceding and following in the stream. The availability of this context would make it possible for a note to be very brief, without repetition of anything from previous notes. So - this method of notetaking would be very efficient.

This is both perfect and real-world, meaning I do such things on paper, and later on, I often don't have the slightest idea what my - too short, obviously - note was meant to trigger from me; I lately put lines on my papers when I begin something "new" there, since without, I too often have asked myself what my note was meant to mean in the previous context, when in fact I had just tried to make economies of paper, and it was a new one...

But you point out to a necessary distinction:

- "Context": what I meant / am hoping for, is xxxxxxxxx YourSearchTerm yyyyyyyyyyy: even that is scarcely available

- Then, there would be previous line // context line (see above) // next line (and then a line to distinguish this find from the next one, or differently colored background, white/chamois/white/chomois and so on). This would be much better but is not available anywhere in our context, but I have seen such "find tables" in dedicated programs, perhaps in the web only, can't say where... perhaps in the results for finds in some forum (perhaps it was even finds for the TheBrain forum, but then, it could be wishful thinking on my part).

On the other hand, here and there you can get such "several lines in context" in rare cases, not as context for your search, but as I have said already elsewhere here, MyInfo's version 5 had an option where for every find the very first 3 lines of content were displayed; this was no help for real context, but if you "organized" your very first lines of your items in a smart way, that function could have been really useful in other "context". They withdrew it for version 6, promised to reintroduce it later on, but that was about 2 years ago... or is it 3 years now?

- Back to our problem: For one-line entries in your content, probably with a blank line before and after, or in any case where the previous and/or next line is a blank one, the previous thing is not useful, so here "context" (that would not be blank) would mean, "if line before is blank, show the last (???) line of the previous paragraph instead", and my ??? insinuates that in such cases, the very FIRST line of the previous paragraph would perhaps the better alternative to display instead; for "next line", similarly, "if next line is blank, display the first non-blank line as third line within the find table".

Permit me to say that many developers do not want to delve into such "line break problems" even if it's really useful. As an example, most (or many) file comparers are not even able to consider the following lines as "equal", by option, and e.g. the developers of (otherwise not bad at all, but then, "moved block" ain't processed either here, so in the end it's not that good) "Beyond Compare" acknowledge the problem, but don't see this as a reason to resolve it:

File 1:

Rather short title of paragraph, for example "Paragraph 1" and then begin of paragph, after just (another) space : Several text lines
of this paragraph
blah blah

File 2 (which for example you want to save in your outliner, in a more neat form):

Rather short title of paragph, for example "Paragraph 1" (but then, you'll have introduced a line break!:)
Several text lines
of this paragraph
blah blah

Now if you want to compare a new version of this text from the web, for example a law in its latest version, from some legal authority, BC is NOT able to consider your saved version

Title
Then paragraph content

from the new version you've downloaded

Title Then paragraph content

And this means that with BC, you simply cannot "edit" your downloads to bring them in this more neat form, since then BC will give you hundreds of false alarms fo co-called "changes", for a law containing several hundreds of paragraphs: no chance here.

Now compare with what outliners and their search functions can do: No chance...

- But you mentioned another level of "context": item title of previous item, and item title of next item! As before, for previous/next line, this should indeed be available by option (and technically, it's not really difficult, neither is the 3-line display described above), so you would have finds table options:
-- display line (with context before/afterwards)
-- display line with previous and next line (the disadvantage here is you need 3 times as many lines within your finds table, so I wouldn't like to have this mandatorily, but by option: when really you need it, but only then), and finally
- display line with together in this form (that would be FOUR lines, though!:)

title of previous item
title of item in question (bolded)
line of found term (found term bolded, context regular font)
title of next item

And above, for 3-line display:

previous line (if blank, first line of previous paragraph if there is any)
line of found term (found term only: bolded)
next line (if blank, first line of next paragraph if there is any)

So much for things we will probably never see in our life.

I forgot a detail: Even the 1-line context display isn't that useful whenever your search term appears right at the beginning of the line (but without it being the beginning of a sentence), or when it appears to the end of the line, especially when a new sentence has begun rather immediately before the term.

Technically, it is possible to have the search term "centered", by having the program fetching the same number of words/characters before and behind, but such al algorithm doesn't consider sentence parts enough.

So this brings me to another consideration, since any outliner developer would have to reinvent the wheel, on his own: Perhaps there is a basic problem with outliners, which is the absence of "libraries" for parts of the outliner, except for the tree. You can buy (and even have for free) lots of tree "components", but it would be a good thing for developers to be able to choose some routine elements from the usual "libraries", but since there are so few outliners, with so few customers, most of such elements would not exist, or they are not easy enough to find, and then to adapt.

Also, on a bigger scale, software houses buy other software houses / individual developers' findings, but in the outliner world, without there being the necessary money for such things, every developer minds his business, without ever there being any interaction by which some standards could evolve. And as said, lots of developers' coding efforts go into html/web rendering/"translation", and that's also a reason why they don't like to spend time with ingenious solutions, and that's why we are often stuck with a rather primitive state of affairs in outliner details, where ingenious solutions would have perfectly been possible.

Not speaking of missing basics, for example even with "Boolean" search, NEAR is rarely available, let alone things like BEFORE 3 or AFTER 4, in askSam meaning within the 3/4 words before/after the next search term. (As said, AS has got a "command line" for entering search codes, and that's all quite impressive, even though it's 25 years old and just the residuals of its quite complete macro language then that, except for the search codes, got lost with its transposition to Windows).

This being said, it would be "advisable" to have a "winner" in this field, a "winner who takes it all", but under the sole condition that he will then reinvest his gains into real development of his outliner/PIM/WhateverYouCallIt - and we would not see this.

But please permit a frank word here: Judging by the pace of their respective development, it must be assumed that ALL those developers have got a profession for living, and then do some coding in the evening, one day per month, or similar. Even if they applied just all their week-ends to this coding, their new versions should come with tenfold of what they bring now. So this "lack of application" seems to indicate that even for such spare-time developments, those developers want to maximize return on a minimum of hours spent on coding. My remark may seem a little bit harsh, but anybody who knows a bit about programming, cannot help but be astonished by this slow development pace we see almost everywhere in the outliner world.

Quite interesting, the total lack of interest in myBase on bits: Not only it disappeared after just 1 day, but especially, 3 comments on bits in all, which is extremely low, even compared with other, quite "lesser" tools there that often generate about 30 comments or more there, and especially with other outliners on sale there.

This indicates that what I say above on the VISUAL ascpect of myBase (and what the commentator says about it in the cnet link above) both is correct more or less, and is an important factor in the buying decision for such software today, since we convened that technically, myBase is not bad at all, and in fact it is quite one of the "heavyweights". But its APPEAL is substandard.

This is certainly an important lesson for developers in general, all the more so since we (and they) don't get any numbers from anyone: Nobody knows even approximate "installation numbers" for any outliner (let alone "active installations" where the user buys updates), except the respective developer for his own one.

"in all" was meant to be "this time", interest in that program on previous occasions was much more vivid. Btw, it's the owners of bits that would have, by far, the very best comparative overview of RELATIVE "figures" for the proponents in different software categories (even if they don't have absolute figures ; since we can assume that the respective bits sales numbers "represent", more or less, the relevance of those absolute figures, after some years, and some returns of the softwares to bits, all the more so when new buys on bits are cheaper then regular updates from the developer (and the numbers of which are unknown to bits).

By the way, it would be very amusing to compare OUR numbers for those softwares. Do you more or less agree when I say that for MyInfo, I suppose some 900 "installations in use", for UltraRecall 2,500, for Zoot 650, for TheBrain 1,200, for Rightnote 400, and so on, or do you seriously think we'd need multiply those numbers with 3, 5, 10???