These days on bit, "BeyondShare Pro", from "Fevosoft", aka liuxz.com, Beijing: clipboard sharing between computers within a network; of course, if you transfer files by usb stick, or if you connect your computers by LAN, depends on your further needs (keyboard sharing, monitor sharing, frequency of the need to share clipboard content or files; there is (free) Synergy for all this, too, and ShareMouse, whilst BS, as far as I see, is just for file transfer). So I discovered that ShareMouse (from the developers of that text expander for about 140 dollars often mentioned here) has got a new version 2, and so I looked up "reviews", and as in many cases, it's CNet where any reviews could be found.

And here I made a discovery from which I, not wanting to insinuate anything about what I found there, but totally independently from that, took some "advice" I'd like to share, since outliner developers could learn from it, marketing-wise, "it" being my ideas, not what is there to admire.

Now the old ShareMouse reviews on cnet.com were mitigated but relegated to the bottom, and of interest, 7 RAVE REVIEWS on top (= most recent first, that's why). I looked into them, and their style seemed rather similar, 7 times 5 stars, 7 times a style that more or less reminds me of "marketing speak", 5 times "Pros" and "Cons" - and especially the "Cons" - done in a certain way without not too much variation - bear in mind these ain't facts but just my totally subjective "impression", or better call it "paranoia".

So I clicked on the 7 authors of those 7 reviews:

cocoonmongolia's community profile
ShareMouse Mouse and Keyboard Sharing
"Very useful for anyone with multiple computers."
User's Rating 5 stars
February 14, 2013
Member since:
February 14, 2013
My Posting Summary
Download reviews:
1

rvossel's community profile
ShareMouse Mouse and Keyboard Sharing
"A seamless solution"
User's Rating 5 stars
March 21, 2013
Member since:
September 15, 2002
My Posting Summary
Download reviews:
1

CardFire's community profile
ShareMouse Mouse and Keyboard Sharing
"Smooth, clever, powerful. The Successor of Synergy."
User's Rating 5 stars
March 21, 2013
About Me
Member since:
March 21, 2013
My Posting Summary
Download reviews:
1

bcampbell131's community profile
ShareMouse Mouse and Keyboard Sharing
"Great Software that is truly cross platform"
User's Rating 5 stars
October 31, 2013
About Me
Member since:
November 16, 2009
Occupation:
System Sales Enginner [sic]
My Posting Summary
Download reviews:
1

darnelld9832's community profile
ShareMouse Mouse and Keyboard Sharing
"Share Mouse is the perfect solution to Multiple macs"
User's Rating 5 stars
November 4, 2013
About Me
Member since:
November 4, 2013
My Posting Summary
Download reviews:
1

jgarbers's community profile
ShareMouse Mouse and Keyboard Sharing
"Effortless installation; really hit the sweet spot"
User's Rating 5 stars
November 5, 2013
About Me
Member since:
October 8, 2003
My Posting Summary
Download reviews:
1

seidmadur's community profile
ShareMouse Mouse and Keyboard Sharing
"Simply the best!"
User's Rating 5 stars
November 7, 2013
About Me
Member since:
November 7, 2013
My Posting Summary
Download reviews:
1

It goes without saying that these 7 different authors, with their max. of 35 points, greatly enhanced the overall point number of ShareMouse, besides their unbiased reviews certainly greatly pushing current and future sales of ShareMouse.

Now what can outliner developers learn from my totally aberrant musings about the above?

(In the above, the term "review" goes without quotes; from here, imagine quotes around it:)

- Write your own reviews.
- Or rather, have your friends write these reviews, and do not too much editing work on their writings, some clumsiness will greatly enhance the trustworthyness of these reviews
- You could have done it by staff if you have no friends, but bear in mind that after letting off your staff, they could be in the mood to speak about your scheme
- Also bear in mind the following aspect:
- It will be even better if some of these friends have different native languages, which will vary their English wordings/expressions
- Whilst your staff will probably all be of your own first language (and your possible friends too, perhaps)
- It goes without saying that native (English) speakers have some advantage over other nationalities here
- Do not give the max. number of stars invariably
- Do find some minor faults, preferably totally irrelevant for most prospective users, and name them, perhaps this point in some review, and some other minute point in another review, and have even one of the reviews giving one of those, and a third.
- Prepare your scoop by having some of your friends register years before (see some of the above, no relationship but it gave me my idea, als for all this advice here...!)
- Have them do reviews about other products, too (even if that might appear both too much effort, and dispensable)
- Have them do different numbers of reviews over the years, and in different frequency
- Have some of them do reviews within a certain range of products to which your own product belongs, have others do disparate reviews of "all" kinds of products
- In a word, VARY !
- And this also applies to reviews of competing products or third-party products in general: Some reviews should be good, some bad, some long, some short...

In a word, be plausible in cheating your prospective customers!

Thank you for your painstakingly detailed research about the experience of our customers with our Keyboard and Mouse Sharing solution “ShareMouse”.

We are as happy about the success of ShareMouse as our customers and it is an honor for the whole team that users really like the functionality and ease of use of ShareMouse so much.

Your exposé now seem to try giving the impression that those testimonials may not be authentic.

We gladly keep that straight by providing a more ethical “how-to” for other software vendors how to get awesome reviews:

1. Write awesome software. This is the single most important factor. Be genuine. Be maniac about what you create and smooth out any edges. Over and over and over again. Think for the long run. Think quality! Think Apple! Think Thinkpad! Think Porsche!

2. Provide excellent customer service.

3. ASK happy customers to write a review.

It is that simple. Just three steps. Some of you guys may forget step 3 which is essential. Here is an example: http://screencast.com/t/zBBMtP19

Now, please let us learn more about your actual motivation why you bad mouth us. Why bother at all about what is going on with ShareMouse while you pretend not being interested in it? Cui bono? Who are you?

Please tell us.

Your ShareMouse Team
http://www.keyboard-and-mouse-sharing.com

Hi Bartels "Team".

Your advice in 3 steps to fellow developers is certainly as of much interest to them than is mine, so it will get many thankful readers from that group.

"Your exposé now seem to try giving the impression that those testimonials may not be authentic." -

- A whole "Team" falling into paranoia? Elect another government in your country if you want the next one to again rule the world and put a stop to free speech worldwide and prevent people from detailing their thoughts (might them be useful for third parties or be of perfect irrelevance to anybody) from any possible phenomena they get aware of and judge as "remarkable", from a totally subjective pov, and then use as their starting point for developing some ideas of their own.

Then only, general censorship will rule, as it does in your fori today of which you're the sole owner. Btw, it's always a a very good idea to follow your own advice.

We are sorry that you are in such a mood.

If you had issues with our software, please give us a chance to assist you: http://contact.keyboard-and-mouse-sharing.com

We are eager to help.

Welcome to the forum, Sharemouse team (Gunnar Bartels, I assume).

Most of us are really easy to get along with and do not offend each other nor "guests".
Just ignore 22111. He is throwing sh... at most software developers he comes across in this forum. And after a while he starts insulting forum members, too (he did that a year or so ago, and he already started this time).

All the best, Franz Grieser

Ah, sorry to hear that. Just wonder what hooked him as he apparently is doing some "campagining" here.

Michael

Michael.

I can only speculate. But I don't think he (or she?) is campaigning against Bartels/Sharemouse. If he/she is on a campaign, then it is against software developers charging (in his eyes) to much money for what they deliver.

Bye, Franz

We can't help here. We are into quality. That comes at a price.

ShareMouse: I hope you realize that the impenetrable (both in motivation and in meaning) posts of 22111 are atypical of the useful, professional, and comprehensible posts typically found here.

"If he/she is on a campaign, then it is against software developers charging (in his eyes) to much money for what they deliver. "

You ain't entirely wrong. I've got problems with software like MindJet, e.g., where it quickly becomes evident from various and necessarily poor work-arounds from third-party developers that the basic fault of this software is the absence of cloning items on other maps - I developed this elsewhere, so I won't take your time repeating the details here.

At the same time, MindJet has plenty of money so they easily could integrate the missing feature, but they persist with not integrating it.

Similar, many outliner developers seem to to development - IF they do any development - from the pov "is it very easy to implement so that it will make a quick entry to the "what's new" list?", and they don't deliver what's most "asked" from them, even from devoted, longstanding customers (because that would imply "too much work for not enough returns" from the former's pov I suppose), and a brilliant example for this is Ultra Recall (read into their forum, even by totally ignoring my posts there!!!, incl. year-old posts from devoted customer who've left that place in-between) - not speaking of dozen of other examples/developers - I've ranted enough about this.

So what you might have overlooked here, or simply and maliciously suppressed, is the fact that I alway put the price within relation to the respective "efforts" of the developer in question, and e.g., I would NEVER EVER pretend either ConnectedTex or Zoot were "overpriced" - they both are bargains in their respective field, and I would not have any problem with paying 500 dollars for any one of them, and then about letssay 150 dollars p.a. for updates, in case such a developer would also do the above-mentioned "effort", i.e. not only shape his software the way he likes it, but regularly add to it any additionally feature sensible people would explain to him in a sensible way - I'm not only speaking of myself here (and it's proven, by my postings, that I explain my "needs", don't do but "just claim" them), but also of many other sensible, reasoned askings for needed features: Again, the Ultra Recall forum in earlier years (to which I didn't contribute then, so I'm provenly not speaking pro domo) is the perfect example of what I assert here.

In a more general way (and to prove I'm not ranting against UR here, it's just a perfect example, nothing more), let me AGAIN repeat the need for a very important feature that is, to my knowledge, to be found nowhere at this time, and... tbc'd below.

Unfortunately, people like you miss an important thing: I'm currently doing the "dirty work" for all of us - oh yes, I'm hearing your 08/15, unavoidable screams, "You're certainly not speaking for me!" - by my "laying my hand into the wound" - which is not an English but a German expression, but in German, there are TWO such, rather similar, expressions, that one, and "to put salt into the wound", and that's at the core of the mistake you make: One approach is destructive, the other one, mine, being meant as constructive.

Where you aggravate your mistake, is in the fact that this constructiveness (for all of us, users and developers combined) would only work if fellow users did not take the position of lazy developers, but confirmed how much true my arguments are, since then only developers would not be enticed anymore to "ignore" me, as you advise them, but would finally do their homework.

From a psychological pov, it's envy, of course, it's group dynamics, since the provable facts are on my side, and what's quite a little bit ridiculous about it, is the fact that some quite envy people do have some quite admirable "records" which should entitle them to easily acknowledge when somebody else's try (= unable to avoid this pun!) go into the right direction of common interest, but inevitably make them "shine" in the very restricted area of a specialized forum, more than some other guy who uses the same forum in a more casual way but works hard, and (presumably) top-notch, in some other field he's expert in. This way, some people, and 100 p.c. needlessly, weaken their own interests by negating my arguments being founded - this will not entice developers to do... their homework, call it DUTY??? You are of the forum participants who persistently shows the least respect to my expertise, instead of profiting from it, whilst some "cooler types" here regularly profit from my advice but without ever saying so (A.D. - do you think I'm a fool? And we aint all eager of giving credentials, every one of us, right?), since this would lesser their group-dynamical status.

Now for the "feature example" from above, the perfect "developer example" having been given there already. I repeat myself here, from another thread, but it's one of the most important features or the most important missing feature:

Whenever you do non-creative writing in a serious way, you need cross-referencing. As said, MyInfo (and perhaps CT, from what I hear), are the most serious applications when it comes to this criterion, but both of them (if I don't miss something of the highest interest to everybody here) only allow for cross-referencing within the electronic body of text, not for publishing (and not even for printing-out):

As I have said before, I do some external scripting instead, where, when writing (legal texts mostly), I refer to things like "#852" instead, which, after exporting the whole text from my outliner, I then, by scripting again, translate into paragraph numbers, and I think that any serious non-creative writer (doing his writing within an outliner) MUST CRAVE for such functionality built INTO his outliner, since the above-described detour means you cannot "come back":

No means to see your cross-references (or your paragraphs, to start with: that's the core feature missing here, from which then the feature I am asking for could be developed) in any "ordered" way, after the very first 5 minutes of your writing, and you'll get an acceptable "rendition" of your work after export only (and if thereafter, you do some more editing, which will always be the case, you'll find yourself with all those ugly, mixed-up "#625" bits again).

So this is a feature that any serious writer needs, but when I detail the need for it, NOBODY says, "this is so right, it's beyond me why no outliner developer ever introduced this feature" (which would be perfect if it worked in real-time, but which would be more than just "acceptabl" even if it worked in the "F5" way, i.e. if it updated everything when you press the "refresh" command).

So, stupid, narrow-minded envies make that when somebody details where it's high time that outliner developers did "some more", by finally leaving their comfort zone, you pretend my claims to better software ain't justified - all this because the 3 unofficial "owners" of this forum did not give their initial appraisal (= for similar reasons), and you ain't but claqueurs, and for a claqueur, there's nothing more important int his world than knowing, every second in his miserable existence, to know whom to applaud.

Think again, and we'll have much better software at our disposal tomorrow.