I just checked out their blog:
http://blog.surfulater.com/2008/10/14/surfulater-version-3-update/

As a Macropool Web Research user, I'm tempted to try out the newly updated Surfulater...

NO.
Just sit down and write, silly girl. Get off the internet and stop CRIMPING around. Just pop out the cellular modem baby. That's it...

I too use WR and have used Surf in the past.

Here is my take:

1. Both do an excellent job of capturing web pages
2. Over the years, WR's scope & functionality (non-web) has grown nicely
3. For me, the "killer" functionality includes:
*Ability to add/view/edit ms word, excel & powerpoint files (plus pdfs)
*Ability to send over over Outlook emails (and attachments) to WR
*ALL docs, spreadsheets, powepoints, pdfs, emails in WR are fully indexed
*And my favorite.... all WR items are fully indexed/searchable using MS DeskTop search

I actually prefer Copernic for my desktop search, but with MS Desktop search, I have everything in one search... This is important to me.


-jj

For those who like to save Web pages, I just found another possibility at http://www.freedownloadaday.com/

It is PageNest free edition, which can also be found at http://pagenest.com/index.html .

I haven't tried it yet, so I don't know how well it works.

At present I use MyBase and am quite satisfied with it. WebResearch sometimes does a better job of copying "non-standard" Web pages, but myBase has other advantages...unless WR has had some major recent improvements.

-c

I have tried Surfulater 3. It is a good, solid program. http://www.surfulater.com/index.html

It does a better than ever job of making web clips. I'm moving back to Surfulater for that reason, having moved to Evernote 3 a few weeks ago.

The big difference between the two:

Surfulater 3 does a better job of clipping. Evenote, 3, like many such programs, most often removes lines between paragraphs on the clipped page. This make long articles harder to read, looks bad, and means wasting time to insert lines because it does not have a para format feature.

Surfulater, on the other hand, very rarely removes the line between paragraphs. In a test I made last week clipping to both EN and Surfulater, the two programs both did well - but Surfulater did better. Its page renditions were more accurate, and like I say, it kept spaces between paragraphs.

Surfulater also catches metadata better than any program I have seen. As a starter, even if the name of the publication appears before the article title on a web page, Surfulater is very often able to differentiate between the publication and the title on the second or third line, and to put the title into its title field. This saves time because one doesn't have to make a manual correction.

In terms of other metadata, I love Surfulater. It accurately catches metadata, such as the publication and the date, and plunks it into the appropriate field. It also catches the web url. All of this metadata appears in field that appear with the article in Surfulater.

Surfulater also offers a feature added in one of the version 2 upgrades, and that is tags. The tags feature works well. Cloning files is also easy, and there's a variety of linking possibilities. Surfulater also provides a highlighting capability.

I have found over the years that Neville Franks, the creator/developer of Surfulater, is one of the most responsive people I have ever dealt with. He listens to his users, and the listening is reflected in the way the program develops.

Daly

Daly,

WebResearch has a feature similar to Surfulater's tags - only it's called "categories" instead of "tags". You can assign each WR item a category or a subcategory, and view the categories as a tree.

I wonder though, are Surfulater items indexed/searchable using windows search (as JJ mentioned in a previous post)? With WR, when I type a word in the search box of Vista's start menu, I instantly see all related WR items as well.

Michal

Michael, I have yet to see Vista's search tool give instantaneous results on any computer. It is better than in previous Window versions...but still nothing to write home about.

Surfulater's search gives results within "seconds," and highlights the search words in items containing it. It's one of the best search tools I have worked with.

http://www.surfulater.com/

Surfulater's tag system is very good - nested tags give you an "and" relationship - which is very helpful if you have 100s of items that fall under the top level tag, say Election 08. Nested tags would be, say, McCain, Obama, Palin, Fact Checking, etc. Selecting Election 08 and Obama would give all items tagged Election 08 AND Obama, but not all items on either the election or Obamma.

As well, Surfulater's ability to clone items and to make cross reference links is very handy and well executed. I have no fears, as I have had with other programs of this type, of losing info because there are so many ways to get at it, and to see that a particular item is there. I use cloning and tags a great deal.

I like the fact that items show up complete with metadata fields.

Surfulater works equally well with Firefox.

And as I have said before, Surfulater offers the most accurate clipping ability that I have yet seen, including WR.

It is now better than Evernote 3. If one is interested in a desktop web clipping system Surfulater is the top choice IMHO. It beats EN 3 - EN 3 is a cross platform program, and in developing it some important chunks of EN 2 were left out, making EN 3 less useful for desktop web research.

I am thinking seriously of moving all my info stuff to Surfulater from MyInfo, with the exception of items that need metadata columns - if Surfulater developed that, I would use it for everything.

Daly



Michal wrote:

Daly,

WebResearch has a feature similar to Surfulater's tags - only it's called
"categories" instead of "tags". You can assign each WR item a category or a
subcategory, and view the categories as a tree.

I wonder though, are Surfulater
items indexed/searchable using windows search (as JJ mentioned in a previous post)?
With WR, when I type a word in the search box of Vista's start menu, I instantly see all
related WR items as well.

Michal

Daly, thank you for an elaborate reply.

I just downloaded Surfulater 3, will be comparing it to WR over the upcoming days. I hope the trial version is fully functional.
Damn. I tried to resist downloading another web clipper (I also have EN3)... But just when I thought I was out..they pull me back in...

Regarding windows search -- well, matching search items start appearing as you type -- since windows has already indexed the files -- but I admit that for a complete word or more it might take about 2-3 seconds on my laptop (Dell XPS M1210, I think Dell stopped manufacturing the model over a year ago).

Michal

Daly,

I know you are, or were at one stage, an enthusiastic user of Zoot, which also has the capability of archiving web pages. This being the case, apart from the very obvious differences in the way the data is presented and searched, what is for you the reason to use Surfulater above Zoot?

I've been slowly stabilising the programs I use for information management, and have been working at reducing their numbers (I even managed to get rid Ultra Recall by better use of Zoot). Most of my data archiving goes on in The Brain, but that only links to URLs (unless one feels inclined to save webpages as files or to cut and paste them to item notes, with various dodgy results ...). Surfulater, along with Zoot, has the ability to store the page so that the information remains available if the online page disappears (which does sometimes happen to me). Upgrading to Surfulater will put a spanner in the works of my nice neat information management strategy, but I'm keen to hear how the two programs compare :-)

Thanks!

Graham

Graham Rhind wrote:

Daly,

I know you are, or were at one stage, an enthusiastic user of Zoot, which also
has the capability of archiving web pages. This being the case, apart from the very
obvious differences in the way the data is presented and searched, what is for you the
reason to use Surfulater above Zoot?

Graham and Daly,

Tom (Zoot's developer) has spent a lot of time getting the Zooter's "Archive Web Page" feature to work properly. Using IE or Firefox it now reliably saves web pages as mht files to the windows directory you select, indexes them, and opens an item in the relevant Zoot database (also selectable) that is linked to the saved mht file. This item also contains the text of the web page.

I have found this feature so useful that I no longer use WR at all.

Derek

seeing that people are replacing UR or WR by Zoot, I thought I would install it ...

1. NOD32 recognizes it as a virus (NewHeur_PR virus)
2. after stopping NOD32, install fine
3. trying to run in:
"In order to run Zoot you must change the locale for non-unicode programs to a non-unicode language." - program dies.

Never mind, are you talking about the same Zoot that has the following limitations?

- A single database may contain up to 32,000 items.
- A single database may contain up to 250 folders.
- A single item may be assigned to no more than 25 different folders.
- An item document may contain no more than 32,000 characters (around 10,000 words).
- plain text items only

or is that info old?

Glad to see you are giving it a thorough workout, quant.

Zoot is in transition. It's Zoot32 now, and quite stable, but the many of the old limitations you mention are still in place. The developer is working on incorporating a new rich text editor and the other constraints will be taken care of when that task is done. But for those whose interest is mainly in textual information Zoot(32) remains hard to beat IMHO.

Derek

You will grow old & gray waiting for some of the features you want to be in Zoot. I know--I have & am still waiting.

In fact, since I am now retired, the advantages of Zoot that I could have used if it also had RTF and images are now of little use to me. I bought it, but after a bit of testing, I discarded it.

-c

Derek Cornish wrote:

Tom (Zoot's developer) has spent a lot of time getting the
Zooter's "Archive Web Page" feature to work properly. Using IE or Firefox it now
reliably saves web pages as mht files to the windows directory you select, indexes
them, and opens an item in the relevant Zoot database (also selectable) that is linked
to the saved mht file.

Just for the record, this works perfectly also in Opera, and it's one of the reasons I respect Zoot - its browser independence. i get fed up of being constantly forced back to IE or Firefox because that's all that other programs will support.

quant wrote

seeing that people are replacing UR or WR by Zoot, I thought I would install it ...

1. NOD32 recognizes it as a virus (NewHeur_PR virus)
2. after stopping NOD32, install fine
3. trying to run in:
“In order to run Zoot you must change the locale for non-unicode programs to a non-unicode language.” - program dies.

Never mind, are you talking about the same Zoot that has the following limitations?

- A single database may contain up to 32,000 items.
- A single database may contain up to 250 folders.
- A single item may be assigned to no more than 25 different folders.
- An item document may contain no more than 32,000 characters (around 10,000 words).
- plain text items only

or is that info old?

Valid criticism, though the virus warning is a false positive. The restrictions annoyed me initially not for being there but for not being made prominent enough in the documentation, so I was searching endlessly for "lost" data which overrode the restrictions. Once known I've found it easy to work within them (I don't use Zoot for archiving, so don't get anywhere near the limits any longer). What this does mean, though, is that Zoot is nifty. I was looking for programs which I could run on a daily basis from a USB stick so that, when I did travel, I didn't need to move data backwards and forwards. Everything slowed to a crawl (I could write a three-volume novel whilst waiting for Outlook, for example, to open an e-mail), but Zoot remained speedy, and that, apart from an innate distrust and dislike of UR and its interface, led me to step across.

Graham

Graham wrote:

I was looking for programs which I could run on a daily basis from a USB stick so that, when I did travel, I didn?t need to move data backwards and forwards. Everything slowed to a crawl (I could write a three-volume novel whilst waiting for Outlook, for example, to open an e-mail), but Zoot remained speedy, and that, apart from an innate distrust and dislike of UR and its interface, led me to step across.

-----------------------

For the record (as this started as an Surfulator thread...), InfoQube (aka SQLNotes), is now portable and runs fine on any USB drive (a fast flash or a HD does of course provide better response). It is Unicode compatible (both UI and content). Its organisational features IMO surpass the competition (except possibly Zoot) and it does picture perfect full-page web-capture (clipped sections are not perfect, due to CSS, .js dependancies, but no worse than EN or other similar app)

Documentation (a key and critical issue) is improving thanks to an active and devoted community: http://sqlnotes.wikispaces.com/

Pierre Paul Landry
http://sites.google.com/site/infoqube/Features

When I was on a PC, I was a big fan of Zoot. I had downloaded it and installed it on the recommendation of James Fallows in an issue of the Atlantic. It worked pretty much as advertised, and I used it every day. The programmer(Tom Davis? aka The Admiral)has always been very responsive to questions, complaints, and suggestions. There were times when a new version popped up on the website on a daily basis as he fixed things and incorporated new features. The community of users(Zooters)is active as well. I used it to store and search Outlook, and kept a database of scientific literature in it. It had wonderful abilities to slice and dice information, including the best implementation of Smart Folders that I have used.

Alas, the text only restriction made me move on. Also, I find the MacOS to be more conducive to my way of working. Also, and more to the point in this venue, I find the MacOS to have the better implementations of Outliners and PIMs.

Zoot software is one of the last bastions on the PC of the single programmer shop. I really hope that he succeeds at what he is doing.

Jim

Surfulater 3 I bet is good especially with the inclusion of tags and particularly for those who use it heavily...unlike me....

BUT I was disappointed in one aspect of the dealings. Before I point out my criticism, I would like to say that Neville has been extremely responsive to all queries that he receives and he is one of the first people int he software industry who responds personally and on-time! He's a 1-man email / call center guy who has provided exceptional support.

My criticism perhaps points out an oversight of his when selling his product at first - in terms of the licensing issues. I recall buying his product with lifetime upgrades and hence I thought of that as what it meant - "lifetime".

In a response to my email querying the same, he mentioned that he had been providing free upgrades till now and some upgrade revenue is needed to continue ongoing product development. I fully agree with him on that and plus the economy slowing down worldwide and Kinook's decision to freeze development on UR.... - I don't blame Neville for this and I am not protesting to him because Surfulater version 2.xx being the latest (paid for version for me) WORKS... I do not use it heavily...I do not need the tags in my life at the moment...but I somehow do feel that the main reason I had purchased it was the 'lifetime' as I bought it when i was still a student....and I bought software mostly on deals and hence purchased surfulater but now I find that purchasing lifetime does not mean lifetime because of a change in circumstances....

I apologize for the rant....just had to get it out to a community who was involved so strongly in this kind of software.

Q wrote:

I do not need the tags in my life at the moment...

If you do want them, you can get the pre-release version (2) which supports them, and has no stability problems as far as I know:
http://blog.surfulater.com/2008/07/17/the-new-surfulater-v29400-pre-release/

but I somehow do feel
that the main reason I had purchased it was the 'lifetime' as I bought it when i was still
a student....and I bought software mostly on deals and hence purchased surfulater
but now I find that purchasing lifetime does not mean lifetime because of a change in
circumstances....

I can definitely sympathise with your approach.

I still haven't upgraded to 3.0 but I will, as I believe that in the long term Neville's development will lead to a product way beyond an offline browser. At the moment what is mainly missing from Surfulater are more ways to get information into it, such as importing files from disk. Neville has indeed admitted as much. Within this context, if development takes such a direction, Surfulater may soon need a different name.

I know all this isn't much consolation. However, at a certain point companies much choose between keeping their promises 100% or ensuring their own viability so that they can keep at least part of their promises in the future as well. And --it's actually very easy to provide a lifetime license if one doesn't ever update a product!

Cheers
Alexander

I still haven?t upgraded to 3.0 but I will, as I believe that in the long term Neville?s development will lead to a product way beyond an >offline browser

I too believe it is going to become a bigger than what it is right now!

However, at a certain point companies much choose between keeping their promises 100% or ensuring their own viability so that they >can keep at least part of their promises in the future as well.
And --it?s actually very easy to provide a lifetime license if one doesn?t ever update a product!

Both are excellent points Alexander that have pointed out to me a more supportive stance to Neville's response and selfishly speaking - if I want a better product tomorrow, I guess there are some sacrifices today!

Cheers mate!

Q, I agree with you and Alexander that Surfulater has good potential to evolve in future. This perhaps seems ironic because Neville has said that Surfulater focuses on doing one thing well. And this approach has resulted in what I view as the best web clipper on the market, and most certainly the best among the ones mentioned on this forum.

Yet when you look at the Surfulater forums, people talk about the sudden realization they have had that the program is a good note taker, and note templates are provided. In fact, version 3 has a number of templates, including one that provides fields for referencing books, although it is not a complete biblio reference given there is no space for publisher, etc. But if one isn't using an automated biblio software, there isn't anything wrong with. And in fact, there is a lot right with it because it's not going to create the bugs that automated systems seem to get.

I think the templates, plus tags, plus the ease of cloning, suggest further developments. Neville has talked about new features that would include being able to choose the destination folder at the time of clipping in an easy step. From that, it may be a reasonable to speculate that the same ease of clipping could come to non-web documents.

Metadata is already present in the fields that appear at the top and bottom of each web capture, and in version 3 those fields can be relocated to top or bottom. I think I saw that Neville was looking at the possibility of user defined fields.

So I think Surfulater is a program to watch.

Daly

Graham Rhind wrote:

I was looking for programs which I could
run on a daily basis from a USB stick so that, when I did travel, I didn't need to move data
backwards and forwards. Everything slowed to a crawl (I could write a three-volume
novel whilst waiting for Outlook, for example, to open an e-mail), but Zoot remained
speedy, and that, apart from an innate distrust and dislike of UR and its interface,
led me to step across.

Graham

Graham,

Is Zoot now able to fully run from a USB stick on a computer w/o administrative rights? I was not able to find out any current information at the Zoot website, and they have been talking about this for many months.

--Ken

Ken wrote:

Graham,

Is Zoot now able to fully run from a USB stick on a
computer w/o administrative rights? I was not able to find out any current
information at the Zoot website, and they have been talking about this for many
months.

--Ken

I can't answer that, I'm afraid, as I never use computers without full rights. Perhaps somebody else knows?

Graham

For give my ignorance with this program, but does anybody know the terms of their trial software? I looked at their web site, but could not find any information. Also, I am assuming that this is not a "portable" application.

--Ken

Ken,

From memory it's a 21-day trial period (though the developer has always been amenable to extending that if further testing is required, on a case-by-case basis).

I'm not sure whether Surfulater can run from a USB stick (its data can be on one and shared between computers which have Surfulater installed). I've checked the forum but I'm not much wiser....

Graham

Ken wrote:

For give my ignorance with this program, but does anybody know the terms of their trial
software? I looked at their web site, but could not find any information. Also, I am
assuming that this is not a "portable" application.

--Ken

Thanks for the information (on both of the above posts), Graham. Before I embark on trying time-limited software, are there any shareware programs that are useful for web clipping and organizing that I should look at first?

--Ken

Surfulater vs WebResearch - my experience

I own a license to WR pro.
I downloaded the trial version of Surfulater 3 (trial limitations: When Surfulater is running in Free Trial mode the Data Folder is only used for Send To|HTML File(s) and Send To|MHT file. In Free Trial mode My Documents\My Surfulater\MyKnowledge.Surfulater is the only Knowledge Base that can you can add to and edit. Other Knowledge Base files can be opened in read-only mode).

I'm no programmer, so the following comparison is that of a basic home user. I probably have omissions/ possible mistakes, and you're welcome to correct me. But here goes...

1. Web capture accuracy:
- Surfulater does a decent job capturing web content, but I find WR to be more accurate. For instance, compare a page captured from Wikipedia in WR vs. Surfulater. Mostly, WR captures the page exactly as it is. (NOTE: the most accurate results, btw, are achieved with FireFox's scrapbook extension. And interestingly, WR uses scrapbook extension to capture webpages in FireFox).
- When saving right-justified text in Surfulater (for instance, Hebrew text), the result is left-justified.
- Both apps can capture metadata. Surfulater does so automatically and displays the data under "reference" just beneath the URL. In WR, you go to options->save->and check "use decription meta tags as document comments"
- Annoying WR bug: sometimes instead of saving the article's URL, WR saves a scrapbook address instead. It's extremely annoying if you discover the blunder only after already saving about a trillion webpages ;)

2. Browser integration:
- Both apps work with IE and Firefox (FF). Surfulater relies on a right-click menu alone, while WR has both a toolbar and right-click menu options. I find the WR toolbar more comfortable than scrolling down along the rt-click menu options.
- In WR, while saving a webpage, in a pop-up window you can choose a folder, add tags (="categories") and add comments to the document. In Surfulater, you don't have an option to choose folder/tag while saving; the webpage would automatically be added to the folder you happen to browse at the time, though you do have a "New Articles" folder and according to the help section you can pre-define a folder for new articles to be added.
- WR toolbar options: Add article to new documents folder; "Save as" (a handy option where a pop-up window opens allowing you to choose folder, assign a category to the article and add comments); Save address as (=bookmark a page); Save screen clipping as; save linked web pages.
- WR toolbar has an "already saved?" option, allowing you to check if you've already saved a specific webpage. It's a wonderful option but at least on my machine it's buggy, sometimes I get false negatives -- i.e. WR claims I've never saved a specific page while I actually have. Also, WR toolbar has "Examine last saved document" (clicking the option will present the last page saved).
- WR rt-click menu options: Save frame; Save frame as. If you select text you have "Save selection" (goes straight to new articles folder) or "Save selection as" (you choose where the selection is saved in a pop-up window, tag it, add comments)
- Surfulater rt-click menu options: Add new article (you have to select text first); Add article plus page (if you don't select text you get an empty article with the webpage attached); Add page to article (the page is added as an attachment to the article you're currently browsing); Bookmark this page.

3. Editing captured page
- WR has more versatile editing options such as choosing font color, and align the text rt/left/center
- In both apps you can of course add text or images, and format the text as bold or italic. Adding images is cumbersome in WR, you have to browse for the image file in order to add it, you can't just paste (Annoying!). In both apps you can highlight text, add bullets and numbering.
- In WR you can edit the webpage before capturing - both in IE and FF

4. Unicode - I have a problem with Hebrew text in both apps... In WR, the pop-up window displays the title of a Hebrew page as "????????????" ... In Surfulater, you have an option to convert the the folder tree to unicode (which I haven't tried yet) ... Right now I have problems with Hebrew URLs displayed as gibberish in the "See Also" field ...

5. Tagging -
- I LOVE Surfulator's tag system. Much more intuitive. Nested tags are created automatically, which is great. It makes cross-reference a breeze.
Also, tags are easily displayed in the Tags field beneath the article - it's NOT so with WR.
- WR has "Categories". You can assign each web page as many categories and sub-categories as you want. Trouble is, the categories feel just like a second folder system to me, instead of like "real" tags. It's as though I have a double folder system. So I absolutely prefer Surfulater's tagging!
Neville Franks, the creator of Surfulator, defined in his blog the difference between tags and a folder tree, and I just loved his description: "Tags provide an alternate view into your knowledge base to the hierarchical folder tree. Taking an analogy with a Book, you can think of Folders as the Table of Contents and Tags as the Index."

6. Both apps can be minimized to system tray. In WR, when minimized you can use the right click menu to choose options from the system tray - new document, new note, new internet address, save screen clipping. In Surfulater you have only restore an exit.

7. Note taking - you can use both apps to take notes. In WR you choose "new note". No templates. In Surfulater you add new article, and btw, you have article templates, which is great ("note", "quick note", quotations"...).

8. Databases - in both apps you can create multiple databases. In WR, you have to create separate categories for each database. I have no idea if you can use tags across databases in Surfulater since the trial version doesn't allow you the creation of new databases.
I wish WR and Surfulater had the option to open more than one database at a time in a tabbed interface (like MyInfo) but that's wishful thinking ;)

9. Search -
- Windows search accessability: WR items are indexed and searchable using Microsoft desktop search. It's a great advantage. As far as I gathered -- Surfulater articles aren't accessible via Windows search -- please correct me if I'm wrong.
- WR has of course an integrated search option, it uses windows search, it's fast, and has an option to highlight search terms or turn highlight off. You can't search across databases, but of course you can use Windows search to access all WR content (Windows Key+F or type into the start menu search bar)
-Surfulater's search feature is extremely fast as previously mentioned here, I think it's faster than WR's internal search. Search terms are highlighted. I don't know if you can search across databases since I don't have the option to create new databases.

10. Outlook - WR has an outlook add-on, it's pretty neat -- you can send emails from Outlook to WR. Too bad Macropool sell this add-on separately, if you want this add-on you have to pay extra ;)

11. Interface:
I find Surfulater's interface much friendlier.
I love the way articles are presented in Surfulater -- you have the following fields:
~Title and date
~Text (=the article itself)
~Comments
~Attachments (=you can attach files or link to files on your computer)
~See Also (=cross reference. GREAT feature. You can point from a certain article to another one, thus creating mutual reference -- it's extremely helpful)
~Tags
BTW, in Surfulater you can also attach files to a folder, not just to articles.

In WR, all you have is Comments. No cross-ref, no file attachments. Also, no easy display of tags -- you can click on "categories" and see which are marked, but that's cumbersome. In Surfulater tags are simply displayed in the "Tags" field and it's SO much easier to catch everything in one glimpse.

12. Cloning articles: a great feature of Surfulater. You can copy an article from one folder to another and every change you make in the original article including tagging and cross-ref will be displayed in the copy.

13. Adding files to the database as separate items: WR allows you to add whatever files you want as items -- PDFs, Word, FLV etc. In Surfulater you can only add such files as attachments

There are so much other features to compare (WR has the ability to change the location of the reading pane, to enlarge the reading pane atc... In Surfulater you can dock the knowledge treebar wherever you want...) ...but it's 2 a.m. here and I'm about to collapse on the keyboard. Once more I stress that all criticism is just my subjective opinion.

Verdict: I'm about to purchase Surfulater.

G'night!

Michal