Forum Posts Feed
Looks like a new version of Surfulater is about to be released.
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by Q
Oct 31, 2008 at 09:24 AM
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.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Oct 31, 2008 at 01:13 PM
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
Posted by Q
Oct 31, 2008 at 08:25 PM
>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!
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Nov 2, 2008 at 12:06 AM
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
Posted by Ken
Nov 3, 2008 at 05:25 PM
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