MrAnalogy
08-16-2008, 03:43 AM
I've had an eye on UR for a year or two now. I'd been looking at a lot of KB programs and even used Ecco Pro for a while. I finally got some time to take a closer look at UR and switch from Treepad. I also own a 13 year old shrinkwrap software company so might newbie thoughts on UR might be helpful.
GREAT PROGRAM BUT NEEDS A BIT OF CONFIGURING TO GET FULL USE
So far, UR looks like a fantastic, well executed program. However, I suspect that it needs a lot of tweaking for a new user. It seems that some users view it more akin to a FoxPro than a Treepad. I.e., more of a tool you use to create a database than the database itself. This is a catch-22 because a Casual User will not know how to configure UR. Conversely, it probably takes a lot of effort to configure UR in the simplest way to get the job done. That means hiring someone for perhaps a few thousand dollars to configure UR.
LARGER MARKET FOR PRE-CONFIGURED TEMPLATES
I suspect that your market would a a lot larger (which means you could afford lots of cool new features for us <g>) if you had a few good templates that were constantly updated.
BUT IT MIGHT BE COMPLICATED
You might have the equivalent of a Forking Problem, however. I'm not sure if a user can update a template URD once they've been using it. E.g., Captain GTD releases GTDv1.0 and I start using it. Six months later he releases v2.0. I don't think I can just update my template automatically, right? In this case all the users of Captain GTD will end up with versions that are slowly drifting from the main branch of Captin GTD's constantly maintained GTD template. Quite a sticky wicket, eh?
GREAT PROGRAM BUT NEEDS A BIT OF CONFIGURING TO GET FULL USE
So far, UR looks like a fantastic, well executed program. However, I suspect that it needs a lot of tweaking for a new user. It seems that some users view it more akin to a FoxPro than a Treepad. I.e., more of a tool you use to create a database than the database itself. This is a catch-22 because a Casual User will not know how to configure UR. Conversely, it probably takes a lot of effort to configure UR in the simplest way to get the job done. That means hiring someone for perhaps a few thousand dollars to configure UR.
LARGER MARKET FOR PRE-CONFIGURED TEMPLATES
I suspect that your market would a a lot larger (which means you could afford lots of cool new features for us <g>) if you had a few good templates that were constantly updated.
BUT IT MIGHT BE COMPLICATED
You might have the equivalent of a Forking Problem, however. I'm not sure if a user can update a template URD once they've been using it. E.g., Captain GTD releases GTDv1.0 and I start using it. Six months later he releases v2.0. I don't think I can just update my template automatically, right? In this case all the users of Captain GTD will end up with versions that are slowly drifting from the main branch of Captin GTD's constantly maintained GTD template. Quite a sticky wicket, eh?