Ultra Recall reviews

[schferk]

There's a recent UR review in pcworld, from a certain Ian Harac.

The review is from september, and it's fifth find in google for just "ultra recall" (= not "ultra recall review"), so you cannot be more prominent than that, and thus it should not be ignored by kinook, but it is.

The bottom line of the review is very positive, but it's written from a very unqualified pov, i.e. Mr. Harac doesn't seem to understand much about outlining and / or IM (and how could he, he does "reviews" on pcworld in numbers, for any sw there might be there, and if he's only paid 50 bucks or so apiece, it's quite understandable that he won't begin each "review" with 3 days of reading the available web material about each sw category before beginning to trial, and to write about his trial), and it clearly shows, even to prospects, so the question remains if such a "positive" review that is incompetent even at first sight (and erroneous in part), is really helpful to bring new customers, left alone (= as it is). Also, he might have a char / word limit within which to write much better stuff than he delivered re UR would take (too much) time (if it's paid 50 bucks or so) even for an expert on the matter.

So, an advisable approach to such pieces of "unwanted recommandation" would be to create an "account" there, then say something on the lines of "Thank you very much for your kind review and your bottom line that I dare seeing as a recommandation, and allow for my giving some more details about our sw (and even a minor correction): blah and yada."

On the other hand, such a thing could be / could have been written by a member of the respective community defending his beloved sw, but 3 months later and for a 5th find for the sw in question, that's not been done either. (Whilst for a weird thing like CT, their's plenty of crap like "Why you should buy CT when in fact you were searching for an outliner!" throughout the web - people who fall for such manipulative crap will be "very pleased" afterwards, as soon as they get that's it's not their lack of understanding / intelligence (which they will have initially blamed) that they can NOT do with CT at the end of the day, what they had initially planned to do, but that they were simply ripped off by (manipulative - no, that'd be an oxymoron) propaganda.

So, the (official, by the owner, and UR's followers') UR approach to public statements is the direct opposite of the CT approach (at least as far the lapdop speak-out is concerned, the developer doesn't have any propaganda left to do - you see I don't fall into the trap of saying "too much", even "between the lines").

So why is it this way here?

- Not enough care of the developer for his own product's standing in the public eye.

- Not enough caring (any more) of disenchanted customers for a product they don't see in active development (anymore / currently), and where they see the developer doesn't speak out, even vÃ*v them, "internally" if I may say, to encourage his customers that yes, indeed, he will broaden the feature set of his product, and the utility for a wider public, by this enlarging the return of his product which will in turn give him the means to do even more work on his product, and so on - no upside spiralling here, and not even promises to do real work within a minor scope, i.e. without trying to multiply the customer base - nada.

Hence the remembrance, for more than one current customer, those (honest but desastrous) declarations of the developer back in 2008 or 2009, re "maintenance yes, developing no". And with these in mind, more than one current customer will say to himself, in the absence of positive declarations, might it be possible that kinook learned from that tolling experience? Which would mean, in plain English, no positive announcement, so there's a chance for the "maintenance yes, active development no" policy announced back then, having come into effect?

Hence no UR fanboys (anymore) to positively comment / give further positive info even on 5th find google results when normally you'd have assumed that not one but several UR customers would be happy to jump in on such an occasion to praise the product they perhaps use 40 hours or more every week.

I'm far from rejoicing at this state of affaires, since I consider UR at the top of comparable products - but that also means there's much left out, not a single one of all these competitors being ready for prime time: They are ALL sub-standard if you allow, and within such a competition, UR is "best" or, at the very least, among the very best.

But no reason for anybody to rave about it - incl. the developer who refrains from such an occasion (5th google place, i.e. everybody interested in UR would read it) served to him onto a silver plate though.

Do better than this, as well for the communication, as for the product behind.

Will you ?

EDIT : Off-topic: 6th on google for "ultra recall" is the 61 p.c. off with bits, which is another marketing disaster, since prospects will have a look there, deduct UR isn't "worth" the asking price of 100 bucks, but only 40, but since they can't get it for this price, and so are strongly demotivated to buy it at 100, preferring some competing product where is no such promo they will have missed - at best, they wait for the next UR promo, which means a prospect that would normally have brought 100 bucks will now bring in 19.50 bucks. Hence the spiraling downward, instead of any rise in interest. (As for the CT touting, well, CT is the "product" of an outlinersw group dynamics meaning people try to convince themselves that they are sort of an "elite" - I would have presumed that role (once played by UR, no?!) becoming cast one day by IQ, but then, not. Well, group dynamics have their own rules, and quality considerations ain't one of them as we all know.)

EDIT 2 : I just read in the "review" of Treepad Plus, by the same guy for the same site, "Over the past decade, I've used two text information programs daily for personal projects: ConnectedText ($40) and TreePad Plus. " - OMG: This only serves to show that 10 years of using CT make you to lose almost all your possible IM landmarks. (And btw, his argument there about an unpleasant legacy GUI in order to retain the existing customer base is rubbish by any possible pov: Fact is, many developers buy the cheapest basic components (or even free ones), as ugly as they might be, and then they could perfectly replace them with a much better-looking framework later on, retaining the same overall layout, and with rather little adoption efforts required. But no, they refrain from this negligeable effort, and they refrain from the cost they would encur, hence the ugliness of their products. UR is at the opposite here: They use a graphically very pleasant framework, so UR isn't ugly at all but rather beautiful for a normal Windows applic - it's just that the tree hasn't got formatting, and the editor neither got mouse wheel control nor basic-functional spreadsheets.

Off-topic : Treepad is a classic example of the double-edgedness of making a totally crippled free version, too: Most "reviews" about TV are about that piece of crap (and must necessarily be putting off), so rather few people only bother to have a better look at their paid editions - which are too many, anyway.

[wordmuse]

I do find it weird that Kinook will not respond to users - loyal users about URP, the roadmap, etc. It's as though the feeling is that we're adversaries. Even folks like me who bought version 5, without regret, though not nearly the enthusiasm I'd have had if the roadmap meant something real.

The take-away for me is that I've been on the lookout for something that is being actively developed that can replace URP. I don't believe I'll find such a thing because the feature set in URP is too dense and unique - plus there would be no easy way to migrate to something else, and like many others here, I know migration always is a painful experience and while you may easily be able to capture all the actual content, you never get to capture all the connections between the content items.

I've been down the migration road many times; it's not fun though when it's right, I do it anyway.

I still hope that Kinook continues with real development on URP. But I thank them for what they have provided. While longing for the roadmap, I'm still a pretty happy camper.

And after all - what we're all dealing with here are really just First World Problems.

Cheers.

- Bal

[schferk]

I

"And after all - what we're all dealing with here are really just First World Problems."

As I recently retorted here, no sir! Personal computing is now 30 years old, and people who've done good things in the past, do have a certain moral obligation to continue their good work, since we certainly would not come to expect this work being done by minor developers having not done good things in the past either. In every science, there is search for development, from a conceptual pov, not only, "we want it more, we want the existing better", but in search for partial breakthroughs, for totally new ways, beginning by inventive first steps.

The current state of affairs in individual / mini-group IMS ist, development has virtually come to a halt about 10 years ago, today there is NOTHING there that would not have been there more than 10 years ago, all developers combined (I'm speaking from a conceptual pov, while acknowledging that e.g. Zoot today is "better" than the Zoot from "yesterday", with all its 32k, plain-text-only and other limitations) - perhaps the only exception from this rule being CT, but which is a wiki, with (inventive) add-ons, and it's inacceptable to establish a rule by which wikis be "outliners further developed and brought to a new level" or something like that, for the sole reason that there IS indeed some invention there, but not here.

Proof: My writings here in this forum (with their antecedents in those other fori mentioned before) clearly show that the outliner concept (incl. other and interconnected hierarchies like in TB) is far from being defunct - had I the financial means to not only do conceptional work (together with the limitation that I don't have intermediate solutions, but must abstract over several intermediate levels which better might already have been realized to rather work "from there"), but to finance the corresponding coding, that old outliner paradigm would quickly roar to totally new heights never imagined before, and I'm very well speaking of the user experience here - technical realization is one thing (and can be very complicated is you really want things simple AND powerful for the "end" user), but the ease of use, AND the ability to do everything what you might want to do, with sw, in a given work environment, is a challenge that could never be attained or fulfilled by just thinking, give people enough water, enough bread, enough medical assistance as they are in need of, and then only do something for science at such.

I do NOT want to be rude here, I don't want to emply the term "naïve" or such. But I have the right to say: In any matter you can currently study at any university of this world, 95 p.c. of what you can study there, is done, with them knowing very well that it will not have the slightest implication on hunger, thirst, "third world probs that should be overcome first". The same in art: More gifted people than we are, write novels and plays, create paintings, write music, etc. - after A.H. 33-45, the Killing Fields and all this, and BEFORE hunger and thirst in the Third World will ever become resolved.

Back to IMS's: Nope, they don't have to wait for all these much more important problems being resolved once (and Man being how he is, that might never be), before having the right to ask for being further developed, as have any other of all these things that smart and gifted people waste their time upon, instead of better saving Africa. (So, for once, I'm with the "majority pov" here.)

II

"I've been on the lookout for something that is being actively developed that can replace URP. I don't believe I'll find such a thing because the feature set in URP is too dense and unique"

That's what I've seen many months ago - there isn't any robust and viable alternative, and if ever I had to do it all "by myself" (i.e. with my money and with my concepts being put into code), lots of basic things would first have to be realized along the lines of UR as it today - all the more so it'd be a pity if UR didn't get some of my ideas, since what it has done up to now is rock-solid.

Btw, it was for exactly seeing that "no-alternatives-out-there" that a year ago I developed my alternative, hybrid system detailed here, and which is VERY usable and could constitute a viable long-term alternative, except for AO's lacking Boolean search, AO's lacking a search results (= a "hit") table, and the inability of existing indexing search tools to index AO files (meaning my complete searches with non-indexing tools take about 2 min. each for a complete search), and also, the inability of any external search tool to present the "hits" not only within their context (File Locator can do this), but to give me a clickable search results tabe from which I then could jump right into the corresponding item in AO (as is possible with the internal search tools in UR, MI, etc.) - and deep links into specific AO items (as they are possible with UR items) wouldn't harm either.

III

"while you may easily be able to capture all the actual content, you never get to capture all the connections between the content items"

What did I relentlessly preach here? No clones, no tags, since neither will travel.

No pun whatsoever intended.

[schferk]

Interesting discussion here throughout page 37, between "J-Mac" and "Dormouse":

http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=2362.900

They openly discuss problems UR might have with MS integration, and "Dormouse" advocates that the work for MS integration gets harder, and less rewarding.

People there openly state that UR did indeed announce in 2008 or so that development will be stalled, and that we've seen exactly this, with the exception of the - also announced - necessary work for making UR work with Win 8 and such.

There's a blatant charge from "Dormouse": "has since just provided a path for people who upgrade their OS. I applaud that; takes away the feeling that it is an urgent matter to find an alternative." - in plain English, this means, that even minor adjustments ain't done because kinook loved his clientele, but just to assure that no more people than absolutely necessary will be leaving, by doing the least possible work here. I hope "Dormouse" is mistaken here, but often, openly cynical assertions are sheer truth.

He also well summarizes my idea on the market (without giving me credit, of course, but he concedes reading this forum attentively):

"I would really prefer that the program were popular and still actively developed, but I don't think that programs like these are the way that the market is moving. Developers everywhere are aping Apple or apping iOS, because that is where they think the money is. Programs are dumber but prettier and it is simpler to see what to do. The antithesis of UR really."

That's exactly what I did say here, in many more words, some weeks ago, except for him not going so far as to follow me in my conclusion:

You'll remember I said that's the reason why UR, in order to survive - and get a much more interesting market as well -, has to resolutely adopt the way I've advocated and detailed here, since, this becoming more and more common sense for everybody, in the "consumer market", there is no place left for applications like UR, exactly for the reasons detailed by me and summed up by "Dormouse" in his "The antithesis of UR really."

Of course, there is also and ever that problem of developers too much inclined in wanting to "be decently paid", instead of doing some work in order to produce excellence, all the more so considering that such outlays would pay if done in a strategic way (cf. those details).

A last word - and why I put this post into this thread here: It's evident that people who are very quiet here, do harm to this program where lots of multipliers are present. And can you blame them? Here, they don't think they will get any valid answer for constructive criticism. So they turn elsewhere and have at least the satisfaction of their criticism, now deconstructive, being heard - by third parties who'll decide over budgets and which programs will make it into their networks.

And no, allowing for such developments is not smart.

[Dormouse]

Interesting discussion here throughout page 37, between "J-Mac" and "Dormouse":

http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=2362.900

I think my point of view is rather mischaracterised here. I think that Ultra Recall remains more functional than its direct competitors, and appreciate Kinook's making upgrades to endure compatibility with new OSs. I appreciate that people may want more new features for the price of the upgrade, but feel that it is a straightforward decision; Kinook needs to decide what makes best use of their time; we need to decide whether a particular upgrade is worth it for us. (I won't upgrade to 5 because I won't "upgrade" to W8 - if I were going to, then I'd go for 5 too).

There's a blatant charge from "Dormouse": "has since just provided a path for people who upgrade their OS. I applaud that; takes away the feeling that it is an urgent matter to find an alternative." - in plain English, this means, that even minor adjustments ain't done because kinook loved his clientele, but just to assure that no more people than absolutely necessary will be leaving, by doing the least possible work here. I hope "Dormouse" is mistaken here, but often, openly cynical assertions are sheer truth.

I ascribe no motivation to Kinook, but assume they are acting as sensible business people. I am sure Kyle is emotionally attached to UR, but doubt that he can work just from love. Equally, I don't see that Kinook is acting just to avoid people leaving. They are enabling them to continue with UR if they upgrade their OS; that is 100% a good thing from a users point of view.

[Dormouse]

He also well summarizes my idea on the market (without giving me credit, of course, but he concedes reading this forum attentively):

Actually, I visit this forum very rarely (maybe once a year or less). I did visit recently when I realised that there was a v5, skimmed a few posts but did not read many very attentively because they just seemed uninformatively negative about an upgrade being made available or their wishes for development not being met. And, I'm afraid that I haven't read any of your posts in detail at all - they are just too long and too verbose.

I largely agree with the OP here:
I'll try to keep this short. There's at least one other thread on this topic, but it's closed and I have a different take from many of those posted (with some notable exceptions).

Ultra Recall Pro has remained my repository of choice for storing and organizing all kinds of information.
I've yet to find a similar product I like better (and I've tried many).
For software I depend on every day, ~$16/year ($50 roughly once every 3 years) is very reasonable.
The generous licensing that allows installation on multiple computers used by the same person makes the above cost even more reasonable and especially paltry compared to what I spend on stuff I use only once or rarely.
There's also no extra charge for support after nn days like many vendors nowadays.

but noticed that the thread was largely dominated by your very long posts taking the thread in a completely different direction.

[Dormouse]

You'll remember I said that's the reason why UR, in order to survive - and get a much more interesting market as well -, has to resolutely adopt the way I've advocated and detailed here, since, this becoming more and more common sense for everybody, in the "consumer market", there is no place left for applications like UR, exactly for the reasons detailed by me and summed up by "Dormouse" in his "The antithesis of UR really."

Of course, there is also and ever that problem of developers too much inclined in wanting to "be decently paid", instead of doing some work in order to produce excellence, all the more so considering that such outlays would pay if done in a strategic way (cf. those details).

I don't think that developers wanting to be decently paid is a problem at all. It is entirely reasonable unless they are just doing it for pleasure or as a charitable enterprise.

I suspect that I would disagree with you about the likely success of your proposals, but would need someone to give a brief summary of what they are to give an opinion.

The market trend has been dumbing software down as well as making some uses easier (the two are not the same). UR is a highly complex program with many functions; if it were dumbed down it would be a very different thing. I think that most users (including me) value it for that complexity and would not want it reduced (and most feature requests I've seen are for extra complexity, options etc, rather than less.

[Dormouse]

They openly discuss problems UR might have with MS integration, and "Dormouse" advocates that the work for MS integration gets harder, and less rewarding.

I have no idea how Kinook perceive the current playing field, but I would be concerned about Microsoft's direction of travel. A single OS for phones, tablets and desktops does not seem like the best context for programs of this type. And MS integration becomes less rewarding as their market share slips.

For me, I have for many years used MS programs as little as I can (I find them just too 'heavy', rigid and dictatorial - and often not functional enough), and the close integration between UR and MS Office has meant that I use UR very much less than I otherwise would have. I can set it up differently, but I think that people who use office a lot obtain much more benefit from UR.

I don't know if MS's strategy with W8 will be successful, but I would certainly not have bet as much of their business on it as Steve Ballmer has, let alone the ex(?)-Microsoftie betting the whole of Nokia's future on it. And, if I were Kinook, I would be cautious about the way ahead.

[schferk]

"I've not been able to get UR to work with MS Office docs running internally on my current computer (W7 64 bit; UR4). I agree about the aggravation that the previously excellent support appears to have gone. Doesn't bother me directly,

as I never get in touch with support on any software

- either I can see how to make it work, or I don't use that function - but indirectly it does

because I make substantial use of any tips etc available on the forums."

Well, that's called consumerism, yes? And of course I thought it safe to deduct more than just casual reading was a prerogative to "make substantial use of any tips etc available". My fault.

[Dormouse]

Actually, I visit this forum very rarely (maybe once a year or less). I did visit recently when I realised that there was a v5, skimmed a few posts but did not read many very attentively because they just seemed uninformatively negative about an upgrade being made available or their wishes for development not being met. And, I'm afraid that I haven't read any of your posts in detail at all - they are just too long and too verbose.

"I make substantial use of any tips etc available on the forums."

Well, that's called consumerism, yes? And of course I thought it safe to deduct more than just casual reading was a prerogative to "make substantial use of any tips etc available". My fault.

Consumerism???

Kinook has given a number of very informative tips and given instructions on dealing with specific problems. I have always found them by specific searching (usually with Google, as it might throw up something from elsewhere). Did it a lot when I was first finding my way around UR some years ago, and very rarely indeed since - partly because I haven't had any problems, and partly because I have not been using UR extensively.

Using the forum as a support repository is not at all the same as reading the forum attentively.

[wordmuse]

I

What did I relentlessly preach here? No clones, no tags, since neither will travel.

No pun whatsoever intended.

I think this is correct in a world where everything has to be portable, where you can't rely on the software at all to do what you want it to do.

And, you are correct, too, in that no clones, no tags - probably no internal connections at all - is the safest way to go.

But living life in the life boat instead of partaking of the cruise? What's the point of having feature-rich software if you're not going to be able to use the features?

That said, I have made some "self-defense" moves. For instance, in-line text based tags. I use things like 224study, which URP treats different from 332study. And so on. And I think any full-text search function would also make the differentiation, so that kind of tag is fully portable.

It's a pain, though. And it remains a first world problem.

I read your comment about that phrase, and while you're correct that we should not wait to solve first-world problems before tackling those of the developed world (that is your meaning, yes?), the fact is that I have the good fortune and blessing that arises from not having to trudge a half-hour down to a river to put some water on my shoulders and carry it back to my hovel where my sickly kids are wondering when the next batch of swill is going to come in.

I also believe that development of solutions for first world problems can have huge leveraged and beneficial effects on the third world. So there is no intent in my meaning that 1st world problems be left unsolved. But surely, you can see the difference, and be grateful for the difference in your lot versus that of the mom who cries herself to sleep because she can't find a doctor within 50 miles of her home to help her child with a penicillin-treatable ear infection.

For me, the differentiation of these kinds of problems gives me a sense of perspective that I find useful. It reminds me that there is a difference between almost any of the problems I face compared with the much harsher problems that others face, and this enables me to feel a tad embarrassed if I ever get to hot under the collar about something like Kinook not following the road map. I speak only for myself and do not expect you or anyone else to accept what I say as valid. It is only meant for consideration - and perhaps a bit of provocation. :)

Kind Regards,
Bal

[schferk]

Just bec it's so beautiful, and, really, could you blame him? J-Mac in DC : "It is a fairly complex program and while the Help file is very detailed and extensive, it is also written as if for programmer types. By that I mean that after reading it all the way through - and that was a heck of a long read! - I was so damn lost I thought I might just close Ultra Recall and never open it again. OK, maybe not quite that bad, but I was pretty confused. The forum is an OK source of info, at least from a few experienced members, though there were some who seemed, well, a bit "elitist", if you can understand what I mean by that. I remember one such ass... err... forum member... actually posting that Ultra Recall required a higher IQ than many of the new users posting stup..., uhh, let's say very "beginner"-type questions in the forum."

Dormouse, I was VERY polite in calling your stance "consumerism", in fact saying you plough thru fori in order to fetch any hint you might get there, but you don't contribute anything to those very fori, could be qualified by less polite terms, too.

Wordmuse, you do exactly what I explained here and in outlinersoftware.com before: Doing simili-links, i.e. individual codings that then are processed by your own macros: Those will travel (but can only partially replicate inbuilt links' functionality).

Re travel: J-Mac wanted help for fleeing UR for MI (well, that was some months ago), so I tried to dissuade him, here:

http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=30763.0

(last post there at this moment) - when I speak about UR, as I rather often do in other fori, I always mention UR's strength even when complaining about its annoyances, and my DC post here is particularly interesting since I spontaneously found the (highly plausible) reason for TheBrain's poor import facilities there, as soon as I considered them (whom nobody could ever consider stupid), by way of trial, cynics instead of just sloppies.

Third world? In that very MI thread over there, people say they better had believed kinook when they said there weren't but maintenance releases to be expected further on - paid ones, for Win7, and again for Win8. On the other hand, I say UR is rock-stable, i.e. up to now, kinook has eliminated any possible bug as soon as it was notified to them, and I highly appreciate that (cf. MI, har, har, har - they're best in introducing 10 new bugs for every 3 old ones worked on - my estimates).

All the more so it's annoying that UR doesn't even get formatting within its tree (and many other such things that would be easy to implement but so much helpful every minute of your long working day with UR) - I would have done all these things ages ago, whilst kinook looks at UR's revenu and decides, it's not worthwile, and I'm really disappointed.

There's hunger and medical neglect in the third world, so why ask kinook to enhance their (fine but suboptimal) prog? Well, let's be stringent: Let's close this site, let's sweep off all sw from our pc's, let's put our cleaned pc's into the waste bins: Let's go back to pencil and paper whilst hunger and medical neglect in this world hasn't been properly addressed. Let's show our total compassion! And then, these probs properly resolved, what about the animal species? Hence my invitation to discuss sw probs within a sw / application frame and make abstraction of the outside world, in whichever state it might be.

Shouldn't anyone contribute on that subject he's able to supply something valid? E.g. I'm not a military specialist, but I think it's the military, backed up by a less utilitarian government than the U.S. have ever had, that could eventually overcome the nepotism behind the lack of food, medicine and education in all these countries. Get a new leader in any of such southern countries, his population will starve as they starved under his predecessor, and the new leader's family will, in some years, all be billionaires: Do you think any humanitarian intervention will ever end this? Of course not: It's power, and power only that could change anything for the better, and since power isn't a moral quality, things are getting from worse to unbearable. Why do you think animal experimentation is exported in high numbers from Europe to China? Because there's no limit whatsoever to anything over there.

Sorry for being blunt, but what do you expect from moral discussions in an UR forum? UR is a very valid contender, but it's suboptimal though. That's my point here.


EDIT : Sorry for mixing up things: The link above concerns the MI thread there in which you'll find my post, but J-Mac's citation above is from a genuine UR thread there:

http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=29590.0

[wordmuse]

Your comment makes me think you missed my meaning re third world problems. I'll try once more, and then just drop it as it hardly matters in any scheme of things whether we see eye to eye on this.

The point of the phrase "1st world problem" is to give 1st worlders a sense of perspective when they get angry, annoyed, etc. That's it's only real purpose.

It is NOT to say that one's pain and irritation don't count. It is rather a quick way of saying, "I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet."

That's all.

So - given that, by all means - go after your goals. I am. Go and prod and poke and provoke Kinook to do better. I'll cheer you on!

But I remain convinced that knowing that whatever comes is a matter of "shoes" rather than "feet" is a good thing for me to keep in mind.

Cheers.
- Bal