How is Ongoing Development?

[danson]

Hi K,

It's nice to see a company with a policy of reasonablness that doesn't hide behind strick cut-offs etc.

Would could be nice as well is some kind of loyalty bonus to those of us who have been with you for some time already. Perhaps a %-off offer for previous licence holders.

It's always nice to receive some appreciation for supporting a product throughout its development.

Best wishes and good luck with the release,
Daniel

[dasymington]

Originally posted by danson
Would could be nice as well is some kind of loyalty bonus to those of us who have been with you for some time already. Perhaps a %-off offer for previous licence holders.

I think the upgrade policy referred to implies that there is:

"There may be an upgrade fee for major product releases (i.e., 2.x -> 3.x)."

Presumably the upgrade fee is less than the new purchase price.

[danson]

ah well spotted. hopefully your interpretation will prove accurate!

Daniel

[kinook]

http://www.kinook.com/support.html

[danson]

to save other readers a click:

"We only charge for major updates, usually at around a 50% discount, and of course, once you upgrade you get free support and updates again."

gosh i love this company.

[quant]

Originally posted by kinook
As was mentioned, all purchases within 60 days of a major release are freely updated to the next version (see http://www.kinook.com/order_policy.html), and in all likelihood the final release will be within 60 days. In fact, any purchase on or after today will be eligible for a free upgrade to v3 when released, even if that occurs more than 60 days from now.

whoops ...

I hope that you manage to release it in 60days-2weeks ... or am I just plain unlucky?

[igoldsmid]

knowing Kinook it'll be remarkably close to when they said it would be - which is some kind of magic for software development!!

[Leoram]

I don't want to be too persuasive but... who knows, maybe in 30 days our baby will be here, and possibly with new additions to the roadmap, as there are some important features the users are still eagerly awaiting. I'm saying this because when 2.0 was released things were better than expected .

[michaelkenward]

Originally posted by igoldsmid
Kinook - why don't you just download, install and review X1 / free Yahoo Desktop Search?

I came here eagerly hoping to find something that I could use to replace Onfolio, a fine piece of software killed off by Microsoft.

Sadly, I find that Ultra Recall is stuck in the old model, insisting that folks use its own built in search engine.

It is as if Google and the whole move to desktop search (DTS) does not exist.

Today, no software has a hope in hell of success unless it works with the X1 or Google and Microsoft DTS and many more. There is even a technology to make it happen, the iFilter.

One alternative to Onfolio, Websearch, has recognised this need. Sadly, they believe that the only one that matters is Microsoft's DTS. (In reality, even though I am an X1 fan, if you want to support just one option, it should probably be Google DTS.)

Ultra Recall, AskSam's overly complex product and others will doubtless have their fan base. But they will never break out into the big time, certainly not into the corporate market

Information is what matters. Not how it is stored. I want to search everything from one place.

So, off to continue my search for a 21st century product.

[quant]

Originally posted by michaelkenward
I came here eagerly hoping to find something that I could use to replace Onfolio, a fine piece of software killed off by Microsoft.

Sadly, I find that Ultra Recall is stuck in the old model, insisting that folks use its own built in search engine.

It is as if Google and the whole move to desktop search (DTS) does not exist.

Today, no software has a hope in hell of success unless it works with the X1 or Google and Microsoft DTS and many more. There is even a technology to make it happen, the iFilter.

One alternative to Onfolio, Websearch, has recognised this need. Sadly, they believe that the only one that matters is Microsoft's DTS. (In reality, even though I am an X1 fan, if you want to support just one option, it should probably be Google DTS.)

Ultra Recall, AskSam's overly complex product and others will doubtless have their fan base. But they will never break out into the big time, certainly not into the corporate market

Information is what matters. Not how it is stored. I want to search everything from one place.

So, off to continue my search for a 21st century product.

???

Everything in UR is indexed, providing lightning fast search of everything you put inside. Can you please elaborate what kind of search you need? Maybe, for you UR might seem complex, but the fact that you can use attributes, links, templates, forms, saved searches, ... provides possibilities you probably cant see/imagine/dream of before you try ...

You are right, information is what matters. But the information is not flat, it is very complex. With all the search software you mentioned, you can find the information, but you are missing the next step. It's like you live in two dimensional world, and cannot see the third one. The another dimension here is the relationship between the information:
- labels/attributes
- inside wiki links
- linked items ...

So, off to continue improving my information database using UR

[ksrhee]

Originally posted by michaelkenward
Sadly, I find that Ultra Recall is stuck in the old model, insisting that folks use its own built in search engine.

It is as if Google and the whole move to desktop search (DTS) does not exist.

Today, no software has a hope in hell of success unless it works with the X1 or Google and Microsoft DTS and many more. There is even a technology to make it happen, the iFilter.

One alternative to Onfolio, Websearch, has recognised this need. Sadly, they believe that the only one that matters is Microsoft's DTS. (In reality, even though I am an X1 fan, if you want to support just one option, it should probably be Google DTS.)

Ultra Recall, AskSam's overly complex product and others will doubtless have their fan base. But they will never break out into the big time, certainly not into the corporate market

Information is what matters. Not how it is stored. I want to search everything from one place.

So, off to continue my search for a 21st century product.

I'm not sure I agree with you here. I see UR and DTS as being complementary. I don't think any DTS will have an ability to help me find or organize complex information that I want to keep and search.

For instance, I use X1 extensively for file and e-mail search, but I don't think X1 or Google, or any other DTS can replace what UR does in my universe. They are "too" limiting in my book for keeping track of all information for me.

I understand that you want to find your information in one place, but if that search tool doesn't offer the features you need, what's the point? I have both X1 and UR running in my PC, but even if X1 can search inside UR, I would not use X1 for searching since UR offers more power and speed in search within UR.

[dasymington]

Desktop search engines are fine if you just want to search (I used to use X1), but if you want to organise your information in ways that are meaningful to you then UR is much better.

[michaelkenward]

The idea of desktop search (DTS) is that you do not need to organise in the mind numbingly structured way that something like Surfsaver, for example, requires.

Saved searches are fine, X1 has them, but the thought of devising complex templates in the AskSam model fills me with gloom. What works today, could be out of date tomorrow.

My research material consists essentially of email, PDF files, documents (mostly Word) and web grabs.

There is no structure that will hold this information in ways that will retrieve it consistently. That's because a structure that works for one task will not work for another.

I am a writer who covers many different topics. I can file something about venture capital under "finance" but when I want to know what "venture capital" has done for the "fuel cell" business I need to be able to search accordingly. I cannot anticipate the strange combinations that are likely to come up in the future.

Good fast DTS meets this need. (I currently get Onfolio to "publish" to html format that X1 can index.) It is there to handle unstructured data.

I started off in this data management game pre Windows, with dBase and Lotus Agenda. I have used Zoot. They did just fine until DTS came along.

Google works on the assumption that the web is an unstructured mess. Sure, tagging helps, and is something that a good DTS should support. Google is bringing the same approach to the desktop.

I have nothing against web grabbing software that allows experts to use it as they see fit, and to spend their lives improving their databases. But I am more interested in gathering information for use in ways that I have not yet thought about.

The software house that comes up with the first toy that also integrates with other DTS will make a killing. It does not have to take anything away from life's librarians.

Unless, that is Google gets there first. It has added a growing array of formats that it can index.

[quant]

Originally posted by michaelkenward

My research material consists essentially of email, PDF files, documents (mostly Word) and web grabs.

All the things you mentioned, UR keywords automatically. Keywords can be retrieved for the following file types:

· HTML (web pages)

· Internet Explorer Favorites

· MHT (web pages saved by Internet Explorer)

· Microsoft Office documents (including Word, Excel, and Powerpoint)

· Microsoft Outlook (messages + attachments for known document types, contacts, appointments, tasks or notes)

· Firefox/Netscape/Mozilla bookmarks

· Email messages (Outlook Express messages and news posts and any MIME file, including attachments for known document types)

· PDF

· Pictures and other documents with summary information

· RTF (rich text)

· Text (system code page, UTF-8 and UTF-16 encodings)

· XML (most encodings)

· ZIP (any supported file types found in the ZIP file)

· TIFF documents containing OCR text (Microsoft Office Document Imaging)

Originally posted by michaelkenward
There is no structure that will hold this information in ways that will retrieve it consistently. That's because a structure that works for one task will not work for another.

I am a writer who covers many different topics. I can file something about venture capital under "finance" but when I want to know what "venture capital" has done for the "fuel cell" business I need to be able to search accordingly. I cannot anticipate the strange combinations that are likely to come up in the future.

ok, so if there is no structure in your information (or at least you think there isnt), I suggest you try SearchInform (free for one database), which provides morphology/fuzzy/phrase/closedness/... search. I use it for the information that I have not processesed yet or which is not essential for my needs.

[kinook]

Originally posted by michaelkenward
I came here eagerly hoping to find something that I could use to replace Onfolio, a fine piece of software killed off by Microsoft.

Sadly, I find that Ultra Recall is stuck in the old model, insisting that folks use its own built in search engine.

It is as if Google and the whole move to desktop search (DTS) does not exist.

Today, no software has a hope in hell of success unless it works with the X1 or Google and Microsoft DTS and many more. There is even a technology to make it happen, the iFilter.

One alternative to Onfolio, Websearch, has recognised this need. Sadly, they believe that the only one that matters is Microsoft's DTS. (In reality, even though I am an X1 fan, if you want to support just one option, it should probably be Google DTS.)

We would like to support GDS and WDS, but unfortunately IFilter is not enough for files that themselves have a lot of structure and most likely a lot of data (see the 6th post in this thread for details). Newer versions of these products have been released since we last investigated this, so we'll look again to see if things have improved.

Also, utilizing export sets and command-line export in UR v3 Pro, it is possible to automate export of all items in UR as documents to a folder that will be indexed by (any) desktop search product.