Why I Upgraded to UR 5.0

[schferk]

wordmuse, your "and we have our choices to make": Two things: First, I'm writing here in order to PREVENT people from making negative choices, by disappointment, but then, when almost "nothing" comes their way..., AND I'm writing in order to trigger something that would be come around, but this making totally unnessary any "choice" = to leave. (And I forgot: Another hing I want to express, there is NO such "choice" in the end, not a single offering within this tiny market is really better, whilst rew come close, so my point is, we must accept that the market itself is the problem, and that we must accept the fact that our wishes cannot be realized but in a different kind of market, where there's much more money for the respective developers to gain from - within the traditional outliner paradigm, there's nothing really spectacular to come from kinook, nor from any of the other offerings, since the developers "ain't paid" in this tiny fraction of a market, fractionized into many competing products on top of that - cf. the citation manager market, only two main offerings, and it's a specialized market that's many times bigger, so there's plenty of revenue for the main contenders.)

A "first-world problem"? I know what you mean, but then "software IS first-world" (incl. China), and what has been done, in this particular field of outliners, etc., the last ten years? Don't we have the right to ask for further development, from people who would perfectly be able to give us very sophisticated things? As I explained today in the other thread again, it's ALL ABOUT BUCKS, it's all about finding your market niche, AND SERVING THAT MARKET WELL, and then there's enough revenue in order for the developer to deliver.

Have a look at bits: Any day (or week or so), an outliner comes there, for 20, 30, sometimes 40 bucks, incl. UR (which is there for 20 / 40, which means not even 10 / 20 bucks go to kinook when bits and the payment processor have taken their respective share) - so do you really think that normal business for outliner developers is great, these days when people don't even pay anymore tose 100 / 50 bucks originally asked for, and developers get paid 19 dollars for their best version? (And there are so many competing offerings at 20, 30 bucks that the minority paying 100 bucks for UR, MI or whatever is slimming down from day to day, as more people get aware of bits, with its tremendous success?)

Hence, the developers' unwillingness to do their work: We get what we pay - and even better: what THEY are paid (9.50 for UR) - for: almost nothing.

As for MS Office docs in PB and UR, concurrently (?), never tried this, but where would be the problem, then, to do it, with 5, 4 or 3? What you describe whould be a task you should be able to do with every third party program, not only UR and PB, as long as it's able to do this, by its individual feature set? I mean, not one of these programs do anything WITH / TO those external files, they just open the respective MS applic (Word, Excel, etc.), and offer a frame to it, Word, Excel, from within to work on their original files? Or do you mean, UR 5 and PB are able to both "open" the same file, concurrently, meaning at the SAME time, within respective frames, and there would by ONE file concurrently being edited from within the two applics, and when you save the file, any editing from "both sides" will be correctly processed? That would be a very elegant thing indeed - how many screens do you use, concurrently? Three or more? Elegant set-up, indeed. Technically, it would mean, the same Word / Excel file is concurrently processed by two instances of Word / Excel, right? Didn't know this was possible - or did I misunderstand you?

Which reminds me of a problem mentioned in the other, the "mind-map", thread: Using two instances or multiple maps, for deep-linking / launching OR for "thinking", i.e. separating those functions from each other, even using the same graphic program, should be perfectly possible, without the mental interference problems described there.

Again, 9.50 for UR - this is outrageous. Hence my not sharing with complaining, but my saying, without a paradigm shift for UR, what do you expect, AND, why NOT a paradigm shift for UR: Wouldn't many of us be willing to follow? And even if not, a whole new market for UR would open, where they could do that development work we expect them to do. (I'd be happy to pay, and for students, student's prices - where's the prob?)

[wordmuse]

schferk - I understand, I think....

And yes - software overall is a first world problem. I guess I was coming at the difficulty here after watching a bit of American politics in the news and realizing for the umpteenth time that we've got weasels who seem bent on turning America into a cesspool. In that emotional context what happens with this or that program just didn't seem that important to me. Add to that the fact that I still don't regret my decision to purchase UPR5 - well that's the explanation for what I wrote...

Now where I truly went wrong was posting in this thread. The long posts you made made my eyes gloss over (my problem, not yours). I can see now (I think) that you are trying to show a commercial context in which UR could succeed and you seem to be expressing details of what that could look like. Kudos to you for that. Much more than I would do - especially without payment and double-especially the way Kinook doesn't say a word in response to the UR user-community's justifiably bitter disappointment (still a first world problem) with URP5 - though I still have no regrets about upgrading. And triple-especially since Kinook has not seen fit to respond to you (unless you've gotten responses privately, which is your business).

So given this, I'm butting out...

Do carry on.

- Bal

[schferk]

Thank you very much for this kind post, Bal.

You entirely got it: Devising a broader commer context where this prog's problems could be handled with revenue "justifying" this, from kinook's pov, AND trying to push the "science of information" just a little bit, from from a rather practical pov, meaning I would like to desive something really useful, be it hybrid or not.

And no, no mail from kinook.

There ain't that many developers (of existing pim sw I mean) who could do something better, from limitations of their expertise; kinook certainly would be able, and the people behind PB, too, with some others, but all those like to do their thing, their way,

whilst I'm not more than an amateur programmer who once did a very elaborate thing but within an unsuited programming language and with going stuck on my various programming deficiencies, e.g. it was a sophisticated but self-contained system, just with export to Word, for better printing, but no mail, no web page, no pdf processing or such, let alone "cloud" integration or integration of "portable devices", and I was too much aware that such integration would be mandatory in order to get prime time (as said, all in all I sold 5 times the light version), but me without basic programming knowledge like API's, .net and all this - so I archived the source code...

but since, I've been living in extreme frustration, since my amateur sw then had all those little things that all these professional programmers could do, but just don't do.

Hence my musing, lately - and since it seems there will never be something really better - to put, some day, money from another business into paying coders.

But I better had made my mind up, up to then, as for the program to deliver; dead-ends are "free" (except for my time's worth) before doing the coding whilst afterwards, I'd pay thrice (and as said, the existing sw's are lacking also the intermediate functionality, for most of the latter, so that my imagination, or my abstraction capability, sometimes is stretched to its limits - hence my musing about intermediate steps, and my scripting to "simulate" intermediate steps, more or less : even with awkward work-around, you often can "see" if the "optimized, slick version" of what you're doing would be convenient, or if it's the whole (micro-) concepts that's not worth much).

And to be honest, lately, my discovery how much benefit mm sw can bring into your workflow, hasn't helped with my eventual getting to almost-definite specifications, since it's now

how to integrate optimized mm with optimized "bulk" data processing...

But as said in the mm thread, there should be some perviousness between the mm and the IMS sw; if there cannot be, shuffling around data with external macros (which also would be possible between mm and IM, not only between different mm maps) is simply too awkward as to be a viable solution.

And this would mean that I (or whomever it might concern) must first solve that mm-IMS interaction problem

("solving" meaning here, knowing how and at what cost such a solution is possible, and with what mm sw or component that isn't too bad or will soon be further enhanced, and being sure the functionality that in such a hybrid system will be expected to be executed by the mm part, is possible with that mm part (sw or component) that's available to you for such a venture).

Anyway. I thank you very warmly for this encouragement, and as long as I'm not being thrown out here, I'll continue to post intermediate results of my "conceptual work", or of just trying out new ways and new things.

[wordmuse]

Glad to see we're in sync a bit.

I think that over time, software *will* emerge from somewhere to give us what we are looking for. It probably won't be URP. I find TheBrain to be very useful in complementing what I can do with mindmap software and URP. But it probably won't be that either.

I find many overlaps in the functioning of UPR and TB - especially in the areas of searching external documents and connecting from one point in a database to another. I also find both programs wanting in many significant areas. Not being a techie, I can only make requests and leave it to the business decisions of the developers as to whether they can accommodate me.

When I compare UPR to the old DOS programs Tornado, IZE, MaxThink, and MemoryMate (I do miss MaxThink and its sibling Houdini), I think we've come a long way. And no one told Kinook to do anything. The free market inspired the development, and as long as the current idiots in the political class don't muck things up too terribly in the free market, I fully expect new software wonders in this area going forward.

What you write here might well give someone somewhere inspiration to take the torch, even if that turns out to be someone currently unknown to anyone.

- Bal

[schferk]

"especially in the areas of searching external documents and connecting from one point in a database to another"

On the spot !

"I also find both programs wanting in many significant areas."

Very unfortunately, on the spot again !

( "the current idiots in the political class"

Very unfortunately, you are wrong here, being governed by i*** would be serious enough, the ugly truth being, though, that they very simply have other masters they are accountable to, and that's not their respective country, let alone population. Excursion into politics closed. (We don't wanna be ostracized, nay?) )

"might well give someone somewhere inspiration to take the torch"

Spot-on ! It's not that I don't see this, and indeed, if somewhere (meaning: not on a Mac, please! I couldn't follow, I know some programming and lots of scripting in the Win world, not on Mac!) a top-notch prog arised, pillaging my ideas, I'd more than happy. The only thing that might some day really worry me, is when I will have come to the conclusion that I must realize it myself, go into investing, needing a year, and in month 8 of that same year something really good will come out! That risk is always there, considering that there are some rather good progs there that have done all the basics yet, meaning it'd be easy for them to pass a development-from-scratch. But certainly, UR has done so much, in the past, that their needed effort to make this prog outstanding, would not be that extremely demanding.

"think we've come a long way"

Yes and no. The first about 10 years of Windows were prolific, but not as prolific as they should have been. And since, we've got almost a standstill in concepts, for most sw kinds.

Have a look at Freehand 4 (1993 if I remember well, or was it 1992?) - look at its replacement, Illustrator today: 20 years of conceptional standstill, except for minor details, whilst the technical possibilities would have skyrocked).

Have a look at Word 2010, and at Word 5 (or at WordPerfect in that era) - even today, Word needs one of two different add-ins in order to do "proper outliner", sort of, or compare with XyWrite (from 1982 on - incredibly powerful and thus the standard in press rooms all over the world then (I used it for years then, would never have touched on Word: was about 200 times quicker than Word was on my slow and overpriced notebooks then, and was scriptable - in fact, scripting XyWrite macros was the very first scripting I did in my life!).

Have a look at Excel today (good ecosystem around btw, but that's not their fault): Compare with Lotus 1-2-3 then (yeah, there is Resolver One, today, but you better be a programmer in order to use it, let alone take advantage of its special capabilities), compare with Lotus Improv, a sensational concept being buried then for "external" reasons.

The same for DTP sw. (Corel Ventura for the poor, Framemaker for the rich, and then even PageMaker got a mark-up language, only its very first (Mac) didn't have one and was sub-par because of that!)

The same for PIM's - mine (and yes, it was object-oriented) had clones, tags and all (whilst most of today's don't), 15 years ago (and some other also had then).

So, what we see, is a near-standstill in sw "architecture" or "engineering" (both not meaning the development here, but APPLIED expertise, i.e. NEW RESULTS, new intelligence coming from the pc, and then, re "internal excellence", since memory chips ain't 2,000 bucks for 10 mega anymore and there being multiplied processing power, there's been total sloppiness with memory, processing power or any other resources, within programming), except on the integrational level (thanks to the web), but re integration, have a look back at that favorite of mine when it comes to defunct sw: Framework, pure genius (from 1983 (that makes it THIRTY YEARS NOW, kudos going to Robert Carr especially) - so don't prematurely assume MS had invented the Office Suite! ...

[schferk]

... And it goes worse.

Have a look here, "Are you going to wait for Windows 9?":

http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/i...?topic=32935.0

Interesting reads there, among others not so smart. One thing seems to be evident: MS is trying, by all means, to copy Apple's "Closed Circuit" concepts, and some fear that this might bring the de-professionalisation of the Windows system as a whole, most people needing pc's - or not, when there will be enough slates one day - for the web (incl. mails and films), and - Apple has proven this - are willing to get into closed systems, with DRM, applics only when approved by the hardware vendor, etc.

So people say, prices for professional equipment will skyrock. Well, I remember those times in which I paid a fortune for my rather weak notebooks. Then, "everybody" got a notebook, and that meant that even for prof. users (= people who need a notebooks, instead of just wanting to see films, etc. at home with them), notebook prices went down in a spectacular way.

And so, when the "everybody" and the prof. markets will again split up, it's perfectly possible that these augurs will be right, and slates and such, and the respective sw, will be accessible for anybody, whilst "real pc's", with "real sw", will again become a thing for few people willing to pay the price.

Example: Micrografx Flowcharter 3 cost me 1,000 bucks then, and was totally bug-ridden, incl. loss of data. Then, some day, that same FlCh3 got into the bargain counters, for some 15 bucks.

But back to near-standstill: The real problem with FlCh3 was that there wasn't any shortcuts for adding another specific symbol (meaning, you would have needed about 10 or 12 (min.) shortcuts in order to insert them into your map, instead of having to change, with the mouse, the needed symbol first, within a palette, and then inserting with the mouse, then again going to the palette, select another symbol there, put it into your map.... The same with connector lines: Everything was purly "manual", no shortcut for, e.g., connecting the current symbol you were inserting, with the symbol you had insert previously.

So, FlCh 2000, the last I got, nothing new here, re smooth working. And the current FlCh (yes, there is one, I'm not exclusively mentioning defunct sw here) doesn't seem to have such shortcuts either. They bloat their sw with any remote functionality, but that functionality that you need 3 times the min., isn't there, and will probably never get there - the same with competitors:

I know of NO such flowchart sw that facilitates this (neither does Visio), and in fact, one of the premier "advantages" of mm sw, whenever you can manage to do an mm map instead of a flowchart, is, that mm sw allows for very quick working, whilst doing similar maps with flowchart sw is extremely strenous, for its lack of easing your burden of multiple, endless repetition of meanial tasks.

Technically, there is no problem whatsoever: As well as MM allows for assigning 9 different, often-needed symbols (of your choice) to 9 different key combinations, any flowchart sw could allow for assigning symbols / stencils to key combinations - they simply don't do it, and then, you have the great "please" to try to write mouse (!!!) macros in order to automate this by having macroed mouse clicks in fly-up palettes and such - in a word, terrible.

And to say the truth, I've been wandering for some time now that kinook's persistent silence could be explained by the possible above-described future environment in which future sw will have to exist:

Mr. Everybody will get almost nothing since the prices will not allow for thorough development, hence "portability" from pc to Android or RT or even future slate "pc" 's, but strictly on that amateur level that will certainly not stress the basic user.

And as for "prof" sw, well, developers think that given the (low) numbers, people will have to buy anyway, so no real effort needed, and given again the low numbers, they presume that competing sw will not be developed, their possible developers deciding that given that the narrow market is taken, another such sw will not be able to succeed.

Adobe with its Photoshop- and Lightroom-type programs (but certainly not with Illustrator and such) are in-between: Not slate-fare, and not profs-only: Will be interesting how they will position these progs when there will be less and less desktops out there, in the housings of the general public.

In other words, an era is possibly nearing to come to its end: That era where the limits between everyman's sw and prof.'s sw have been largely blurred (i.e. by taking everyman in the (formerly, prof-only) boat. And now it's possibly an era where everyman's sw gets really dumb (Evercrap, anyone? It's been deliberately dismantled, deconstructed!), whilst prof sw is low numbers, expensive and another market (cf. crm or laywers' sw that both were never popular with your neighbour).

And now let's come back to UR. They regularly go to bits (as said, 19.50 for them for prof., 9.50 for them for standard): That clearly indicates they go "consumer market", or more precisely, they continuously try to get out of the consumer market the max that it'll bear for them, and on the other hand, they make NO effort whatsoever to make a break into any possible large prof. market (except for having made UR network-compliant (but without access rights, i.e. half-heartedly): no doc M, no crm made easy, let alone lawyer functionality or such. (And I don't see any advertizing directed to such prof. markets.)

This all means, UR HAS MADE A CHOICE: Offering some good functionality to everyman, and that's it, since everyman's market will be brought down, functionality-wise, no more sophistication needed - which was there as a product of that simili-parallelism between prof and everyman markets -

and which era seems to come to an end now (with rare exceptions (Adobe)).

And possible UR (and others) will have mused around such considerations - when the inherent "tragedy" here is that in the past, UR has realized so much of what'd be needed in order to make it a prof. program within a future dual market, that the additional effort in order to succeed there, instead of just getting some crumbs out of everyman's market where there's lots of progs much easier accessible to that everyman.

In other words, kinook seems to be lacking the guts to see that they could make UR prime time-ready for that secondary, the prof., market, with applying rather restricted effort and means to do so, and would not have to look out anymore for bitsdujour crumbs in the 10 to 20 dollar range, only attaining a remote position in that everyman market since it's not slick enough in order to spontaneously please.

About 12 years ago, Adobe bought Macromedia and buried FreeHand. I was outraged then, as were thousand of loyal FH customers. Looking at it from today (i.e. from Win8 desaster point in time), I brood if back then, there might not perhaps been at Adobe very smart people who foresaw that the seemingly so democratic, in very large portions "common market" for profs and everyman that existed in 2000, wasn't just a transitional period that would soon come to an end.

We seem to be leaving that passage soon (the first big step out being made by the iPad 3 years ago), and UR is stuck, by its lack of courage, within the consumer market where it could claim a very remote, minute position at best: from a consumer perspective, there are lots of "better" progs.

And that's the explanation for what we see.

kinook don't have a communication problem, as some disappointed ex-user stated in another forum this year, kinook have a perception problem: They rightly see the consumer market and know there's nothing to gain from that, for them, hence their unwillingness to further invest within their program.

But they don't see their possibilities within the prof. market: They only see UR isn't ready for that market, but this undenial fact seems to blur their perception that it would not take so much of an effort in order to get it ready for professional prime time - and that their position there could become a rather comfortable one.

This analysis could refocus kinook's percption, though, and that would mean very good stuff to come from them.

Or, when they don't consider it "the new element" that changes the lot, then some of us had better leave. (And yes, normally you'd had to pay for marketing consulting.)


EDIT:

Just for the joy of it:

"And again. And again. And again. And even after that the freshly marked up document will remain the same unstructured presentation soup bulk

as one finds in any braindead blonde's Word file."

from once-and-only poster "Brains" (not me) in the MI forum, a highly instructive post anyway, deserves to be read: Both parts are current probs for UR, too, so the link is not just for fun. He's bold as brass: "Data taxonomy and research capabilities: Mesozoic fossils" - but he delivers his points! 265 visits to this date, let's see if we cannot get them some more page clicks here:

http://forums.milenix.com/viewtopic....9f4dc756dfd1e9

[wordmuse]

So - I don't disagree with much of what you wrote. I write per what my relatively modest needs are and believe that things are better now than they were.

For instance, For most of just over 25 years I've been keeping a hand-printed journal since 1986. About two years ago, my hand began fatiguing faster, and I could not find pens with a wide enough barrel to help. (And at some point a too-wide barrel would prove equally problematic, yes?) I'd been reluctant to go to a keyboard since I connected with pen and paper much more intensely than with keyboard and screen.

But, alas, my hand just couldn't keep up with my mind. Not that I had anything profound to say - just that what I did have to say needed written expression.

A few years ago, Word would not have supported what I want to do. Now it does so easily. And there are third party programs that make transfer of images to and from Word child's play, e.g., Snagit. So my Word document can be almost (not quite) as visually rich as a hand-printed page with doodles, drawings, things overlapping, crossouts, etc.) It's not as much fun as it used to be, but it's sufficient and getting better as third party software makes some things that were difficult easy. Example: I just found a music keyboard for my Galaxy Tab. It records music ideas I have and I can then send them via Dropbox to my PC where I can then import the music into Harmony Assistant which will score what I played. I can then take a screenshot of the score and paste it into my journal. And I can annotate it such that Ultra Recall can find the relevant document when I need it.

All that would have been darned near impossible for me (not a techie) just a few short years ago.

Given the synergies that are out there, and again, assuming the free market doesn't get mucked up (I'll accept that we need not identify "by whom"), the incentive to keep on moving things toward richer digital environments will continue, and people like me will benefit from this.

Here's a digital environment that I would love to see come down to level where someone like me could afford it both in terms of price and ease of use.
http://fooyoh.com/nowwatch/watch/8Ez6UQ69iQ0

And I believe one day, environments like this will emerge for the everyone.

Hopefully, I'm not too optimistic.

- Bal