Why I Upgraded to UR 5.0

[tfjern]

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

[schferk]

tfjern, I've been detailing the utmost details for the power user of any IMS who's in need of not getting lost within his stuff comprising a 6-digit number of "items" / nodes - I didn't try to give unwanted advice to people who dream of a slick, light Apple thing in their sleep. On the other hand, if any power user has got advice for fellow power users, i.e. how to better manager giga of data, it'd be very welcomed by many readers, I presume, to have a detailed description of a viable alternative to what I discovered as a viable work space. But that would ask for some thinking about your approach, and for some redactional effort from yours, it's not done by a single line multiplying a single char.

Any sw product with a forum has its lapdogs pretending the sw is good enough as it currently is, but here we've got a high-standard product that obviously doesn't meet the sales expectations of its developer(s), hence its lack of serious development complained about many loyal and devoted users, so CONSTRUCTIVE criticism seems to be needed, especially including some marketing ideas, i.e. thoughts about new features able to multiply the market (and not only the market SHARE in the tiny traditional market) of the product in question, and that's what I did here.

Thus, people like you, tjfern, who are happy with the product as it is, should be deeply thankful for the efforts of others who try to assure that your beloved-as-it-is product will be there "tomorrow", by their ideas how to make it a) really oustand from the competition and b) a viable offering in a much bigger market that will create big revenue.

Sorry for being blunt, but your comment is destructive for this product, whilst my developments, even while dull reading, are highly constructive, and you should be smart enough to have seen this without me clarifying this for you.

[schferk]

(Editing timeframe closed.)

In order to clarify:

tjfern is certainly not one of those who pretend to be happy with the product as it is; on the contrary, in that other thread, "Just purchased 5.0"

http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthre...?t=5027&page=2

he complained about UR not being in real development since 2008. But have a look at that thread's end: Last post:

09-04-2012, 04:38 PM dasymington Registered User Join Date: 06-16-2005 Posts: 280
Disappointed too - Yes, I too am regretting paying for the upgrade as a gesture of loyalty to the product and to support future development.

And then, the button

"Closed"

- People regretting their positive gesture, and then nothing, and that's all. The psychology of closing a thread on such a bottom line is devastating.

The irony is blatant here. I openly described which way I LEFT UR - and hadn't got censored, though, which gave me the chance to see more and more clearly the strengths of UR, and so, it's me, the NON-UR user, who's relentlessly advocating two things here:

- kinook, get back to work, do your homework, and such

- kinook, you've got such a fine product that further investment in man time into your product would be well worth it, AND here's what you can do on top of that, in order to become decently paid for your efforts

Whilst paying users of today - speaking of "updaters to v. 5" here - are angry, but do NOT make these efforts (anymore) to MOTIVATE kinook to resume real programming on UR, other than, in part, paying 50 bucks.

At the same time, I try to CONVINCE kinook that there's a SENSE in developing the applic further, and I try to convey the possible advantages of doing so, for kinook AS for its user base.

Thus, it's not constructive at all to try to denigrate lengthy posts of mine that try to be detailed instructions of how to do things the best I'm able to imagine, by single lines that pretend what I write was rubbish, since even silence at my descriptions couldn't possibly highly motivate kinook to trust my assertions that it'd be beneficial for them to trust what I'm advocating, and then just negative reactions could only fortify their possible impression that at the end of the day, they better stand upon their current minimization of investment in time and efforts re UR.

I mean, never ever would I expect fellow posters to just follow what I suggest and recommend, but then, bring arguments, bring your own experience diverging from mine, get some LIFE into this forum, in order to bring some life into the product itself. Some posters here will remember the askSam forum: In the early years, there was development of the product, AND rather elaborate discussion of features, possible features, uses and possible uses (among more basic ones), mostly due to one single person that held the level as high-brow as it got; then these discussions faded out, together with slowing of development (to not say, it getting to a halt), and one day, the forum was gone.

Compare with UR. If you search for high-brow postings, and discussions with several such postings of such quality, there are all here - but they are many years old. So you might say, that's in synch with lack of development, but there's a major difference between UR and AS in this respect: AS' development came to a halt because the original developer got in high age, and the man who had his saying there - and who ended up buying the business - was / is a marketing guy, not a programmer if I'm not totally mistaken.

Here, it's the other way round: kinook are programmers, they're not in their old age, they're just fed up with the very limited commercial possibilities of outliner sw. So, when for AS any try to instigate a good discussion about improved value and bigger possibilities was devoid of sense, at least from the point in time the marketing guy had dismissed any developer left there, here, with kinook, any discussion would be heard by the developers themselves, and my wish (= illusion?) is that driven by good arguments, they would resume their duty.

Hence my quest to approve my ideas, or to oppose them, but with arguments. If your ideas are better than mine, I'd be glad to support them, but as far as somebody doesn't produce any better idea than are presented by others, it'd be constructive to not simply declare they are of no value.

Since what'd be left, then - and I'm describing the state of the forum as it has been for some years now - would be a synchronicity between sw that is dormant, and a forum that is dying, in that sense that it has been almost exclusively comprised of complaints, with nothing new. Remember, with AS, the next step was the disappearance of the forum. You all ask for commitment from kinook - what irony that instead of approval and encouragement, the one poster who shows engagement these times, from the user side of the "table", gets silence or "zzz" of "pfff" and such gestures meaning "of no interest" - that's the stance kinook displays vàv their product for the time being, and which makes you so angry.

The MI forum is a very dormant thing and always has been, except for the months I participated in it; AS' had its prime, long ago; UR had its prime, long ago - the indifference (for not saying, apathy) of today's UR forum contributors vàv possible enhancements not via "function", but via functionality (which is something completely different), not speaking of business developments, risks to make UR dormant forever, and sheer complaining will not change anything.

And, off-topic here, you see, hoisting, asked for by so many users at the time, and rightly so, is about "focus ON detail": bravo, absolutely necessary. What I have been asking for, and have been explaining, from an organizational level, is FOCUS ON CONTEXT. It seems I'm the only one to have become aware of the absolute necessity of such a "counterbalance" to hoisting, but then, that would be the "fault" of people not being willing to delve into my details (another blatant irony, yeah), it's not because what I'm speaking of was not of utmost importance.

And then, I speak of little enterprise features (ok, I buried these a little bit), which would indeed put UR into a new, and a hundredfold bigger, market. That's for you, folks, that I'm thinking about such things, so don't let me alone asking for them. A commercially viable UR would make your day, but your current complains-only position will not get you there.

This post is not intended as a charge but as an encouragement. Don't go the AS way, folks.

[wordmuse]

I purchased 5 and have no regrets other than that Kinook has not commented on the negativity with a real explanation.

Kinook has no obligation to comment; and we have our choices to make.

There are a few performance enhancements that came with 5 and they solved some of my 4x difficulties. Among them, I can finally view and edit Office docs directly within the 5 interface. That enables me to share Office docs with URP and TheBrain. They get created in TheBrain, I open the thought folder and drag it into URP.

The docs are searchable from both programs and I use the same docs in different ways depending on the app context.

I couldn't do this in 4x.

I am not happy that the road map has been ignored. There was lots of promise there. But I tend to be a take what you can get and consider if the dissatisfaction is a "first world problem" kind of guy.

On a scale of 1 - 10, I am at a 6 in terms of my pleasure with 5. Mileage obviously varies.

[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.