Fred, thank you for the kind words. I'm doing better, hope to return to work in January. Even with the insurance company (and I have a good insurer) paying disability monthly the last three years have brought me slightly over the brink of poverty (grin), and it has been tough. But things are looking up.
Re AskSam and my post to Bits - Yes, I was angry when I saw the developer's claim, thus my sharp reply. And I guess I was not mindful when checking other posts, or at least I would have caught the irony, and suspected a pen name with M. Finis, if not Thomas Short also.
Another "heritage" program which seems to have hit the rocks is InfoSelect. It is sad to see. And probably needless as with AskSam.
Thankfully Petko is alive, well, and at the helm of MyInfo steering a wise course.
Daly
MyInfo 5.50 Beta - Offtopic
-
Daly de Gagne
- Posts: 52
- Joined: Wed Feb 07, 2007 6:15 pm
Hi Daly and all,
3 years is a long time, and just 1 month out of ca. 36 is "nothing"... so you're much butter now, and I am glad to hear this.
No critic addressed to you: I posted as "Thomas Short", was not read (neither by you since you retook my arguments... but again, in "3 lines" you put it sharp, when my "30 lines" weren't read), then "I.E. Finis" posted after you (not "M. Finis" - "I.E. Finis" was Latin for "This is the end" - Remember "Last Tango in Paris"? Brando: "This is a new beginning!" - Schneider: "This is not a beginning, it's the end!" - And shortly afterwards, her bullet pearces his heart...
For the psychologist in you: Paul's a schizoïd (subform of borderliners) who cannot "love" but women who are given or make love / love with "everybody else" around, thus risk not to love him back, hence his Parisian wife (Rosa / Marcel, cf. also Rosa's mother = Paul's stepmother, to Paul: "We don't know anything about you.") and Jeanne (going to marry Tom)... but who for a moment forget that those women who "like" such a "setting", are not the ones you'll come too close emotionally, even in general (cf. Jeanne's treatment of Tom, her fiancé), and certainly not when they point a fire arm againt you chest...
But well, on bitsdujour, sophistication is lost to begin with, hence their lack of understanding of your "a 6 for a 9" where I, as a non-native speaker having captured it instantly.
InfoSelect is a good example of awful marketing, and awful development... and of awful misunderstanding from many sides. On outlinersoftware, there's another post saying they should have stuck to a minimal offer years ago, instead of developing it into bloatware... where in fact an information manager needs to have a well rounded-up set of features in order to be helpful in your workflow - just another simple database, and then having to do your writing in MS Word, as "everyone"?
In fact, IS was / is very expensive, and thus has to be absolutely stable and rather intuitive if not perfect yet, and it seems to be none, i.e. (= id est, that is) if you forgive some quirks to programs like MI and UR, up to now, you don't to IS costing about 3 times at much, and this is not even the stability problems (that MI and UR don't have).
This is to say, for high-paying customers, SI doesn't deliver as they think (rightly so) to be in their right to expect. (And not speaking of "absence of development" - well, sort of - during a long time.)
And again, with SI, the "How to export to EN" problem...
Yep, the cloud. BTW, those last days, I read a "news" old some months but news for me: Google had some cloud applics for text and spreadsheet and whatever; they had a component to load down and treat those files even off-line, on your comp, when not online then. Well, I read they did away with these components.
I hope very well that you can at least export your stuff into something on your comp, perhaps file by file, manually?
So you see, it's not the cloud in itself that is really interesting in the end, that's a transition phenomenon, just like iPad 1 is.
And then, how many people do REALLY work in groups and in synch on the same texts in the cloud, from a "normal" application with some cloud functionality? Nobody, I suppose. Those real work groups do it with special software allowing for more than just the stricts community working basics, and other users want to synch, yes, but all those work groups needing EN, well, that's wishful thinking, people would LIKE to share things that way, when in fact only 1 out of 100 even shares his macros - Prof. Manfred Kühn e.g.
I am aware then that marketing issues depend not on the real state of affairs, but on the shared common lies and common false perceptions of people... but again, EN has put millions of dollars into their offerings, and continue to do so.
So what? Running in a Tata behind a Ferrari... and believing to join it in the race?
My answer given in this forum is the only valuable answer for every information management software Tata, in a marketplace where Ferrari and Maserati rule (= The Brain is investing millions of dollars into their cloud offerings also, and they seem strong with the corporate market, PersonalBrain not being but their crippled offering for poor individuals like us).
Which is to say, not saying, SI was bloatware, and it failed because of it being that, but saying, if SI fails (which is not yet done, as for AS), it's because it bloats in the wrong direction, even when offering many things (but in a not intuitive way in my opinion), it does not offer the right things for those "little entrepreneurs" who are willing to pay 250 dollars or even a little bit more, but who want FUNCTIONAL software, and stable software, and intuitive software for their money... and for their 12 hours' work each day.
Neither AS nor SI ever delivered that, and worse, they did never did anything for reaching this goal.
UR does not do hard work to reach this goal neither (just one example, UR's editor is awful, seems to be the cheapest component on the market, perhaps just 100 dollar instead of 500 - so they allow for your employing your own, external editor - a good thing for special occasions, but awful for your daily work on a different 200 or more of items a day), nor has MI done this in the past.
Reading my posts thoroughly in this forum might be cumbersome, but it gives the answer to the survival of ANY such an information manager that doesn't have PB's and Surfulater's (Just do some math: it's developer states to have sold xxx times his very expensive editor, now multiply the number he gives with the dollars per unit - he's got millions and millions to invest in Surfulater, on top of the millions - let's hope - that latter program generates.) and EN's many millions.
Other slate comps will see the light soon, better ones, and then I'll be "the first one" to prone, MI should be on such a slate, perhaps on an Android very near Windows (and compatible in its file format???!!!), or for Windows itself, and being not too slow, not too short-lived in their battery power for a workday...
But then, an ELEGANT program, elegant in its appearance, and elegant in its functionality, must exist in order to be worthwile for adapting to a touch screen.
Every other program will lose out to EN from start on.
I'm positive about this, as said before. Take it or leave it. That's hard, but then, I'm not a beggar, I know what I am speaking about. When I abandoned my software, I did it because I knew I hadn't the manpower to realize what I wanted, and what I had understood it should have been there. It's not "I would like to have this, and that, and this other thing", it's "Creating software that has a chance against the millionnaires".
3 years is a long time, and just 1 month out of ca. 36 is "nothing"... so you're much butter now, and I am glad to hear this.
No critic addressed to you: I posted as "Thomas Short", was not read (neither by you since you retook my arguments... but again, in "3 lines" you put it sharp, when my "30 lines" weren't read), then "I.E. Finis" posted after you (not "M. Finis" - "I.E. Finis" was Latin for "This is the end" - Remember "Last Tango in Paris"? Brando: "This is a new beginning!" - Schneider: "This is not a beginning, it's the end!" - And shortly afterwards, her bullet pearces his heart...
For the psychologist in you: Paul's a schizoïd (subform of borderliners) who cannot "love" but women who are given or make love / love with "everybody else" around, thus risk not to love him back, hence his Parisian wife (Rosa / Marcel, cf. also Rosa's mother = Paul's stepmother, to Paul: "We don't know anything about you.") and Jeanne (going to marry Tom)... but who for a moment forget that those women who "like" such a "setting", are not the ones you'll come too close emotionally, even in general (cf. Jeanne's treatment of Tom, her fiancé), and certainly not when they point a fire arm againt you chest...
But well, on bitsdujour, sophistication is lost to begin with, hence their lack of understanding of your "a 6 for a 9" where I, as a non-native speaker having captured it instantly.
InfoSelect is a good example of awful marketing, and awful development... and of awful misunderstanding from many sides. On outlinersoftware, there's another post saying they should have stuck to a minimal offer years ago, instead of developing it into bloatware... where in fact an information manager needs to have a well rounded-up set of features in order to be helpful in your workflow - just another simple database, and then having to do your writing in MS Word, as "everyone"?
In fact, IS was / is very expensive, and thus has to be absolutely stable and rather intuitive if not perfect yet, and it seems to be none, i.e. (= id est, that is) if you forgive some quirks to programs like MI and UR, up to now, you don't to IS costing about 3 times at much, and this is not even the stability problems (that MI and UR don't have).
This is to say, for high-paying customers, SI doesn't deliver as they think (rightly so) to be in their right to expect. (And not speaking of "absence of development" - well, sort of - during a long time.)
And again, with SI, the "How to export to EN" problem...
Yep, the cloud. BTW, those last days, I read a "news" old some months but news for me: Google had some cloud applics for text and spreadsheet and whatever; they had a component to load down and treat those files even off-line, on your comp, when not online then. Well, I read they did away with these components.
I hope very well that you can at least export your stuff into something on your comp, perhaps file by file, manually?
So you see, it's not the cloud in itself that is really interesting in the end, that's a transition phenomenon, just like iPad 1 is.
And then, how many people do REALLY work in groups and in synch on the same texts in the cloud, from a "normal" application with some cloud functionality? Nobody, I suppose. Those real work groups do it with special software allowing for more than just the stricts community working basics, and other users want to synch, yes, but all those work groups needing EN, well, that's wishful thinking, people would LIKE to share things that way, when in fact only 1 out of 100 even shares his macros - Prof. Manfred Kühn e.g.
I am aware then that marketing issues depend not on the real state of affairs, but on the shared common lies and common false perceptions of people... but again, EN has put millions of dollars into their offerings, and continue to do so.
So what? Running in a Tata behind a Ferrari... and believing to join it in the race?
My answer given in this forum is the only valuable answer for every information management software Tata, in a marketplace where Ferrari and Maserati rule (= The Brain is investing millions of dollars into their cloud offerings also, and they seem strong with the corporate market, PersonalBrain not being but their crippled offering for poor individuals like us).
Which is to say, not saying, SI was bloatware, and it failed because of it being that, but saying, if SI fails (which is not yet done, as for AS), it's because it bloats in the wrong direction, even when offering many things (but in a not intuitive way in my opinion), it does not offer the right things for those "little entrepreneurs" who are willing to pay 250 dollars or even a little bit more, but who want FUNCTIONAL software, and stable software, and intuitive software for their money... and for their 12 hours' work each day.
Neither AS nor SI ever delivered that, and worse, they did never did anything for reaching this goal.
UR does not do hard work to reach this goal neither (just one example, UR's editor is awful, seems to be the cheapest component on the market, perhaps just 100 dollar instead of 500 - so they allow for your employing your own, external editor - a good thing for special occasions, but awful for your daily work on a different 200 or more of items a day), nor has MI done this in the past.
Reading my posts thoroughly in this forum might be cumbersome, but it gives the answer to the survival of ANY such an information manager that doesn't have PB's and Surfulater's (Just do some math: it's developer states to have sold xxx times his very expensive editor, now multiply the number he gives with the dollars per unit - he's got millions and millions to invest in Surfulater, on top of the millions - let's hope - that latter program generates.) and EN's many millions.
Other slate comps will see the light soon, better ones, and then I'll be "the first one" to prone, MI should be on such a slate, perhaps on an Android very near Windows (and compatible in its file format???!!!), or for Windows itself, and being not too slow, not too short-lived in their battery power for a workday...
But then, an ELEGANT program, elegant in its appearance, and elegant in its functionality, must exist in order to be worthwile for adapting to a touch screen.
Every other program will lose out to EN from start on.
I'm positive about this, as said before. Take it or leave it. That's hard, but then, I'm not a beggar, I know what I am speaking about. When I abandoned my software, I did it because I knew I hadn't the manpower to realize what I wanted, and what I had understood it should have been there. It's not "I would like to have this, and that, and this other thing", it's "Creating software that has a chance against the millionnaires".
-
Daly de Gagne
- Posts: 52
- Joined: Wed Feb 07, 2007 6:15 pm
Fred just a quick reply in a light vein after a first glance: my Latin is rusty, but I knew the meaning of finis. Since you were using it as a name and are male, I shifted at least a little into the realm of romance languages, and the M was for the honorific monsieur. Though I have a French name I know just school French, which is also rusty!
Cheers,
Daly
Cheers,
Daly
-
Daly de Gagne
- Posts: 52
- Joined: Wed Feb 07, 2007 6:15 pm
Hey Fred, one more quick response, re Surfulater.
Neville, its developer is always responsive. I use both Surfulater and Evernote for clipping, primarily web clipping. In many ways I prefer Surfulater, and would use it if it much more if it had cloud synch.
I have followed Neville over the years, and he seems to have a roadmap and an appreciation for what information consumers need and want. He has shared that roadmap recently in Outlinersoftware.com - I would say that Petko and Neville are the two most responsive developers currently at work.
Incidentally, I found I have unintentionally maligned EN, having said it was unable to search for items sharing 2 or more tags in common - it does do this, but unfortunately didn't highlight this feature; I learned of it when someone pointed me toward the help file (I do not read help files well, an aversion going back to frustrations with anything the least bit technical, a childhood thing).
I find MyInfo has the easier columns to work with (cf UltraRecall), but wish I could get more than one column view - in other words, to have more than one set of columns for a specific topic - a set which would be appropriate for some of the items in the tree, and another set for other items. This would enable me to combine information in a specific topic rather than having it in two topics because I need a unique column set for each.
I cannot remember for sure, but I think I was able to do this with ADM, which at one point was poised to be the ultimate outliner/info manager/web clipper - but for some reason (money perhaps) its developer withdrew, without any explanation, and it was over. I think there are ideas from ADM, such as different column views, which are relevant to MI today.
Daly
Neville, its developer is always responsive. I use both Surfulater and Evernote for clipping, primarily web clipping. In many ways I prefer Surfulater, and would use it if it much more if it had cloud synch.
I have followed Neville over the years, and he seems to have a roadmap and an appreciation for what information consumers need and want. He has shared that roadmap recently in Outlinersoftware.com - I would say that Petko and Neville are the two most responsive developers currently at work.
Incidentally, I found I have unintentionally maligned EN, having said it was unable to search for items sharing 2 or more tags in common - it does do this, but unfortunately didn't highlight this feature; I learned of it when someone pointed me toward the help file (I do not read help files well, an aversion going back to frustrations with anything the least bit technical, a childhood thing).
I find MyInfo has the easier columns to work with (cf UltraRecall), but wish I could get more than one column view - in other words, to have more than one set of columns for a specific topic - a set which would be appropriate for some of the items in the tree, and another set for other items. This would enable me to combine information in a specific topic rather than having it in two topics because I need a unique column set for each.
I cannot remember for sure, but I think I was able to do this with ADM, which at one point was poised to be the ultimate outliner/info manager/web clipper - but for some reason (money perhaps) its developer withdrew, without any explanation, and it was over. I think there are ideas from ADM, such as different column views, which are relevant to MI today.
Daly
Hi Daly,
As is my English, but posting regularly in the www helps, at least for writing (and some sort of thinking even)... (And again at the end...)
Hi Everyone,
I would like to clarify that my above "take it or leave it" is NOT to be seen as my words being evangelical, but if I seem bitter here and there, it's for the absence of real discussion, here and in other forums. That is to say, to survive in a world getting more and more ferocious for almost everybody, in order to survive you need a "vision", or just call it a smart positioning of your product on the market.
A little here and a little there isn't sufficient anymore, and the prominent places are taken, by the big players. Thus, "minor" players (= by their actual stamina) must see that they find an appeal that goes ways beyond their select market penetration - AS and IS being perfect examples of how to cut a (once) not-even-so-select but rather comfortable market penetration in pieces, on purpose!
And thus, what every such program needs today, is an "integral philosophy", a sort of "rounded-up image", what do you call it in English, a "perfect shape"? coherent gestalt? You see what I mean.
And in order to build up such a gestalt, instead of a bunch of dispersed features clutter, you normally would use a sort of "learning by thinking in common", a sort of "this is good, but here's even better", and of "yeah, but did you bear in mind that...", and of "oh, I overlooked this, but this gave me the idea to even betters yours, here's how", etc., etc. In this way, a team - and there are some quite smart people around here and on other forums -
could shape in common the real thing.
Whereas in practice, I'm quite monologuing, and past objections were poor, weren't aimed at topping my ideas, nor at make me rethinking on them, but just at discarding them in an all-embracing, summery way... and have stopped since long altogether.
It's in this state of affairs that I say, take it or leave it when no integrative efforts of others are present: In the absence of something better, my "philosophy" displayed here is the best we've got, when in fact I had thought to create a real discussion going top-down and from the minor details up to top again.
Thus, what I'd like to express is not that I am right in my proposals, down to the last details, nor when designing the global sketches; what I want to say is, in the absence of something better, i.e. a group creation, we are well advised to do with we've got, my monologues, since they are 100 p.c. better than wishful thinking that with cluttering features together from which some will appeal to some, and others to other people, MI will become a "great" program, and the non-great programs seem to be doomed in the medium term.
And BTW, let's put it frankly, when hoping to get something else, better, will not produce this other thing, it's always true that working together on this one doesn't produce any "visible" financial benefit to us, and this is a major aspect in the absence of real participation in such a brainstorming...
whereas real work groups are (either political, religious, or) paid for this... but those have their specialised software.
Thus, all those people out there, crying out for cloud applics for "workgrouping", wish in their heart that non-commercial work-groups (= hence the inability for them to pay for specialised, high-brow softwares for this) might succeed, where in fact, when given the occasion to join one, they defect.
That's the truth, folks, and that explains my bitterness shining through here and there, but be assured, if Petko or anyone wants more details, explainations or better solutions to this or that, I'd be GLAD to rethink what I've proned in my about 120 posts here up to now.
The gospel is to be taken as such; my thoughts on information management for independents and little businesses are subject to discussion, anytime. But let's be specific. Let's work hard. Let's avoid another "nightmare", as AS's Wade splendidly put it.
And again, Hi Daly,
UR cannot rely on its columns, UR will have them soon.
I'm not out to (try unsuccessfully to) foul-mouth Neville, it's just that he must got plenty of money, so that he could produce everything he would like to realize... but then, again he was on sale on bitsdujour some weeks ago; again, I tried out Surfulater; again, I could not do anything with it; again, I thought, well, if really I needed to save wep pages, I'd use WebResearch for it, but not this thing there I really hate in its actual state; seems to be sort of a 3-panes outliner, when in fact I would be glad to have a 3-panes outliner, the first pane being the projects, the second one holding together hundreds of items, and the third one containing the item contents - but if I understand it well, Surf is one of those programs who awkwardly try to put a max of items in the third pane, making the saving of the first pane. In short, the panes philosophy is terrible, in my opinion, with endless clutter in the pane in which I'd expect the contents, and with way too much screen real estate for the first pane then since "everything" is in the second, which by this replaces the "normal-first" one.
There is another, even more ugly 3-pane outliner created by a (prominent) German law professor, Fritjof Haft, google for "haft outliner" - such programs are terrible (and will never really succeed as long as they stuck with their weird philosophy).
IMPORTANT
BTW, ANY outliner needs two more panes, for projects, and for recently visited items... and perhaps even for recently visited trees / tabs. Those tabs could easily replace, by toggle, the search pane there, on the right side of the screen, the 3 panes on top of the others: projects, trees, items, in various lengths as the user wants them to have, that's how real work goes, not in fervently searching an invisible "recently visited items" list, triggering the same command 5, 8, 12 times, as a blind man, each time needing to check first, was this the tree / item I wanted to go back to?!
NOW FOR ADM
Since I cannot get this mythological program, I wondered if it is legal (in US, in EU) to use a formerly "illegal" copy since it's abandonware?! For scientific use perhaps? For re-engineering purposes? Or has the owner of a program the right to bury it altogether? For how long then? For 15 years perhaps, since even patents fall into public domain after 15 years?
ADM-that-cannot-be-found-anywhere, what is it good for? Perhaps, some formerly illegal copies of its manual should be allowed to consult in the web? Parents don't have the right to bury their children... but developers having got this right with respect to their software... even if it's the most ingenious and brilliant software of its kind?!
RE different sets of columns for sub-topics.
Since UR is (for the time being) the all-your-stuff-in-one-tree philosophy (i.e. perhaps 3 or 4 trees in real for all your things, as opposed to my 200-plus MI trees, and I'm continuing to cut down...), perhaps they will get it, but again (we spoke about this feature), in my opinion, it would clutter even more, when in fact the smart combination of sub-groups of info, in various ways, seems to be the ONLY way to resolve information management problems one and for all - UR might be great for somebody's stuff of 1 GB... but how to scale it for 100 or 1,000 people?!
And let's put it bluntly: I FEAR THIS UR's upcoming abilities since MI is not so strong in them as I wish it to be!
As said above, UR is "better" in many things than MI is; so MI must differenciate itself from the all-in-one-file philosophy of UR, in order to avoid direct comparison, in which it would perhaps lose, in the opinion of many people - and in fact, that's fact even today, cf. UR forum participants' numbers and MI's ones.
But as explained by me in this forum, MI's philosphy - if it is a philosophy, a "vision", and if not, let's make it one! - IS SCALABLE... UR's is not.
This is the core sentence of all my 120 postings here. MI must show excellence for people who fraction their info, then combine it in every which way; it's its only way to success, as its competitors do not have engaged in this way yet... at least, they don't show any sign to be engaged in scalable solutions where every info item is there at any place you want it... and in a synched state.
Hence the absolute need for synched loading of many different topics = MI files, AND of synching even items of other topics, as explained before.
As MI, UR has nothing for those needs, as have all competitors I know (= not even Kühn's cherished ConnectedText), so this could be MI's royal way to success: It would be the first and premier software where lawyers and other people with money to spend, but with needs to be fulfilled before they'll spend anything on such a program, can separate their (1,000 or more) cases into different files AND have commun info handy with every such file - such a system is scaleable into whatever you want.
Now compare with UR - theoretically, they could all this do, as MI could do it! But they are in their big file containing it all state of mind...
And the same with the big contenders. Everything I said here with respect to MI's potential success, they could adopt, but at this time, nobody seems willing to do the real work this would imply.
That's Petko's chance, and not giving way to wishes like "I would like to do this with it" and somebody elses, "Could I pay some dollars in order for you to realize my wishes first?" NO PUN INTENDED, in no direction.
But MI or any other software of its kinds needs a VISION to succeed.
BTW, Scriv has one, a tremendous one... and as we all know, they're Windows now...
And there's always InfoQube, in some sort of a years-long waiting stage...
EN has the mass appeal, I gave a vision for a more select contender.
But appeal to people "for me it's sufficient", be them otherwise erudite or not, is a too select one as a vision in order to survive among the wings of this new world's errant sharks.
As is my English, but posting regularly in the www helps, at least for writing (and some sort of thinking even)... (And again at the end...)
Hi Everyone,
I would like to clarify that my above "take it or leave it" is NOT to be seen as my words being evangelical, but if I seem bitter here and there, it's for the absence of real discussion, here and in other forums. That is to say, to survive in a world getting more and more ferocious for almost everybody, in order to survive you need a "vision", or just call it a smart positioning of your product on the market.
A little here and a little there isn't sufficient anymore, and the prominent places are taken, by the big players. Thus, "minor" players (= by their actual stamina) must see that they find an appeal that goes ways beyond their select market penetration - AS and IS being perfect examples of how to cut a (once) not-even-so-select but rather comfortable market penetration in pieces, on purpose!
And thus, what every such program needs today, is an "integral philosophy", a sort of "rounded-up image", what do you call it in English, a "perfect shape"? coherent gestalt? You see what I mean.
And in order to build up such a gestalt, instead of a bunch of dispersed features clutter, you normally would use a sort of "learning by thinking in common", a sort of "this is good, but here's even better", and of "yeah, but did you bear in mind that...", and of "oh, I overlooked this, but this gave me the idea to even betters yours, here's how", etc., etc. In this way, a team - and there are some quite smart people around here and on other forums -
could shape in common the real thing.
Whereas in practice, I'm quite monologuing, and past objections were poor, weren't aimed at topping my ideas, nor at make me rethinking on them, but just at discarding them in an all-embracing, summery way... and have stopped since long altogether.
It's in this state of affairs that I say, take it or leave it when no integrative efforts of others are present: In the absence of something better, my "philosophy" displayed here is the best we've got, when in fact I had thought to create a real discussion going top-down and from the minor details up to top again.
Thus, what I'd like to express is not that I am right in my proposals, down to the last details, nor when designing the global sketches; what I want to say is, in the absence of something better, i.e. a group creation, we are well advised to do with we've got, my monologues, since they are 100 p.c. better than wishful thinking that with cluttering features together from which some will appeal to some, and others to other people, MI will become a "great" program, and the non-great programs seem to be doomed in the medium term.
And BTW, let's put it frankly, when hoping to get something else, better, will not produce this other thing, it's always true that working together on this one doesn't produce any "visible" financial benefit to us, and this is a major aspect in the absence of real participation in such a brainstorming...
whereas real work groups are (either political, religious, or) paid for this... but those have their specialised software.
Thus, all those people out there, crying out for cloud applics for "workgrouping", wish in their heart that non-commercial work-groups (= hence the inability for them to pay for specialised, high-brow softwares for this) might succeed, where in fact, when given the occasion to join one, they defect.
That's the truth, folks, and that explains my bitterness shining through here and there, but be assured, if Petko or anyone wants more details, explainations or better solutions to this or that, I'd be GLAD to rethink what I've proned in my about 120 posts here up to now.
The gospel is to be taken as such; my thoughts on information management for independents and little businesses are subject to discussion, anytime. But let's be specific. Let's work hard. Let's avoid another "nightmare", as AS's Wade splendidly put it.
And again, Hi Daly,
UR cannot rely on its columns, UR will have them soon.
I'm not out to (try unsuccessfully to) foul-mouth Neville, it's just that he must got plenty of money, so that he could produce everything he would like to realize... but then, again he was on sale on bitsdujour some weeks ago; again, I tried out Surfulater; again, I could not do anything with it; again, I thought, well, if really I needed to save wep pages, I'd use WebResearch for it, but not this thing there I really hate in its actual state; seems to be sort of a 3-panes outliner, when in fact I would be glad to have a 3-panes outliner, the first pane being the projects, the second one holding together hundreds of items, and the third one containing the item contents - but if I understand it well, Surf is one of those programs who awkwardly try to put a max of items in the third pane, making the saving of the first pane. In short, the panes philosophy is terrible, in my opinion, with endless clutter in the pane in which I'd expect the contents, and with way too much screen real estate for the first pane then since "everything" is in the second, which by this replaces the "normal-first" one.
There is another, even more ugly 3-pane outliner created by a (prominent) German law professor, Fritjof Haft, google for "haft outliner" - such programs are terrible (and will never really succeed as long as they stuck with their weird philosophy).
IMPORTANT
BTW, ANY outliner needs two more panes, for projects, and for recently visited items... and perhaps even for recently visited trees / tabs. Those tabs could easily replace, by toggle, the search pane there, on the right side of the screen, the 3 panes on top of the others: projects, trees, items, in various lengths as the user wants them to have, that's how real work goes, not in fervently searching an invisible "recently visited items" list, triggering the same command 5, 8, 12 times, as a blind man, each time needing to check first, was this the tree / item I wanted to go back to?!
NOW FOR ADM
Since I cannot get this mythological program, I wondered if it is legal (in US, in EU) to use a formerly "illegal" copy since it's abandonware?! For scientific use perhaps? For re-engineering purposes? Or has the owner of a program the right to bury it altogether? For how long then? For 15 years perhaps, since even patents fall into public domain after 15 years?
ADM-that-cannot-be-found-anywhere, what is it good for? Perhaps, some formerly illegal copies of its manual should be allowed to consult in the web? Parents don't have the right to bury their children... but developers having got this right with respect to their software... even if it's the most ingenious and brilliant software of its kind?!
RE different sets of columns for sub-topics.
Since UR is (for the time being) the all-your-stuff-in-one-tree philosophy (i.e. perhaps 3 or 4 trees in real for all your things, as opposed to my 200-plus MI trees, and I'm continuing to cut down...), perhaps they will get it, but again (we spoke about this feature), in my opinion, it would clutter even more, when in fact the smart combination of sub-groups of info, in various ways, seems to be the ONLY way to resolve information management problems one and for all - UR might be great for somebody's stuff of 1 GB... but how to scale it for 100 or 1,000 people?!
And let's put it bluntly: I FEAR THIS UR's upcoming abilities since MI is not so strong in them as I wish it to be!
As said above, UR is "better" in many things than MI is; so MI must differenciate itself from the all-in-one-file philosophy of UR, in order to avoid direct comparison, in which it would perhaps lose, in the opinion of many people - and in fact, that's fact even today, cf. UR forum participants' numbers and MI's ones.
But as explained by me in this forum, MI's philosphy - if it is a philosophy, a "vision", and if not, let's make it one! - IS SCALABLE... UR's is not.
This is the core sentence of all my 120 postings here. MI must show excellence for people who fraction their info, then combine it in every which way; it's its only way to success, as its competitors do not have engaged in this way yet... at least, they don't show any sign to be engaged in scalable solutions where every info item is there at any place you want it... and in a synched state.
Hence the absolute need for synched loading of many different topics = MI files, AND of synching even items of other topics, as explained before.
As MI, UR has nothing for those needs, as have all competitors I know (= not even Kühn's cherished ConnectedText), so this could be MI's royal way to success: It would be the first and premier software where lawyers and other people with money to spend, but with needs to be fulfilled before they'll spend anything on such a program, can separate their (1,000 or more) cases into different files AND have commun info handy with every such file - such a system is scaleable into whatever you want.
Now compare with UR - theoretically, they could all this do, as MI could do it! But they are in their big file containing it all state of mind...
And the same with the big contenders. Everything I said here with respect to MI's potential success, they could adopt, but at this time, nobody seems willing to do the real work this would imply.
That's Petko's chance, and not giving way to wishes like "I would like to do this with it" and somebody elses, "Could I pay some dollars in order for you to realize my wishes first?" NO PUN INTENDED, in no direction.
But MI or any other software of its kinds needs a VISION to succeed.
BTW, Scriv has one, a tremendous one... and as we all know, they're Windows now...
And there's always InfoQube, in some sort of a years-long waiting stage...
EN has the mass appeal, I gave a vision for a more select contender.
But appeal to people "for me it's sufficient", be them otherwise erudite or not, is a too select one as a vision in order to survive among the wings of this new world's errant sharks.
MyInfo will have its vision and the plans for MyInfo 6 are great, but let's first get 5.50 out of the door..