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Old 11-15-2012, 12:03 PM
schferk schferk is online now
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I

Yes, quant, there's a real, and double problem here.

I am aware that it must appear really lame (all the more so coming from me) when I say (above), make it complementary, so allow for my trying to distinguish problems.

a)

It seems to me that organizational use of a "mind-map" does interfere with its "idea-triggering" use, i.e. you use it as a file / item launcher, and in your mind, this function shadows your wanting the map to trigger new ideas.

But I also think problem b) is at least partly responsible for this, and I think, even with problem b) not being resolved, just SOME external linking maps ("external" viewed from those maps, i.e. not including links to detailed "children" / "siblings" maps within your maps collection) in the map might be acceptable, let's say 30 or 40 items in your map, with 3 or 4 items as links.

That being said, I suppose that even with problem b) solved, big attention must be paid to not multiply links then.

b)

As stated in my first post here, some synching would be more than welcome, AND it would be need to be both-ways:

1. (partial = a particular sub-tree) tree export from UR (or another outliner) to MM (or another "mind-mapping applic) - but with UR and MM, this is possible, so let's stay with these for the moment -, in order to freely think about those things.

This is possible, and then you re-arrange, and add, perhaps partially delete, perhaps do some move into siblings maps (!)...

All these changes must then be synched manually, which is strictly impossible. It's a hellova hell of work, and it'll produce lotsa mistakes, be it yourself or being a your possible secretary who's supposed to to this. The only way to do it with not TOO many error-producing is to not work work within MM but to work on MM print-outs, then your sec doing the sync work not between MM and UR but within UR, from the MM print-outs.

The problem is, synching back from MM to UR will overwrite the original UR items with another tree, since there is no functionality whatsoever to identify the unique identifiers of the UR items (which are there!), to dock them onto the according MM items, and then, by re-import, to identify these, and new ones, in order to re-arrange and complement the UR tree,

all this together with the respective contents, for one...

2. But we must be aware that the problem arises even if we leave contents out!

Which means, in order to simplify things a little bit, the developers of both coupled programs could decide to not have exported, then re-imported the notes for the nodes (in any case or better, by option), but simply to process the tree.

This will shuffle around much less text and other content, but the programming difficulty will be exactly as it will be in alternative 1.

3. You begin your work within MM, then export "down" to UR. This is perfectly possible, but rather useless, since, as said for 1. and 2., any reasonable way to go back to the "musing stage" will be impossible, so at which point would be the point in your workflow where you deliberately interdict yourself further "musing within the map" but make the decision, "from further on, I'll limit myself to only think about it within UR".

Or, of course, you say to yourself, "from this point on, I'll try to synch back manually then (to UR, after exporting the tree "up" to MM), since now, changes / additions / etc. will be rather sparse".

Technically, that's possible and even maybe viable, but then, think a sec: Your attention that not much new will come your way, and your knowing what a fuss it will be to re-arrange the UR tree then, after any such deletion, rename, move and add-on, all by hand, will seriously hamper any further idea-finding within the MM map, so at at this time, have it complementary, as lame as this advice my appear.

And, if I dare say this, since quant convenes with my experience, be sure my advice here is good advice.

II

Which implies, there SHOULD be a technical solution, from UR or such and MM or such, where two developer together create a USP for BOTH of them! (Or, as with CT, an in-built graphical representation of your data within your IMS, but I don't think that would be really the best solution: Too much work for UR or any other, and yet not enough functionality within the "mind-map" part of the program.

On the other hand, there's cost. At this time, the price of UR is about 100 bucks, the price of MM, VM and such is 250 or 300 bucks or more, so the cost of the "add-on" (= some hundreds of items within your maps, tens of thousand of items within your IMS) and your main system is far from being within equilibrium; UR in its current state isn't worth 300 bucks or more, etc., etc., etc.

Which all means UR should go corporate, have commercial functionality in order replace 1-5 seat commercial sw, and should go to be optimized within this range of use, THEN (only) apply a price of some 250, 300 bucks per seat, and of course do a student version for 100 bucks (remember, all this is NOT identical to my once speaking of 1,000 bucks sw).

I'm NOT aggressing current UR users here, by asking for tripling the price of the current sw, but within UR's and its competitors' current price range (cf. TheBrain for a start...), NOBODY will EVER get you that splendid sw we're finally asking for, AND that finally we'd be willing to pay for, as soon as our demands are met.

Hence this "slow death" of UR we're all complaining about, and which must not necessarily happen.

As for askSam, yes, the price was 300 bucks, AND it was a tremendous good thing for tasks like qualitative anaylisis, etc., BUT: Serious "little businesses" was impossible with AS, since it was buggy like hell, incl. data loss, which is not the case with UR, so most little businesses were afraid to use it for this simple reason yet, AND AS hadn't any functionality in order to be used for tax-compliant main use of your things going out (not speaking of things coming in), so its only possible use was as additional sw besides your main doc processing sw - unfortunately, this is the same with current UR, and in SPITE of UR's much better mail handling than AS' mail handling - and then, UR's outgoing mail handling isn't that sophisticated if I dare say.

So, I'm speaking of elaborate functionality, but also of another business model. I think that in the threads I've been writing in lately here, I succeede in explaining a little why NOT ONE of these applics succeed in finding a viable business model by offering just IM only - they are simply not of much enough use for any little business, all the less so since all of these must look elsewhere for their main needs - for their "just IM", then, they use all sorts of offerings, incl., for some of them, some of those dozens of outliners that altogether share that tiny market - and, let's put it bluntly, for most of them, UR might not be their most natural choice since the "first ten minutes accessibility" of the UR approach is rather sub-par.

There's some interest in the observation of TheBrain since their main business - above the overpriced offering for indiduals - is said to be corporate use (with sophisticated sw that is not identical at all to the crippled sw for individuals), while NOT offering document processing if I'm well informed. So it seems there might be an IM market for rather big corporations, that is not identical with their "everyday-for-everybody" sw needs, but where perhaps, in a corporate of 1,000, some 30 people within the strategy department get a 50,000 bucks sw with 30 seats, in order to do what we do with UR, be it TB or something else.

But it's clear as day that current outliners today will remain exotic - or even die, for lack of cloud functionality -, or become really useful for some-seats-businesses. And NONE of them IS, at this time. But then, kinook is one of the strongest offerings, and one of the strongest developers, so they could do much better than they do now, as soon as they got the motivation to do so.

Or anybody else might step in and do it from scratch...

Or from what they are doing now - again, I mention CRM and case management / lawyers' sw here. Up to now, they are all just addressing their respective traditional markets, they did not yet see that broad tiny-biz market yet.

But if ever something comes that we can be pleased with, it'll be such tiny-biz sw, from UR or from anywhere else.

The lack of developmentt in traditional outliners and such is heartbreaking, all the more so since, from my own, rather complete, programming experience back how MUCH kinook COULD have done these last year to make their sw outstanding in every respect, when in fact there is almost "nothing" - implementing new features into existing sw does NOT asks for "man years", or the other way round, with just ONE "man year" of kinook quality, ALL COULD HAVE BEEN ALREADY THERE.

I refrain from saying, "shame on you, kinook", but I dare to say that it's an incredible pity as it is today.
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