UR's weakest link

[janrif]

I think the weakest linki in Ultra Recall is the difficulty getting data into the program -- this includes beta 3. And I don't see this addressed in the roadmap.

Here's what I mean. If a user is clipping data from program x, user then has to call UR & paste it in a logical place. Failing that & using the automated clipping mechanism, the data could end up anywhere & the user then has to go into UR to move it to an appropriate place in the outline or in a different UR DB.

Several programs including Zoot, Ariadne, ADM & others have designed methods whereby the user clips, goes to the systray or some kind of floating icon & is able to select the db &/or the topic in which to drop the data.

IMO the easiest, most sophisticated of these mehtods is in ADM (can't vouch for current developement) followed immediately by Zoot which is currently being transitioned from 16 to 32 bit.

Given UR's sophistication in other areas, I hope the developers address this weak link.

[$bill]

I have just spent the past several months consolidating my collected stuff into UR from Ecco, ADM, Zoot, Paradox, Access, Outlook, Excel, Quattro, Palm as well as saved mht, html, text, and word files. I would report just the opposite- getting information into (and out of) is one of UR’s great strengths – I found getting information into UR reasonably streamlined and remarkably glitch free!!

That said...I acknowledge that you are offering a good suggestion regarding refinement of the clipping mechanism. Once I was quite fond of the zooter and the collector (ADM) and your post caused me to reflect on why I haven’t really missed them upon moving to UR. I do make extensive use of the automated clipping mechanisms (Launchy in Firefox, toolbar in Outlook & IE, right-click send to, Ctl+c/Win+v) and avoid what you refer to as “the data could end up anywhere” by leaving the destination as the Import Folder (default); however I do occasionally send it to the wrong data file and would welcome a mechanism to set a default location/database for importing data by these methods. Now instead of dragging to the collector in ADM, I drag to the UR icon, pause- UR comes to the fore, and I drop into the appropriate place in UR. For my work flow, this has worked even better than the collector.

[janrif]

Originally posted by $bill
I have just spent the past several months consolidating my collected stuff into UR from Ecco, ADM, Zoot, Paradox, Access, Outlook, Excel, Quattro, Palm as well as saved mht, html, text, and word files. I would report just the opposite- getting information into (and out of) is one of UR’s great strengths – I found getting information into UR reasonably streamlined and remarkably glitch free!!

Good to know & I'm jealous that you've gotten all that data together under one roof.

If you wouldn't mind expanding this a little bit, exactly how did you get your zoot, ecco & ADM items with their meta data into UR? Having this information would be extremely useful to me.

However, this is very different from what I was actually referring to which you have covered in your second graph.

Originally posted by $bill
That said...I acknowledge that you are offering a good suggestion regarding refinement of the clipping mechanism. Once I was quite fond of the zooter and the collector (ADM) and your post caused me to reflect on why I haven’t really missed them upon moving to UR. I do make extensive use of the automated clipping mechanisms (Launchy in Firefox, toolbar in Outlook & IE, right-click send to, Ctl+c/Win+v) and avoid what you refer to as “the data could end up anywhere” by leaving the destination as the Import Folder (default); however I do occasionally send it to the wrong data file and would welcome a mechanism to set a default location/database for importing data by these methods. Now instead of dragging to the collector in ADM, I drag to the UR icon, pause- UR comes to the fore, and I drop into the appropriate place in UR. For my work flow, this has worked even better than the collector.

No doubt you are more organized than I am but I leave my cursor wherever & as a consequence my data ends up wherever unless I wait for the program to come to the foreground, when I then I have to find the "right" topic to dump whatever it is into it's proper place.

Or, conversely, I can dump everything into the Import folder but then I have to go into UR & drag/drop those items into some logical place as the import area is only designed as a holding bin (I think).

Zoot allowed for some automation so items imported into zoot were automatically moved to the proper topic, db etc via synonyms & actions.

ADM, OTOH, allows the user to create quick links which show up as destimations for clipped matieral. All data is sent in the background so I don't have to leave one program, wait for the other one to come up, find the right place & dump it.

Remember, not all of us use outlook or IE. In fact I don't use Outlook & I use Firefox.

If UR is going to be tightly interwoven with Outlook then I may have to rethink my approach to the software.

While UR is a very interesting program, very clever & pretty elegant the way it handle attributes, forms & panes, I'd rather have a faster way to insert data than some of the other bells & whistles.

ADM's GUI is primitive by comparison but it works. I hope that UR developers consider the transport of daily data into UR worthy of their attention & creativity. I didn't see that on the roadmap.

I look forward to your response to my question above.

Thank you.