I'm not sure I agree with you here. I see UR and DTS as being complementary. I don't think any DTS will have an ability to help me find or organize complex information that I want to keep and search.

For instance, I use X1 extensively for file and e-mail search, but I don't think X1 or Google, or any other DTS can replace what UR does in my universe. They are "too" limiting in my book for keeping track of all information for me.

I understand that you want to find your information in one place, but if that search tool doesn't offer the features you need, what's the point? I have both X1 and UR running in my PC, but even if X1 can search inside UR, I would not use X1 for searching since UR offers more power and speed in search within UR.

Desktop search engines are fine if you just want to search (I used to use X1), but if you want to organise your information in ways that are meaningful to you then UR is much better.

The idea of desktop search (DTS) is that you do not need to organise in the mind numbingly structured way that something like Surfsaver, for example, requires.

Saved searches are fine, X1 has them, but the thought of devising complex templates in the AskSam model fills me with gloom. What works today, could be out of date tomorrow.

My research material consists essentially of email, PDF files, documents (mostly Word) and web grabs.

There is no structure that will hold this information in ways that will retrieve it consistently. That's because a structure that works for one task will not work for another.

I am a writer who covers many different topics. I can file something about venture capital under "finance" but when I want to know what "venture capital" has done for the "fuel cell" business I need to be able to search accordingly. I cannot anticipate the strange combinations that are likely to come up in the future.

Good fast DTS meets this need. (I currently get Onfolio to "publish" to html format that X1 can index.) It is there to handle unstructured data.

I started off in this data management game pre Windows, with dBase and Lotus Agenda. I have used Zoot. They did just fine until DTS came along.

Google works on the assumption that the web is an unstructured mess. Sure, tagging helps, and is something that a good DTS should support. Google is bringing the same approach to the desktop.

I have nothing against web grabbing software that allows experts to use it as they see fit, and to spend their lives improving their databases. But I am more interested in gathering information for use in ways that I have not yet thought about.

The software house that comes up with the first toy that also integrates with other DTS will make a killing. It does not have to take anything away from life's librarians.

Unless, that is Google gets there first. It has added a growing array of formats that it can index.

All the things you mentioned, UR keywords automatically. Keywords can be retrieved for the following file types:

· HTML (web pages)

· Internet Explorer Favorites

· MHT (web pages saved by Internet Explorer)

· Microsoft Office documents (including Word, Excel, and Powerpoint)

· Microsoft Outlook (messages + attachments for known document types, contacts, appointments, tasks or notes)

· Firefox/Netscape/Mozilla bookmarks

· Email messages (Outlook Express messages and news posts and any MIME file, including attachments for known document types)

· PDF

· Pictures and other documents with summary information

· RTF (rich text)

· Text (system code page, UTF-8 and UTF-16 encodings)

· XML (most encodings)

· ZIP (any supported file types found in the ZIP file)

· TIFF documents containing OCR text (Microsoft Office Document Imaging)

ok, so if there is no structure in your information (or at least you think there isnt), I suggest you try SearchInform (free for one database), which provides morphology/fuzzy/phrase/closedness/... search. I use it for the information that I have not processesed yet or which is not essential for my needs.

We would like to support GDS and WDS, but unfortunately IFilter is not enough for files that themselves have a lot of structure and most likely a lot of data (see the 6th post in this thread for details). Newer versions of these products have been released since we last investigated this, so we'll look again to see if things have improved.

Also, utilizing export sets and command-line export in UR v3 Pro, it is possible to automate export of all items in UR as documents to a folder that will be indexed by (any) desktop search product.

Kinook:

The idea of utilizing export sets and command-line export in UR, no matter how automated that may be, doesn't seem practical for the purpose of making a sometime huge database of info available for indexing in GDS, for the reason that this approach would require the user to have exactly the same data (I doubt that absolutely all data could be exported) in two places in the disk. I don't like the idea of having all my data in two places because this would be really difficult to maintain efficiently no matter how automated this may be. I don't see it a smart way, so (to my understanding), this would not be in-line with the reputation of Ultra Recall. I also don't see the "link it rather than storing" approach a good idea because many users (like myself) like the benefits of storing, and some others link their information partially.

In contrast to the above, why don't you develop a special small database that would work with (and be automatically created by) UR with desktop search softwares in mind in order to facilitate indexing? One that would work synchronized with Ultra Recall. I hope you got the idea, what do you think?

It is nice to see my silly idea being taken more seriously than it was by the folks who told me to change my way of living.

Even better that the developers see my point and would like to help. Maybe that's a cue for another product "UR Lite?".

Actually, the business of exporting and indexing does not have to run you into conflicts. It is how I work with Onfolio.

You just have to work on one data set. Your UR stuff.

Then the export just creates a copy.

You could even see this as a good backup strategy. Something that you might need if, heaven forbid, Kinook went belly up and Microsoft delivered yet another operating system and killed the software.

Couldn't happen? Yup. Think Onfolio. Didn't even go belly up. Microsoft just bought it and shut down development, as far as we can see.