Kinook, I am confused -- as well as disappointed now. The roadmap was updated 10/30/08 & the notice for future enhancements is still present. The announcement that UR will no longer be developed has now been removed.

Could you kindly be straight up wi your loyal users & tell us exactly what's going on. We might be able to help. We certainly CAN'T help if we think the product is in a ditch.

Are you continuing to develop UR or not? Is the roadmap valid or not. If not, kindly say so so those of us who were patiently waiting for what was in the offing can start to look elsewhere.

I have a 100's of hours invested in UR from my end. I'm sure you've got thousands. Nevertheless my time is as valuable to me as yours is to you & I think my commitment to your product should be respected w some straight talk.

So exactly what is going on with UR?

Thank you.

The current version of Ultra Recall is mature and useful and we'll continue to support it. We intend to update UR in the future for bug fixes, Windows compatibility updates, and to implement items on the road map when we can justify the effort.

Sorry, some of that is double speak.

Exactly what does "when we can justify the effort" mean?

Are your current clients not worth justifying the effort? Do you need more clients? Do you need upgrade fees, more money? If so, how much? What conditions will make it justifiable to make the effort to complete what you continue to post as the product roadmap?

I'm not being difficult. However, I would like a straight answer. I think you owe your loyal customers that, at least. I'm not looking for warm & fuzzy, just the facts.

Thank you.

Kinook,

[Metaphor alert]

Alas, I had hopes that your next roadmap revision would be explaining how you would be engineering UR for the cloud with MS Azure, Google or Amazon EC2 and adapting UR to mobile devices...

And I respect your need to reassess and perhaps redeploy to cope with the cloud buzz, mobile devices and the economic climate. A new product perhaps?

I appreciate your reassuring commitment to compatibility and bug updates. That should see me through as I do my own coping with the changing landscape.

Thanks for a great product!

Kinook,

genie is out, anything you say about "further updates and development" will now be suspicious. I have to agree with Janrif.

If money is the problem (what else?), then maybe you could switch to special mode. As the calendar pane or other features from roadmap which would warrant upgrade fee are not ready, maybe user could "donate" and this money would count to their upgrade fee once the features are ready. It would change the cash-flow as you'd have money for the development NOW, and not after you updated the software. This would compensate the lower income from the lower sale numbers in times like this. Just a suggestion.

I enjoy program updates as much as the next person, and each release of UR has added features that I indeed use. I do really hope the product continues to be developed at some point in the future.

However, isn't software purchased for what it can do at the time you purchase it? I don't think there is any guarantee implied in any software purchase, from any company large or small, that there will actually be new releases of the software in the future. When you purchase software, you are generally licensing the current version rather than buying into some future vision that may or may not come about.

In regard to UR's maturity and usefulness - isn't it true that if you are happy with the current feature set, you can use UR for many years to come in its current state - especially if it will be updated for any Windows compatibility issues? I know it is exciting to be using a continually evolving product, but UR already has a lot of power and is stable.

That depends, I recognize many names here, from other forums, usually "in search for the holy pim grail".

However we have to keep in mind, that for every one forum warrior, there are 30 or 50 or 100 regular users, many of whom probably still with some older UR version, not bothered much to update to the latest, "just using it". And they are the people who pay the development.

After certain point, the product becomes too complicated for the masses that are actually funding it, yet it becomes a luring ground for searchers of a holy grail (myself including, nothing bad on it).
But that's just a wild shot.... only Kinook sees the real picture.

I can fully subscribe to what you wrote, of course.

yes and no. You might buy it, because there is simply nothing better at the time, but that might not be true in one year or even less. When you include the time to learn the software and most importantly your valuable information which, however easy the export is, would be hassle to move to different software, you realize that the purchase price is much more than just the current version of the software.

true, but who said I'm happy? ;-)
Just an example: great feature of internal links ... but just change it's name and it's lost forever, cause you won't find it. Plus, it's so complicated to simply see all the items where the current item is linked. The internal links pane was on the road map, but now it's gone ... probably forever.

I come to this theme from a different POV.

First Kinook posts a statement that states they are suspending development.

OK, fine. That's their right. To me that means the roadmap is dead & I have to decide to commit to UR as is or invest my time -- forget the money -- to learn, transfer & re-arrange all my data in another program.

Then Kinook comes back, deletes the first post & replaces it with some language that is ambivalent @ best, misleading (in view of the first post) at worst.

That's what got me going here. As an investor -- so to speak -- in Kinook (as are we all), I think I have the right to know exactly what's going on w UR & to know if there are any possible alternatives, i.e. further investment on my part for the next development round, etc.

Maybe Kinook is getting ready to sell the company & wants to show a better balance sheet. That's ok, too. Just say so.

In short, some transparency is what I am calling for.

I believe I have a right to that whether or not UR is a mature product, whether Kinook is going to continue fixing bugs, no matter the philosophy of buying a piece of software, etc.

Those are separate issues AFAIC. If you all want to have a philosophical discussion about software development & licensee expectations, that's fine but that's not what I'm about here.

This is purely a practical matter for me. My time is as valuable to me as Kinook's time is to them & I'd like to be able to make an educated decision about how best to invest my time in the coming months

So how about it, Kinook?

11/07/08

A rumor about UR
 

http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topi...recall-is-dead

I'm guessing that because the Roadmap
has been updated, this rumor can be
put to bed. Yes?

Regards,
Bal

Not at all read the thread "What's keeping you busy"

That's a-too bad. :(

As one of URP3's most ardent fans I was looking
forward to the updates.

But I don't believe in "servitude." It is every
company's right to assess their product line
and what they will do with it. And given the
competitive nature of business, I don't think
that they are morally required (nice as it would
be) to give we users any warning whatever.

Anything contractually taken on as an obligation
(if any such thing exists) obviously needs to
be honored. But nothing more.

Having said that... :)

It would be nice to know, Kinook. You've got
some very loyal folks here who took a real
shine to you. Is this really how you want to
reward us?

Kind Regards,
Bal

UR alternative
 

I have turned to using Knowledge Workshop - http://www.kworkshop.com/ - its broadly similar to UR - plus is has the huge advantage of providing full text search and highlighting search results across everything - web pages, documents (pdf, MS office) -

Development is active.

Re: UR alternative
 

seems nice, but does not have customizable attributes as far as I can see, which means that it's on the same level as other many other PIMs. Everything has to be done through the keywords instead of relevant attributes.

nope - it has fully customizable attribute sets and attributes - rather similar to UR