UltraRecall vs Web Research... my findings

Posted by Daly de Gagne
Jul 12, 2007 at 12:36 AM

JJ, I really appreciate your work. Thank you.

I have never trusted UR completely for web captures.

I use Surfulater.

If I knew I would always, forever, use Firefox I would use Scrapbook because it seems to be the most accurate handsdown, although it can’t do some of the tricks the others can.

But I wonder if we haven’t been taken for a bit of a con.

Windows allows us to save anything.

Why not just save the web page, and then link to it from a program like Infohandler or Idea or even MyInfo or UR.

It is that we seem to be trying to save a few seconds, or maximize the supposed potential, and so we end up foregoing what is most simple and straight forward.

A lot of my best satisfaction in web clipping, apart from Surfulater which I do like, is having IH topics and linking to the saved web page. An extra step but it always works, and I always get the web page right.

It may be a different matter if all you want is a small clip, but often I want the page or most of it.

Daly

JJ wrote:
>INTRODUCTION
>I have used many software products including:
> >Used
>Extensively:
>OmeaPro, UltraRecall, Web Research, Net Snippets, Onfolio,
>Commence
> >Used but not extensively:
>OneNote, ADM, MyInfo, Zoot16, MyBase,
>Surfulator
> >Currently I’m using both UltraRecall and Web Research. After using the
>other products, I find these are closest at meeting my needs (listed below) and are
>still being developed.
> >REQUIREMENTS
>I’m looking for a single product solution to
>collect, index and recall information.
>Information sources include:
>Web pages
>(40%)
>Documents (word, excel, powerpoint & pdf) (30%)
>Text Notes (Note I type in…
>“Yellow Sticky Notes” (15%)
>Email (From Outlook) (15%)
> >TEST RESULTS
>I have
>conducted a few informal, yet “real world” tests with both UR & WR.
> >Saving a
>document:
> >Time to Save into product:
> >1 MB Word doc UR~6 secs WR~3 secs
>15MB
>PowerPoint UR~12 secs WR~45 secs
>35 MB AVI file UR~20 secs WR~240 secs
> >Comments:
> >It seems WR is slightly faster on saving small docs.
>UR is much faster at saving
>larger doc/files.
>WR is unacceptable for larger files.
>NOTE-WR suggests not
>stored files/docs larger than 15MB
> >Time to save & quality of capture web pages using
>FireFox:
> >Orbitz.com (a schedule of flights & times NY-LA) UR~60 secs (Quality –
>Unacceptable: did not capture tables with flight info) WR~35 secs (Quality –
>Excellent: captured the entire page correctly)
> >Drudgereport.com (front page)
>UR~40 secs (Quality – Excellent: captured the entire page correctly) WR~6 secs
>(Quality – Excellent: captured the entire page correctly)
> >Taunton.com (front
>page) UR~32 secs (Quality – Excellent: captured the entire page correctly) WR~5 secs
>(Quality – Excellent: captured the entire page correctly)
> >GPSlodge.com (product
>review) UR~40 secs (Quality – Poor: missed several pictures and formatting was off)
>WR~15 secs (Quality – Good: missed one banner ad)
> >Hertz.com (front page) UR~40 secs
>(Quality – Unacceptable: did not capture page. It only captured a JavaScript
>Warning) WR~8 secs (Quality – Excellent: captured the entire page correctly)
> >
>Comments:
>UR was consistently much slower at capturing web pages. More
>importantly, too often, UR did not capture the web page information correctly. WR was
>much faster & did capture all the pages.
> >
>MY IMPRESSIONS/OPINIONS:
> >Referring
>back to information sources:
> >Web Page Captures:
>WR is clearly the winner here.
>Much faster & more reliable. (No surprise here since the product was designed to
>capture web pages.)
> >What is surprising is the performance of UR. When I use UR to
>capture a page, I must always go back into UR to confirm the capture… I just don’t have
>confidence in the capture with UR. Plus it is sooo slow & I like to capture lots of
>pages.
> >On the UI side, WR is much better. It allows you to “save as” before capturing a
>web page. UR only allows you to save into the “imported items” folder in the active
>database.
> >
>Storing documents:
>UR is clearly the winner here. Much faster & can
>handle large files.
>WR is fine if your files are less than 15MB, but many of my excel,
>pdf and powerpoint files are larger. WR is unacceptable for larger files.
> >NOTE: You
>need the Network Add-in in WR to index the docs.
> >“Sticky Notes”
>There a few minor
>differences…
>One thing I like about WR is when you add a new note, you can add a
>horizontal line in the text. I know this is small, but I like it to separate different
>thoughts in the same note with a line. BUT… if you edit an existing note, the button to
>add a line is not available… go figure???
> >UR is easier to edit an existing note… just
>click in the note and start typing. With WR you need to select the note & click on the edit
>button to enter the edit mode.
> >Emails
>UR & WR both do a good job.
> >One difference is
>WR will save any attachments that are attached to the email into WR, UR does
>not.
> >OTHER FEATURES
>Clearly UR has more power & flexibility with their use of meta
>data. For me this is nice, but I use it only occasionally.
> >One nice feature of WR is the
>ability to assign multiple categories to the same item. (Plus the categories are
>arranged in a tree format) In UR you can only assign 1 category to an item. You can use
>linking to “assign” multiple categories, but WR has a far cleaner approach.
> >WR also
>has a simple scanner interface that allows you to scan docs directly into WR. One
>limitation is that it only allows you to save the scan as a .jpg file not pdf. Nice
>feature, but not too important to me.
> >CONCLUSIONS
>I wish there was a clear winner,
>so I could use just one product. For web clipping WR is better… for saving docs/files UR
>is better…
> >In my particular case, since more of my info is coming from the web, I think
>I will go with WR for now and deal with the limitations of adding smaller files to my
>database… (at least until UR is updated OR a new product comes along…Zoot
>32???)
> >In a perfect world… I wish UR was better at web captures….
> >Hope you
>found this helpful…
> >-jj
>