Ultra Recall is DEAD!

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Oct 31, 2008 at 08:22 AM

Re UltraRecall: I’ve been a loyal UR user since version 1, hesitantly switching to it from the now defunct HyperClip, whose developers simply vanished one day from the web after long term silence.

I have been very satisfied by Kinook, both in terms of development and user interaction. I respect their decision to freeze development; I much prefer that they stay in business through hard times and believe that they will indeed resume development when financial issues get better. Contrary to other such company decisions (such as DogMelon Studio http://www.dogmelon.com.au/nsblog/ ) I have the impression that UltraRecall had captured a significant market segment.

Moreover, UR is indeed a mature product and has nothing like the lock-in related to many other information managers that we discuss here. It uses compressed SQLite files and I recall that Kinook provided instructions on how to access UR files through SQLite. It can export just about everything in useful formats. It doesn’t have one-click HTML export as other products do but I have found this to be a much less useful feature than advertised.

I have been so happy with UR’s features and stability that I didn’t even realise it initially when version 3.0 came out. Unlike other products, I used it productively without missing something promised in the roadmap. Notwithstanding, I found quite a few new features of significant benefit.

Over the years, I found that using a limited set of imperfect tools gets much more work done than waiting for the perfect one(s). Thus, I intend to keep updating my personal project data in UR for quite some time—at least until Windows 7 comes out and I find that it doesn’t run there. Actually, even that is unlikely to make a difference: I still haven’t upgraded to Vista and am seriously experimenting with Linux instead.

Re InfoQube: I am delighted at Pierre’s approach which has stood out from day one. Through his program, he has provided unbeatably versatile access to SQL power—just compare IQ with any SQL based database to find out what you’ve been missing on.

As a consultant myself, I find that the product+services business model is the way to go—after all, it is what has supported the development of brilliant Open Source software including Linux. (Mind you, it is not a guaranteed approach: Sycon did the same with IDEA! but stayed too much behind in actual development). I bought a license to SQLnotes several months ago and am investing in learning the program’s capabilities. Indeed, it is the main candidate for my own company’s database—as soon as my partners realise that we need one!

If there’s one thing I miss, that’s cross-platform support, which I think will be more and more required by business oriented programs. In the meantime, we’ll have to do with Windows boxes.

Cheers
Alexander