Surfulater (cont'd fr Evernote 4)

Posted by Daly de Gagne
Nov 16, 2010 at 04:09 PM

Cady, I’m replying to your post in the Evernote 4 thread I began yesterday, because as you note in your post, it is more about Surfulater than Evernote.

I appreciated your input on Surfulater.

Back in the summer I went to Mac for a two week period - the time I had in which to return it to Staples if I was not completely satisfied. I did return it, in fact.

One of the reasons was that the information programs available, although appreciated by many other people whom I respect, were to my mind lacking.

One of the standards by which I found the Mac lacking was Surfulater http://www.surfulater.com/ . I have watched Neville, the developer, fine tune this program over the years. He has a keen sense of how to massage information, and the software programming skills to make it work well.

When it comes to massaging information - to respecting information - Neville is miles ahead of Evernote. Evernote’s developers have their respect focused on multi-platform functionality, and there is something to be said for that, but not quite as much, in my opinion, as EN’s developers seem to be saying. My fear, confirmed since the introduction of version 3, is that the ability to massage information takes a second row seat in the process. EN does not have even such a basic feature as a highlighter - imperative when working with information, IMHO.

Strategically, I think it would be difficult for Neville to compete with EN in terms of multi-platform functionality - but space in the cloud is infinite. My bet is that if Surfulater could clip from any Windows computer to the cloud, or to the desktop, and to sync between the two as Evernote does, that it would greatly expand the Surfulater market.

Incidentally, yesterday, I downloaded the latest version of Surfulater - 3.40 - and was delighted by a new feature, “Remove HTML,” which enables remove of some or all of the HTML markup - handy because sometimes it gets in the way of making a clipping. It already solved one problem I was having with downloading from a major information site.

Just my thoughts.

Daly

Cady wrote:
>Daly de Gagne wrote:
>>Is anyone using EN 4?
>>
>>I think it is faster in its Windows
>version.
>>
>>However, given
>>that it is an information program, and therefore more
>than a clipper of steroids which
>>can be used on just about any known platform (a good
>thing for those who need it), I hope
>>the developers begin to focus on info management
>more than they have.
>>
>>For example,
>>tags and highlighting.
>>
>>The tagging
>capability is less than it was with version 2.
>>
>>
>>And highlighting of text seems to
>have been yet again bypassed.
>>
>>My hope is that at
>>some future point - sooner
>rather than later - that Neville, developer of Surfulater,
>>can give Surfulater a
>cloud capability.
>>
>>Even if Surfulater does not work on other
>>platforms, I
>suspect there is a significant number of Windows users who would support
>>a cloud
>version - enough to make it worthwhile.
>>
>>Neville has shown more sensitivity
> >>than EN’s developers to the need for post-clip information management tools, and
> >>though there is not a column option ( a favorite feature of mine), he has provided a
>way
>>to deal with metadata which is effective. As well, Surfulater has a tagging
>process
>>which allows for searches for items with both tag A and tag B. It is done very
> >>smartly.
>>
>>Daly
> >Hi. I apologize for deviating from the main topic (EN
>4).
>Since Daly mentioned Surfulater, I just wanted to point out that I sorely miss
>Surfulater on my Mac. I miss the tags. I miss the cross-references… A while ago I even
>emailed Neville and shamelessly begged him to make a Mac version.
>Currently I use
>Surfulater with Parallels (still on v. 5; I haven’t yet upgraded Parallels 6), but the
>lack of integration with other Mac apps makes the process cumbersome.
>To this day, I
>haven’t found a proper Mac-equivalent to Surfulater. I clip web pages to DEVONthink
>Pro Office, but DTP, while an excellent solution to handling large amounts of data,
>just doesn’t “feel” like a Surfulater replacement…