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Surfulater V2.00.20.0 Released – Balance is important

Developing a product of any sort revolves around many different inputs and ideas. One that is all important is listening carefully to customer feedback and doing your best to meet your customers needs. Balance is also important, you simply can’t go and add every feature that everyone suggests or you’d finish up with a product that no one would want to use and you’d probably be broke because you’d put way too many resources into its development. I mention this because the latest Surfulater release, V2.00.20.0 is all about meeting customer needs.

As products evolve and more people start using them, they may be put to use performing tasks the product designers hadn’t ever considered. This is certainly true of Surfulater. In fact I’m sure I don’t know the half of what people are using Surfulater for. This isn’t too good from my point of view, but it speaks well of Surfulater that so many people find it, not only capable, but well suited to handle a variety of tasks above and beyond its core competencies.

The prime enhancements in this release revolve around the ability to reorder content in the Knowledge Tree using a new Advanced Article Sort, along with the ability to change the Date Created for Articles. Advanced sort enables you to sort the entire Knowledge Tree, or a Folder and optionally its sub-folders. Sorting can be done by Article Title or Date Created, in either ascending or descending order.

To access Advanced Sort right click on a Folder in the Knowledge Tree and select it from the context menu as shown here.

Folder Context Menu  Advanced Sort Dialog

Select from the various Sort options and then click Sort.

To change the Date Created for an Article right click on it and choose Set Date created from the menu.

Set Date Created menu and Date Picker

Choose the new date from the date picker window or click on Today or None, the latter leaving the date as is. When the current date is selected the time is set to the current time, otherwise it is set to 12:00AM.

These new capabilities are useful when you use Surfulater as a Journal or simply wish to move articles in time.

While we are talking dates one thing I’ve personally wanted in Surfulater is to be able to set Reminder or Follow Up dates in articles. Sometimes when I capture content I know I don’t have the time to read it then and there. The ability to pop-up a reminder in a week or so would be very handy here. Alas no one else has requested this yet, so it sits on the sidelines awaiting.

For the other changes and bug fixes in this release see the Release Notes in the Help or on the Forum.

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True Stories

I’ve collected some great stories from Surfulater users recently and with their permission I’d like to share some with you.

Hi Neville,
 
It has been a while since I’ve emailed you about your product but I just want to say that it has been over two years since I purchased Surfulater and I find myself using it for everything from research for work and graduate school papers, to my kids homework assignments, to keeping recipes, tracking travel information,etc. I do a lot of purchasing on the internet and I use it for those tasks also.  For school research I use it to track the results from my first line of investigation, eventually transferring some of the information into EndNote once I have made my final bibliographic selection.
 
I have a very short list of software products that I recommend to colleagues, friends, and family and Surfulater is always on my list.
 
Great product…still going strong!
 
Thank you,
Fiona Best

Why I bought the program: In the late 1960s, I took photographs for a Chrysler Motors comic book in which my parents had the only speaking parts. I still have an old, mouse-chewed copy of that comic book; the comic was published on the Internet two years ago, but taken down after only a month on-line. I wish I’d made a copy.

Finally, I hope Surfulater can help me to organize some of the mess of Internet
pages and illustrations I already have stored on my computer. This is something
I need more than a web spider or another note-taker.

M.B.

I thought I’d let you know that the reason I decided to purchase Surfulater after weeks of researching and testing different type of Web research management tools is because of your courteous and fast response to all my questions (not so common to see great customer service these days especially I wasn’t even a customer yet) and also the features that I was looking for in tool like this seem to be missing from the others (there were a few things also missing from Surfulater, but I’ll mention them later).  I literally have tried or looked at all the similar software out there.  I’ve tried Onfolio, NetSnippets (which has stopped their development), Web Research Professional (it came down to this one and Surfulater), Evernote, General Knowledge Base, iMiser, Furl, and quite a few other ones. 

Another big reason that I decided to purchase Surfulater is also because that you seem very open to the input to your customers’ suggestions and endeavor to improve the product.  The active and continual development of this software convinces me that this software will continue to get better.

A. Chang.

I’ve always encouraged users of our software to tell us what they honestly think about what we’ve delivered so far and where we are heading and I’m very pleased that quite a few do. At the same time there are many folks we never hear from, which may be a good thing or then again, may not be. It’s just as, if not more important, to be told any bad news, so we can ensure we address issues in the best way possible. Our support forums along with e-mail provide effective means to have these conversations.

If you’ve been holding back, reluctant to contact us why don’t you go and do it now. If we never hear from you, how can we meet your needs.

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To Vista or not to Vista that is the ?

I was never able to find the time, nor the motivation to try the Vista Beta releases, so it wasn’t until the real release before I laid my hands and eyes upon it. I’ve been using Windows and developing software for it since Version 3.0. In fact I’m in the midst of a big cleanup at present and stumbled across the Windows 3.0 Floppy Disks this past weekend. Oh the memories.

Back to the hear and now and I have to say I was really impressed with Vista. It was without doubt the quickest and easiest install of any Windows version that I’ve ever done. What impressed me the most was it was able to install and work with a range of nVidia Video and nForce LAN drivers without me lifting a finger. On Windows XP on the same hardware I need to manually install these drivers from the CD that comes with the Motherboard. Installation of RAID drivers has also greatly improved and you no longer need to create and use a Floppy Disk during the initial Window install. The motherboard on this PC has Dual Video (monitor) support which I was never able to get working properly with Windows XP. Again Vista had this working from the get go.

Vista itself felt really nice to use. There are a variety of subtle improvements like the “Back” button which makes it easy to backtrack through Control Panel screens. And far more comprehensive Hardware and Software monitoring capabilities. Also things seemed smoother and seemed to work better. For example  I always seem to have problems getting Networking to work, but on Vista it just worked.

You’ll hear and read a lot about UAC or User Access Control. These are windows that pop up and require confirmation before you are able to do most any Administrative task. They clearly can be annoying, however UAC along with the new Protected Mode in IE7 should go a long way towards stopping Malware, Trojans and other undesirable software from infecting your PC and making your computing life a misery.

Vista has a very attractive new User Interface called Aero which I think looks great. You also get a neat 3D Task switching display, with the window for each running application stacked in a 3D space. Each small window shows what each application is doing in real time. So if you are watching a movie for example, you’ll see that in its stacked window.

Back to my opening question: To Vista or not? My plan was to run Vista on the new PC I built for Cherryl,  however after a few days of futility I succumb and installed Windows XP. What was the problem? It was simply that I wasn’t able to get several of her mainstream, can’t live without, applications running. Now take note that I’m not putting Vista at fault, nor these applications, as they weren’t Vista versions. The problem was there weren’t Vista versions of these programs available at that time. A Vista version of one has just been announced, but not the others.

Now you may be lucky and your Non-Vista programs will work or more likely appear to work on Vista, however from what I now know after doing the work to updating our software products for Vista, is that there are some quite fundamental areas which must be addressed for software to work correctly on Vista. For example programs can no longer write to any files in the “Program Files” folder or any of its sub-folders. Vista gives installation programs special permissions to store files on these folders, however when applications try to write to them, Vista makes mirrored copies of the files in the “Application Data” folder and writes to these instead. This can quickly get very confusing with multiple ‘different’ copies of the same files in different locations.

These changes aren’t in fact entirely new. Programs that are designed correctly for Windows XP and therefore run properly in Limited User (Non-Admin) accounts, should also work properly in Vista or at worst may need only minor updates.

So my advice is, if you want to run Vista, only do so once you have Vista compatible versions of all of your mainstream (can’t live without) applications. Anything less isn’t going to give you that WOW experience and will likely cause you some degree of grief.

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New Surfulater release, V2.00.10.0 ready and waiting

A slower than I’d like start, release wise for the year, but there is lots happening behind the scenes. As I mentioned in my last blog post one of the most requested Surfulater capabilities has been the ability to select multiple articles in the Knowledge Tree. Well as they say, the wait is now over.

Multiple articles can now be selected and managed in the Knowledge Tree. This enables you to Copy/Cut and Paste multiple articles at once, Drag & drop them, Remove them, Add reciprocal ‘See Also’ references and use ‘Send To’ with them. This works both within and across Knowledge Bases making it easy to move or copy a selection of articles from one KB to another.

Harold Hauer has just posted on our Forums:

I couldn’t wait to try this feature –FANTASTIC!

And Perry Mowbray writes:

Hey 2.00.10 looks great!

Another common request has been to provide folks with a Free Surfulater Reader that anyone could use to view Surfulater Knowledge Bases. Well the good news is we’ve now delivered this with V2.00.10.0.

The plan was to actually create a new product which was just a Reader, much how Adobe Reader works. Ideally this would be a single .EXE file with no installation required. I’d still like to do this, down the track, but for now I’ve opted for a simpler solution. And that is folks download and install the Surfulater Free Trial, which reverts to a Free Reader at the end of the trial period. This gives them the extra benefit of being able to fully evaluate Surfulater, should they want to.

Another related and important change in this release is the ability open and view any Knowledge Base whilst Surfulater is in free trial mode, and not be restricted to just opening the MyKnowledge.Surfulater KB. This enables Surfulater to be used as Free Reader from day one, not just when the trial period is over. It also enables our users to get view access to their content on any PC they want to install Surfulater on, not just their licensed PC’s.

You can see the full release notes for V2.00.10.0 here.

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Surfulater, the next release …

One of the most requested Surfulater capabilities is the ability to select multiple articles in the Knowledge Tree. In hindsight it is clear that omitting this in the original design was a mistake. When you develop any type of product you have to work through an array of trade-offs, otherwise the product may never reach the market and will likely be cost to much. Opting not to include multiple selection was such a trade-off.

Leaving this out was a mistake for two reasons. First I didn’t realize how much our users would want to work with multiple articles and second it has turned out to be quite a chore to rework the code to implement multiple selection. It sounds simple enough on the surface, but it is quite complex once you dig down a bit.

Selecting multiple items is reasonably straightforward, apart from Ctrl+click which toggles the selected item. However the user interaction that follows is complex and tends to vary for each type of action. For example if you select three articles, right click on one and choose Copy then right click on a Folder and choose Paste what should happen with the selection. In the version of Surfulater you have now the selection moves to the pasted article. In the next version it keeps the selection on the original three articles. This brings it in line with how other Windows programs, such as Explorer, behave. But what happens when the original three articles are no longer selected when Paste is used – does the newly pasted article get selected or does the selection stay wherever it was?  And Paste is just one of a range of actions and associated outcomes that can be performed on a multiply selected set of articles.

Working though the possible permutations for each command is tedious and deciding on what is the most desirable outcome isn’t necessarily straightforward. And what I think is desirable you may not!

I’ve also changed the behaviour of Right mouse click for the next release so that it no longer changes the current selection. These and other changes make it easier and more intuitive when working with selected items in the Knowledge Tree.

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Get up and running with TortoiseSVN and Subversion in 15 minutes.

Subversion is the most popular free, cross platform Version Control Systems (VCS) available today. It also happens to be open source, is being actively developed and has a strong community behind it.

To quote from the Subversion Web site:

“The goal of the Subversion project is to build a version control system that is a compelling replacement for CVS in the open source community. The software is released under an Apache/BSD- style open source license.”

Version Control gives you a time machine for your files, enabling you to go back in time to any earlier version, see what changes have been made over time, and revert your work to an earlier version if need be. It also gives you an audit trail of changes and a commented history of those changes, amongst other capabilities.

The easiest way to use Subversion in Microsoft Windows is to use TortoiseSVN  To quote from the TortoiseSVN site:

“TortoiseSVN is a really easy to use Revision control / version control / source control software for Windows. Since it’s not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like.”

TortoiseSVN  is a GUI client shell around Subversion and most anything that can be done on Subversion can be done in TortoiseSVN. TortoiseSVN (TSVN) includes Subversion (SVN), so you don’t necessarily need to download and install it.  I’m very pleased to say that both SVN and TSVN are very well documented, which is atypical in the open source world. As much documentation as there is, I still found it difficult to both comprehend how SVN works and to start using it. Continue reading “Get up and running with TortoiseSVN and Subversion in 15 minutes.”

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Write Ruby code faster with ED for Windows

Ruby is the most expressive and interesting language I’ve come across in all these years of developing our programmer’s editor/ide ED for Windows. It takes Object Oriented programming and Dynamic language support to new levels, at least in my eyes.

Ruby enables you to do more than other languages in less lines of code and still be reasonably readable, and important asset for any language. The library that is included with Ruby is the most comprehensive I’ve seen, which means there is less searching out other libraries or having to write your own code. The bottom line is simply that you should be more productive writing in Ruby than other languages, which is pretty important in todays fast paced world. And if you can do more with less code, there should be fewer bugs, right! Continue reading “Write Ruby code faster with ED for Windows”

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A Great Surfulater Review

Just after Christmas Ercan Cem contacted me about reviewing Surfulater on his blog Digital World, which was most welcome, and is in fact something we’d like to see more of. We’ve had some good coverage recently, which I’ve been meaning to blog about, but there always seems to be more pressing things occupying my time.

James Fallows mentioned Surfulater in The Atlantic in Nov 2006 in his article Making Haystacks, Finding Needles.

A relatively new entry, Surfulater, created by a veteran developer in Australia, differs from most of the others in the elaborate ways it allows you to comment on, classify, and even edit the material you have collected. For instance, if you’ve copied and stored a blog entry or a passage from a Web site, you can enter notes of your own—“There he goes again!” “This detail is interesting—right alongside the clip, and search for those comments later on. It also has a variety of special categorization tools.

A few weeks back a new customer mentioned he heard about Surfulater in the Washington Post, but I’ve yet to find out any details. Library Clips wrote an article Surfulater for PIM back in August 2006. Bob Stumbel’s EVERYTHING 2.0 list includes Surfulater in his OS 2.0 – Update section, which doesn’t seem the right spot to me.

Back to Ercan’s review which you can find at Great Information Manager: Surfulater. Ercan does a very good job of explaining the need people have for Surfulater and how it fulfills this need. Best if you go and read it for yourself.

If you write a blog or a newsletter or know someone that does and would like to help more people find out about Surfulater, please do get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.

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XEN and the art of Virtualization

I endeavour to spend a bit of time over the Christmas/New Year break trying out and learning about new things as these opportunities don’t present themselves much through the year. On Friday night over dinner, a good friend Russell Robinson mentioned a virtualization product XEN, which was being put to very good use where he does some contracting work. I’d heard of XEN but didn’t know anything about it. I still have Cherryl’s new PC that I can play around with, so this seemed like a good time to check XEN out. Continue reading “XEN and the art of Virtualization”

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Web Operating Systems versus Remote Desktop

I’m trying to keep abreast of what is happening in the world of Web Applications (vs. Desktop) and this includes Ajax, Web Application Frameworks and Web Languages, Web Operating Systems and all things Web 2.0. My main interest here is to have Surfulater or a subset thereof, running over the Net in your Web Browser, one day.

Stan Schroeder has recently put together a very good overview of 10 on-line operating systems which is well worth a read, if you are interested in Web applications. The articles comments provide very good feedback and mention a number of Web OS’s that Stan hadn’t included. Continue reading “Web Operating Systems versus Remote Desktop”