In what seems like a previous life I was heavily into electronics, in fact it was my career for quite some time. I used to love building electronic gadgets, predominantly digital, which progressed naturally into micro-computers. The first computer I built had 4K ROM, 16K RAM and used a cassette tape to load and save software. As anyone who was around back then will tell you, “those were the days”. The next step was, of course, dabbling in writing programs. With such limited memory available you had little choice but to write in assembler language, so you could squeeze as much as possible into the tiny space available. This was a truly amazing learning experience, where one’s ingenuity and perseverance were critical to success. Continue reading “Building a new PC for Xmas because I want a NAS – Part 1”
Surfulater V2.00 Released. The 11th and final release for 2006.
Ok the dust has settled, and there have been no real problems to speak of, with the Surfulater V2.00 release, I’m very pleased to say. I want to briefly run through some of the new features in this release, so go and grab a cup of tea or coffee and read on.
Our first stop is the Knowledge Base (KB) Tab Bar which enables you to quickly switch from one knowledge base (database) to another.
This has been enhanced to include the drop down KB selection menu, shown above, a new IE7 style Close button on the active tab, the ability to rearrange tabs in whatever order you want by dragging them to the desired location, and a new right click context menu that lets you Close, Open and Create KBs, as shown below. The KB selection menu is handy when you have lots of KBs open, as it saves having to scroll the tabs to locate the KB you want.
If you haven’t ventured as far as using multiple knowledge base files, you should give it some thought. Don’t go overboard creating lots of KBs though. I’ve got 24 at last count, with a number past their use by date. For example I used three KBs when planning a trip to Europe last year, but these are of little use right now. They may be in the future though.
See the Help topic: Power Features|Knowledge Base Tab Bar for more information on the Tab Bar and The Basics|Working with Files (new/open/close) about creating new KBs etc.Â
Next up is the new Add Links to Files… capability. Surfulater has had the ability to attach and permanently store external files in its knowledge bases for some time, but sometimes you simply want to store a link to a file and not store the file itself. You were able to do this, but it was cumbersome to say the least.
Add Links to Files works like adding Attachments with the only difference being the end result. You can select and add links to multiple files using a standard Windows File|Open style dialog.Â
Another new way to add links as well as attachments is to drag files from Windows Explorer and drop them on the Attachments field of an Article or Folder.
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When you drop the files (release the left mouse button) a menu lets you choose whether to add links to the files or attach them to the article. Also new in this release are the images shown in the screen shot above, which indicate whether a file is a link or an attachment. New CSS styles have also been added, so the mouse over hover color is different for links and attachments.
See the Help topics: Power Features|Attaching & Linking Files to Articles and the Release Notes for more on this.
Next is a most welcome new and quick way of appending content to existing articles without having to switch to Surfulater. For example let’s say you’ve just added a new article from your Web Browser and then want to add more content from the same web page or even a different page. To do this select the content you want to capture, copy it to the Windows Clipboard and then press the new Append Clipboard to Article Hotkey (Ctrl+Alt+. by default). Surfulater can then either stay hidden in the Windows System Tray or come to the foreground. You can of course append new content from any program, for example MS Word, Adobe Acrobat etc.
For more on the Append Clipboard to Article Hotkey see the Help topic: Power Features|Appending content to Articles.
Ok sit tight, just two more new features to go for this wrap up.
It has been brought to our attention that not everyone wants to use My Documents\My Surfulater as the default Surfulater data files folder, so we’ve added a new item to the Preferences dialog that lets you set the Data Folder as you desire.
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See the Data Folder field at the bottom of the screen shot, well that’s where you set it. I personally use the Shared Documents folder, as you can see above (indicated by “All Users”). This screen shot also shows the new Append Clipboard to Article Hotkey setting.
For more on Data Folders see the Help topic, Power Features|Preferences.
And to conclude there are six new UI (User Interface) Themes, which include various Office 2007 themes and a new UI Theme Toolbar.
This screen shot shows the Office 2007 Obsidian Theme, along with the new UI Theme Toolbar.
And for anyone interested that’s the mATX Case I’ve just bought for a new mini PC I’m going to build over Christmas. I’ve never built modern day PC before and am looking forward to this, albeit with some trepidation.
There are a more things in this release, including all important bug fixes, which you need to go and read about in the Release Notes in the Help or on our Support Forums.
It has been a great year, made all the more so by your support, feedback and words of encouragement. There is still plenty of important and interesting work yet to be done and I look forward to watching this unfold in 2007, as no doubt you do. I also look forward to continued growth of our customer base in the year ahead.
If I don’t post again before Christmas thanks again to everyone, have a great Xmas and a very Happy New Year.
Neville FranksÂ
It’s the 13th, but not Friday and Version Two-dot-oh has been released
A short and sweet post to let everyone know that Surfulater Version 2.00 has been released and is available for download.
With some releases everything just falls nicely into place and away you go. This one was just a bit on the troublesome side. Some problems were of my own making and others were in the latest release of a 3rd party code library that Surfulater uses. Together they conspired against me and delayed the release by at least a week.
But the good news is a new release is out and better still we’ve progressed to Version 2 which I’m very pleased about and is a great way to end the year. This is the eleventh release for 2006, each one building on the last and moving Surfulater further along the path to world net to knowledge domination. Whoops, sorry. I meant it is continuing its journey to meet your needs and wishes, to make it the absolute best program of its type out there.
On a more serious note I plan to write about the new features and enhancements in Version 2 shortly. In the meantime you can jump on over and read the release notes.
Now I just have to hope that the 13th (not Friday) is reasonably uneventful. I nearly waited another day to put the release out, true dinks.
Its not unusual to… (feel free to sing along)
It’s not unusual for folks to tell us how much they love using Surfulater, but we don’t get much feedback about the Surfulater web site. So I was very pleasantly surprised when I received the following e-mail from Deborah Merritt who has recently discovered and purchased Surfulater.
Neville,
I’ve been playing with this for just a short time, but I love the program. I have no experience at all with programs like this. But for a long time I have wanted some sort of program to organize my research. I’m a professor and started out in the days when we used notecards! Just out of curiosity, I put “research software” into google and started looking at a few of the programs that turned up. I hadn’t even thought about a program that primarily organized material from the web. But as I thought about it, I realized that most of my research now–even from scholarly journals–is online. So I kept browsing. I liked your site because (1) it referred to full text searching, and (2) there were “fun” features and it didn’t seem to take itself too seriously. I decided to give the free download a try.
After just an hour or so, I was hooked. I happily purchased the software and have been continuing to enjoy it. Thanks so much for developing this. I’m starting slow, with the basic features, but I’m sure that soon I’ll be checking the blog and forums for more advanced ideas. Cheers! Debby
Deborah J Merritt
John Deaver Drinko/Baker & Hostetler Chair in Law
Moritz College of Law
The Ohio State UniversityÂ
When we designed the Surfulater web site I wanted to make sure it looked good and got our message across as quickly and simply as possible. Often you visit a Web site and leave without having any idea what the site was about. I’ve read statistics that indicate you have about 5 seconds to grab someone’s attention, before they’ll give up and move on. When your business relies on sales from your Web site, you really do want folks to stay somewhat longer than those 5 small seconds. I’ve written here before about having to pander to search engines, instead of writing for your readers, which is really infuriating. Getting the balance right is the hard part, a bit like writing software.
So it was great to get Deborah’s e-mail and as I told her at the time it made my day, which hadn’t been a particularly good one! We’ve had a few more exchanges since and I’m pleased to say Deborah is one very, very happy Surfulater user. This is an excerpt from an e-mail I received from Debby yesterday
I’m probably starting to sound like a broken record, but this really was a tremendous help in gathering info. I read lots of medical journals online, in addition to more popular websites, and it used to drive me crazy keeping all of this stuff straight. So thanks again for everything! Debby
In closing I want to let you know how we can help folks by providing Surfulater discounts. If you run a Forum, a Blog, a Web site, a User Group, a Newsletter etc. we can provide your readers or members with a discount. Of course this helps us by getting more people to find out about Surfulater and it helps you with special offers you can provide to your readers. It was opportune to mention this here as Debby moderates a forum and I’ve provided her members with a discount. So let’s help each other. Just drop me an email and we’ll get started – see the Surfulater Contact page for my e-mail address.
Until next time, have a great week,
Neville
PS. Another great new Surfulater release out soon.
Goal-Free Living With Stephen Shapiro
I did my usual weekend house chores which gives me the opportunity to listen to Podcasts, which is something I relish. I want to recommend a great interview that Michael D. Pollock of Solostream Webstudio did with Stephen Shapiro about his book and web site Goal-Free Living.
Stephen talks about how many successful people he’s interviewed don’t equate their success to lots of goal setting and how people become stressed by goal setting. Likewise todo lists can become a real burden and get in the way of what needs to be done. Stephen keeps a short todo list with just the top priority items on it. Then he has a can do list for everything else. Items move across from the can do list to the todo list as necessary. I do like the sound of this.
Other concepts Michael and Stephen discuss include “Use a Compass, Not a Map†where you find the intersecting point between passion (what you love to do), skills (what you are good at), and value (what creates value – for you and others). If you can achieve the right amount of passion, skills and value you can be successful in whatever it is you want to achieve.
I’ve always been passionate about what I do and what I deliver to my customers. And I’ve always felt I deliver real value. Skills is where I come up short. Not in in the ability to create good products, but in my abilities to be a great marketer and salesperson. People that run small business’s need to be skilled in many different areas, which is simply a fact of life, so we do the best we can and get on with it.
I’m sure you will find SavvySoloCAST #29: Goal-Free Living With Stephen Shapiro a great way to start your week.
Two in one – Surfulater V1.99, Build 2.0 Released
Two releases in the one week, we must be getting close to Christmas. This release will make our bleeding edge users happy, as Surfulater now works with IE7 RC1 and also with Firefox Version 2.0, RC2. Note that neither IE7, nor FF2 have actually been released yet.
There was a problem with Attachments not opening if IE7 was installed, along with a more pressing problem which came out in this weeks V1.99.1.0 release. The latter prevented expandable fields from appearing at their full height and was caused by all of the CSS changes which have recently been made. Both of these have been fixed and Surfulater now behaves itself, if either IE6 or IE7 is installed. Hopefully no further problems will show up when IE7 is finally released.
For Firefox Version 2, RC2 I’m pleased to say all that was required was a simple update to the Surfulater Firefox Extension. In earlier days the Firefox folks make a number of changes which broke lots of Extensions. I was dreading that being the case again, which it wasn’t. If you are using FF V2 you need to download and install the new extension.
I’d not seen either IE7 or Firefox V2 until yesterday and without wanting to stir up any debates I have to say I really do like what I’ve seen so far in IE7. It looks good, seems smooth and fast and works well. Unfortunately I can’t quiet say the same for Firefox V2. However neither product has been released yet, so it is premature to make any final judgments.
Downloads are in the usual place, so go for it. Oh and release notes are over here.
Surfulater V1.99, Build 1.0 out now
Just a quick note to let everyone know that the latest release of Surfulater is now available for download. I would have posted earlier but there have been a few hiccups and we’ve got workmen here making lots of noise, which is a tad distracting.
If you have Internet Explorer Version 7 (Beta? or RC1) installed I suggest you stick with V1.98.4.0 for now as Texas Tomato has reported a problem which is caused by IE7. I’ll be looking at the IE7 issues shortly and hope they’ll be easy enough to resolve.
Two other problems showed up today. One by Perry Mowbray that turns out isn’t new, and another by David Wengier that sort of is. The good news is I’ve already fixed them both, and neither should prevent you from using this new release.
You’ll find the nitty-gritty details about this release in the Surfulater Help and also on our Forums. Make sure you backup your Knowledge Bases before installing any new release, as well as on a regular basis.
I’ll write in more detail about the latest release once the hammering stops, if not  sooner. In the mean time have a great week.
PS. Please excuse the MojoPac distractions.
PPS. Perry reckons the new release is snazzy.
MojoPac – Potentially Great Software with Serious Flaws
The ability to run Surfulater from a USB Stick is something our users and I would like to see. It is easy to carry around your Knowledge Base files on a USB stick or even use them directly from a USB stick, but there are times when you are using someone else’s PC and want to use Surfulater. One way to accomplish this is to run it on the USB stick. However there are hurdles to overcome, primarily in respect to licensing and conversely piracy. We need to ensure that our customers can use their copy of Surfulater on a USB stick, but prevent unlicensed use, and that’s the difficult part.
To my knowledge only U3 USB sticks provide the capabilities software developers need to adequately protect their software on USB sticks, however there is a reasonable amount of effort required to get your software working on U3 devices and I’ve read where some folks aren’t all that happy with the way U3 works and about it not working in some corporate environments. So I’ve shied away from this as a solution and have been looking at alternative ways of meeting the need to access Surfulater Knowledge Bases on different PC’s. For example providing the ability to view KB’s in a Web Browser, without needing Surfulater installed at all. I’m also working on synchronization, which will make it a breeze to use the same KB’s at work and at home.
So what’s this about MojoPac? My friend Leigh Wardle e-mailed me yesterday to tell me he had Surfulater running on a USB stick using a new product called MojoPac and my reaction was wow, followed by how! I couldn’t see how they could protect licensed software from being pirated by copying the MojoPac installation. I told Leigh of my concerns and he promptly e-mailed me back an excerpt from their Web site that indicated the software was protected by locking it to the serial number of the USB device, and therefore copying it to another USB stick wouldn’t work. I thought ok that sounds great I really need to give this thing a try. Unfortunately it was downhill from there.
I duly registered on the MojoPac web site and downloaded the software. My first problem was that I wasn’t able to install it on my 1G Corsair Flash Voyager USB stick because it doesn’t have a serial number. That’s fine and good, as without a serial number they can’t provide the protection software developers need.
I tried another USB device and it worked a treat. Start it up and you get a clean, brand spanking new instance of Windows XP running. I have to tell you I was impressed, and still am.
Next I installed Surfulater and after a small hiccup it installed and ran perfectly. I exited MojoPac, moved the USB device to another PC and started it there and again it worked a treat. Next I activated the Surfulater license to get it from a Trial Version to a Full Version and did some more testing, which all went fine.
Then I moved the USB drive back to the original PC, started MojoPac and Surfulater and Surfulater ran as a Free Trial when it should have been fully licensed! This is problem number one. In essence any software that uses protection techniques that check for various installed hardware will likely not work with MojoPac, as it stands. This is because a MojoPac system includes a mix of the underlying PC’s hardware plus its own emulated or virtual hardware. To resolve this the underlying hardware should not be visible in MojoPac. I think you’ll find a fair bit of commercial software won’t work, because of this. But things get worse.
I kept thinking that relying on a serial number alone to protect MojoPac and all the licensed software installed therein couldn’t be adequate and it didn’t take long to prove that I was right.
I went back to my original Corsair USB stick (without a serial number) and installed a virtual drive. This looks to Windows like a real drive and includes a serial number. MojoPac installed and ran fine on this, and my initial reaction was great. But then reality set in. I can copy this virtual drive to another USB stick or hard drive, or post it on the Internet for others to use, and MojoPac works.
This means that MojoPac itself is easy to copy (pirate) and use without paying for it, but the far bigger problem for me as a commercial software developer, is that it makes my software just as easy to copy and use for free. Surfulater won’t run on a different hardware configuration as I mentioned above, which is a MojoPac failing they need to resolve, but other licensed software I tried works perfectly.
I really don’t want to rain on their parade as I see MojoPac has great potential if these issues can be resolved, but my feeling is that the underlying issues will be difficult to fix. The MojoPac Web site tells us they’ve got some very clever people working there and they are nicely cashed up with VC Funds, so resources shouldn’t be a problem (yeah I’m jealous I know). As things stand right now they need to take some urgent action before they get into serious hot water. If it were my product I’d remove it from the market untiil I could address these issues.
There also seems to be discontentment brewing over on the MojoPac Support Forums, with company representatives AWOL. Hopefully they’ll return soon.
Getting close now
The next Surfulater release is coming along very nicely. The main new feature is the ability to control and create your own style sheets. These are used to control the look of information in the content window. Color Themes (previously color styles) have been removed from the Knowledge Base file and are now in a stand alone XML file, making it easier to add new themes and share them around. These changes lay the groundwork for enhancements to the way article templates work and to make it easier to create new ones or modify existing ones. You can refer back to the article Content styling and templates for more on this.
Other changes are enhancements to the Surfulater SXCF format (see Pushing content into Surfulater from other Programs – Part 1Â and Pushing content into Surfulater from other Programs – Part 2) to enable the Folder for the content to be specified, as well as allowing new folders to be created. Also issues with using Surfulater under a Non-Administrator account have been addressed. And the bug mentioned the last blog post has of course been fixed along with a variety of other odds and sods.
It will be nice to let this release see the light of day. A bit more code to write yet and lots of testing to be done to ensure all the changes don’t cause any problems.
I’ll have extremely limited Internet access until later on the 25th of Sep, so you won’t see any comments from me, to your comments, for a few days.
There is a bug
I found out last week that there is a bug which I introduced in the last release V1.98.4.0 which prevents Surfulater from creating new articles if it isn’t already running. You get an error message saying you need to open a knowledge base, even if there is one open.
I was hoping to get a new release out this week to fix this, however I’m in the midst of various changes which I don’t want to rush and create more problems, when there is a simple work-around. Just ensure Surfulater is running before you capture any content from your Web Browser and you won’t have any problems.