Accessible Knowledge
I’m travelling overseas at present on a much needed and well earned break. Getting connected to the Internet while travelling is way, way easier than 5+ years back, but even still it isn’t anywhere near as easy as I’d like.
In some places we had a 24/7 broadband connection just like back home, but unfortunately this has been the exception not the rule. And of course the best laid plans don’t always work out as they are supposed to. Continue reading “On the road again”
Ok I finally gave in and added good old File Open, New and Close. Way back when I started on the design of Surfulater I thought that I would dispense with File Open etc. as part of my overall goal of keeping Surfulater as simple and as uncluttered as possible.
For some, Surfulater starting up with MyKnowledge.Surfulater worked well and was all they needed, but for other the means to create and work with multiple Knowledge Bases was at best cumbersome. I misread the broad range of uses that Surfulater would be put to and the many different types of users at its helm. As a stop gap I added File|Set as Default, but in hindsight this was a mistake and I should have just gone ahead done things properly with File|Open.
When I sat down to work out how I would fit File|Open into the current design my prime objective was to ensure you could still start Surfulater with whatever Knowledge Bases you were using and get back into the flow as quickly as possible. I must say I’m pleased with the outcome. It feels much as it did before, with the big difference being that if you had say four knowledge bases open the last time you used Surfulater then those same four knowledge bases will be open this time around. This means you don’t need to go anywhere near File Open most of the time, which suits me just fine.
You will find more information in the release notes included in the Help along with the updated Help topic “Working with Files (new/open/close)”. One thing I forget to mention in this topic is the new Toolbar which has File|Open etc. Use View|Knowledge Base Toolbar to open this. If your screen is wide enough you can drag it and place it beside the main row of toolbars. I’ve also added a new Help topic Backing up my Knowledge Base which everyone should read.
Well that’s it for this release. Happy Surfulater’ing.
I’ve been going through the near annual acrobatics of setting up some new PC’s with all of our standard applications recently. You start off by locating all of the CD’s (for stuff that comes/came on CD) and installing these. Then register them as required. Sounds easy enough, and it sort of is, as long as you can find all of those CD’s. Continue reading “Software Housekeeping”
It has been a troublesome few weeks with two people (Gad Chang and Bernard Jennings) reporting that Surfulater was crashing when they started it. First thoughts pointed to the possibility that another application had been installed and that had caused Surfulater to come to grief (usually referred to as DLL Hell), but this wasn’t the case. Problems like this can be very difficult to track down, because they usually can’t be reproduced by anyone except the person having the problem. There was nothing in Surfulater’s log file which gave me any clues either. Fortunately I had the thought that it may be something in the Knowledge Base files that was triggering the crash, so I asked for copies of the files to be sent to me and sure enough I was able to see the exact same crash. Continue reading “Surfulater V1.82, B0.0 released”
Surfulater is very good at storing information and images from the Web and from other programs, but one thing that has been missing until now is the ability to store external files along with your Surfulater content. For example we’ve had requests to save PDF files, Word documents and ZIP files with Surfulater articles.
This latest release addresses this issue and lets you attach any files from your PC to Surfulater articles or folders. The attached file is permanently saved in your Surfulater database, so you have it available even if it gets deleted from your PC. And for folks that carry their Surfulater KB around with them, they can now carry these files around as well. Note that Surfulater compresses these files to reduce the amount of space they use.
For a complete list of changes in this release see the Release Notes in the Help or in our Support Forum.
Ontology is Overrated is a PodCast I recommend you listen to if you are interested in finding out more about organizing information. Clay Shirky gave this speech at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, held in San Diego, California, March 14-17, 2005. Clay talks about why conventional ways of organizing information via. categories and hierarchical trees is flawed and discusses alternatives, such as search. This is in line with my thoughts, some of which are here and comments from Surfulater users our Forums. Continue reading “Ontology is Overrated”
Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users recently wrote an article Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak which I’m sure will resonate with everyone reading this. Kathy wants companies to stop adding features to products, for features sake, even if that means losing some potential customers. Continue reading “Creeping Featuritis”
Interest in Surfulater has reached a new high this past week, which is very welcome indeed. It is difficult for small companies to get the message out, about new products. We don’t have big PR budgets, don’t wine and dine with the big end of town and tend not to have amassed close contacts with industry movers and shakers. Continue reading “ZDNet gives Surfulater a welcome boost”
I’m fanatical about backing up my work. Writing software is complex and costly business and the thought of losing work and having to do it over is one I don’t care to entertain. I backup to an off-site server several times a day, and to other PC’s including my Notebook which has everything on it I need to allow me to continue working, if something should happen to my Desktop PC. Continue reading “Securing Information – TrueCrypt”
There has been interest in being able to grab images from other programs and paste them into Surfulater articles. For example copying an image from a Microsoft Word document and pasting it into Surfulater. This is obviously a good idea and opens Surfulater up even further in its ability to organize your information, regardless of where it comes from. Continue reading “Surfulater V1.70, B0.0 released”