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”
Surfulater V1.82, B0.0 released
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 V1.80, 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
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”
Creeping Featuritis
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”
ZDNet gives Surfulater a welcome boost
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”
Securing Information – TrueCrypt
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”
Surfulater V1.70, B0.0 released
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”
On Google
Well the fact of the matter is Surfulater is barely visible on Google (apart from paid ads). So I’ve been been doing some research to try and see how we can rectify this sad state of affairs. It is pretty obvious that if folks can’t easily find Surfulater when they do a Google search, then the chances of them becoming a customer are pretty slim. Continue reading “On Google”
On the Pod with Dan Bricklin
I’ve just finished listening to a G’Day World Podcast with Dan Bricklin. I can’t tell you much I enjoyed listening to Dan being interviewed. The interview covers a lot of ground, starting from the time he wrote VisiCalc right through to what he is doing today. Continue reading “On the Pod with Dan Bricklin”