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Kinook pulls the plug on Ultra Recall

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patteo:
Kinook Software Forums - Roadmap
"Roadmap

Last updated on 10/30/2008

After four years of continuous development, we have made the difficult decision to suspend development of Ultra Recall due to weak sales in the global economic downturn. Kinook Software remains strong, with sales of our business-to-business software continuing to do very well. We'll continue to support the current version of Ultra Recall and will consider new development in the future if and when conditions warrant. Thank you to all of our customers."
http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3204

I thought I would just post the post on Kinook Forums as I had a little bit of trouble loading it earlier on - Just in case it somehow disappears.

I get this Deja Vu feeling all over again.

Round 1 : Polaris Packrat - killed by a buggy upgrade to version 5 - that was a long time ago - maybe early to mid 90s
Round 2 : Ecco Pro - likely killed by M$ Outlook's release. That was probably late 90s
Round 3 : Ultra Recall - placed on life support by the StockShock Market Gyrations in 2008
Round 4 : Any nominations for 2010s

I'm trying hard to avoid Round 4 simply because life gets a bit troublesome when I have some data that still remain in Ecco, some in Outlook, some in UltraRecall.

Thankfully, I have been too busy to even start migrating my PIM data to UltraRecall - I just use it to capture webpages.

I was thinking that a possibility maybe Onenote 2007 with a combination of Outlook - anyone using a combination of these two happily without anything else.

One reason for sticking with M$ Outlook is that if you have a Windows Mobile PIM, you will need Outlook to synchronize it to your Laptop.

Just about any and every Windows Mobile application writer uses Outlook as a conduit - eg Pocket Informant, MyLifeOrganized, Agenda Fusion and probably many others.

Even Ultra Recall has synchronization with Outlook.

Dormouse:
I thought mlo used its Mobile version rather than Outlook as a conduit, though it can sync with Outlook.

I use OneNote, and Outlook when I can't avoid it (ie it's compulsory in a lot of offices and I will use it just as a conduit).

But just having the two? Well, Outlook doesn't even start to be a competent PIM. Lots of networking/group features you don't need as a single user. Awful Task Manager. No Year View in the Calendar. OneNote is a much better prog (for my uses anyway), but integrates with ie only and has limited layers in the hierarchy, though they are more useful with the addon to give a treeview. I tend to use it for organised projects rather than snippits. Having both really enforces Windows Desktop Search too, at least if you want native searching in them both. I find UR and EN better for snippits from the net; haven't used Surfulater; UR's ability there won't disappear even if it isn't developed.

It may be that SQLnotes/IQ will be the best solution in the end. But will still need Outlook available, I think.

mwfuss:
After reading about the break or freeze in the development of Ultra Recall I contacted the developers to see if the product would still be offered for sale and if so, if it would offered for sale at a discounted price. They very quickly and graciously responded to my inquiry by informing me that they would continue to fully support Ultra Recall and that they would continue to sell the program on their website at full price. I was hoping against hope that they would offer some sort of discount on the program. Although the situation is different, when Kaylon announced that they would no longer be developing either Powermarks or Mp3Rat I contacted them and they gave me a free licence for Mp3Rat [I had already purchased a license for PM]. Just to be clear, I did not expect Kinook to give away UR, I was just hoping that, in light of the development freeze, they would offer it at a discount.

Even in the absence of a discount, I still find the program to be intriguing and I would interested in knowing what others think of it. Are any DCers hardcore UR uses? If so, how do you use the program? How do you find it helpful? Is it worth the $99 to purchase the Pro version?

patteo:
I thought mlo used its Mobile version rather than Outlook as a conduit, though it can sync with Outlook.

-Dormouse (November 01, 2008, 04:37 AM)
--- End quote ---

You are right. They have their own mlo Mobile Sync Manager and it synchronizes at the record level which is very good instead of at the file level.

If I remember correctly, they used to use Microsoft Activesync.

Dormouse:
Has been offered at substantial discount on bitsdujour (62%), so might be worth waiting.

The problem for Kinook, I suspect, is that as a commercial company without massive cash balances it has to make sure that income exceeds or equals related costs. I'm not sure how much difference multilanguage versions would have made as producing them would have increased costs.

I only scratch the surface of what it can do, and mostly use it as an info store - an alternative to Evernote etc. Web page rendering is good. Wouldn't have paid $99 for it; Evernote 3 is mostly free, though it doesn't have the same functionality and its continued development really depends on its web service model taking off; seems to have reasonable funding behind it though.

I'm not sure how much difference the lack of future development makes for me. I haven't been feeling the need of extra functions.

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