Messages

1

General Software Discussion / Re: What are people using these days, instead of Surfulater?

« on: September 13, 2019, 05:27 PM »

It uses the database on the Clibu server.

-nevf (September 12, 2019, 05:04 PM)

That means it does call somewhere to register, correct?  It just happens to call to you.  Am I parsing that correctly?

-wraith808 (September 12, 2019, 05:46 PM)

Clibu consists of a Browser App and a Cloud Server app which communicate back and forth. User registration is handled back on the server, so yes it calls our server.

-nevf (September 12, 2019, 06:51 PM)

So even with the following feature from your prior post:

This stores all data locally, and will have offline support with synchronization to other devices should you wish to use that.

You will still need to be connected to your servers to use the software?

-wraith808 (September 12, 2019, 11:36 PM)

Apologies there is some confusion here. Clibu currently stores all data on the server, with some duplicated in the Browser.

The new app I'm developing, which I have written a bit about on the Clibu blog (along with live demos) and have mentioned here, stores all data locally.  It will eventually be able to run entirely in the Browser, even without any Internet connection. In order to get the full benefits of automagic sync across devices, secure cloud backup etc. then connection to the server would be needed. This will be optional. I hope that clears things up.

2

General Software Discussion / Re: What are people using these days, instead of Surfulater?

« on: September 12, 2019, 06:51 PM »

It uses the database on the Clibu server.

-nevf (September 12, 2019, 05:04 PM)

That means it does call somewhere to register, correct?  It just happens to call to you.  Am I parsing that correctly?

-wraith808 (September 12, 2019, 05:46 PM)

Clibu consists of a Browser App and a Cloud Server app which communicate back and forth. User registration is handled back on the server, so yes it calls our server.

3

General Software Discussion / Re: What are people using these days, instead of Surfulater?

« on: September 12, 2019, 05:04 PM »

If you haven't tried Clibu yet, I'd welcome any feedback.

-nevf (September 11, 2019, 04:59 PM)

Does it use the same sort of registration as Surfulater, i.e. dial home instead of just inputting a code?

-wraith808 (September 11, 2019, 10:14 PM)

Clibu registration is entirely in the app, no third parties involved. It uses the database on the Clibu server.

4

General Software Discussion / Re: What are people using these days, instead of Surfulater?

« on: September 11, 2019, 06:39 PM »

nevf, ill check it out at some point.  but i can no longer be switching around programs like before!! 

-superboyac (September 11, 2019, 06:07 PM)

@superboyac Just skip an episode of some mediocre tv show and put the time to better use. 

5

General Software Discussion / Re: What are people using these days, instead of Surfulater?

« on: September 11, 2019, 04:59 PM »

If you haven't tried Clibu yet, I'd welcome any feedback.

Clibu has the same functionality and UI across Smartphone, Tablet and Desktop adapting the UI to suit each device. All updates are synced to all devices in real time.

Clibu was my first Web application and borrowed quite a bit from Surfulater. However it lost some of the more desktop app capabilities which help speed up workflow, like lots of keyboard shortcuts and keyboard navigation. And the UI is a bit cumbersome.

I'm now rewriting Clibu from scratch with a heavier emphasis on usability, more powerful UI components such as the new Tree (blog)  (demo) a new and far better WYSIWYG editor with the ability to switch to using Markdown, both Tree Folders and Tags like Surfulater had, local database (with import/export), offline support with both real time sync and eventual updates when back on line and much more.

The next demo will include the new content editor, with basic functionality, new Home content, Archive and Trash collections along with various bug fixes.

6

General Software Discussion / Re: What are people using these days, instead of Surfulater?

« on: September 11, 2019, 04:33 PM »

Thanks for commenting .

Surfulater does not have any Export capability, so it isn't possible to Import it into our new app Clibu.

-nevf (September 11, 2019, 03:12 AM)

So, does Clibu have export functionality?

-Jibz (September 11, 2019, 04:38 AM)

Not yet, but planned.

7

General Software Discussion / Re: What are people using these days, instead of Surfulater?

« on: September 11, 2019, 03:12 AM »

Yep its me. I did try to update the activation but was unable to because eSellerate no longer had the users registration details. When that failed I created a new free license coupon which I sent. Unfortunately this didn't work because eSellerate seem to have been merged into another company (Sharit?) and their order system no longer works. Unfortunately this is out of my hands and there is nothing more I can do. In hindsight using a 3rd party to handle licensing was not the best of ideas.

So to say that I was not very helpful is pretty disappointing.

Surfulater does not have any Export capability, so it isn't possible to Import it into our new app Clibu.

I am quietly working on the next major version (rewrite) of Clibu. This stores all data locally, and will have offline support with synchronization to other devices should you wish to use that. It will also have local backups. For more information see the Clibu Blog which has links to early sample apps. The next sample release will have basic Note editing.

PS. Full disk image backups are a good idea and help greatly when disaster strikes.

To answer the original question: Clibu.

8

General Software Discussion / Re: Notetaking software

« on: December 14, 2017, 02:22 PM »

Anyway, after my evening reboot, Clibu came up in Firefox 52.5.

-Steven Avery (December 13, 2017, 06:57 PM)

Good to hear Clibu is ok now on Firefox 52. I was a little surprised you had a problem, but only a little.

Firefox is a continual source of frustration for me as a developer. They have basic issues that go back years that haven't been addressed. Yet they seem to think that pushing speed and changing the look will win friends and influence people. I wrote earlier in the year about the onerous process of getting Firefox Extensions accepted into their store and to hear now about Extensions breaking just adds fuel to the fire.

9

General Software Discussion / Re: Notetaking software

« on: December 13, 2017, 02:01 PM »

Windows 10, Firefox 52.5 does not get it up even after a cache clear. However, now it is working in some other browsers, so I can test it out.

-Steven Avery (December 13, 2017, 11:29 AM)

Good to hear you have it working. FYI your FF is quite behind the current Version of Firefox which is 57.02 and Clibu works fine on that.

If I can help with anything further please let me know. And do give us your feedback on whether Clibu meets your needs etc.

10

General Software Discussion / Re: Notetaking software

« on: December 12, 2017, 10:29 PM »

http://myclibu.com/  just says "Clibu loading"

-Steven Avery (December 12, 2017, 08:15 PM)

Steven,
Try clearing your Browser Cache.

What Web Browser + Version + OS are you using?

11

General Software Discussion / Re: Notetaking software - Clibu V2

« on: December 05, 2017, 02:21 PM »

Clibu Version 2 was released yesterday and is a major new release which fully supports Smartphones, Tablets as well as Desktops with all capabilities available on all platforms.

See the V2 Pt1 Blog post. for more information and the Clibu website.

Clibu V2 completes the first stage of an extensive update to turn Clibu into a Progressive Web Application or PWA. This enables it to adapt and respond to different devices and screen sizes providing an optimal user interface and user experience on all devices.

With Clibu all of you content is always up to date across all devices, gone are the days of manually synchronizing data. Clibu has true hierarchical tags, a full featured wysiwyg content editor, multiple knowledge bases, sharing and collaboration, web clipper, full text search and much more.

Future plans include full offline support, extending the on-premise version to provide Mac and Linux versions in addition to Windows, editor enhancements possibly with markdown support, more drag and drop capabilities, improved search, import/export etc.

If you've never tried Clibu or looked at an older version, please do try V2 and let us know your thoughts, so we can continue to improve it to meet your needs and wants.

12

General Software Discussion / Re: flamory

« on: November 09, 2015, 01:28 PM »

>- a Cloud-based service called Clibu (refer Clibu V1 released, improved UI and easier to use) - which (though I could be wrong, of course), seems to me to be taking several steps backwards for techno-ideological reasons, or maybe it's to create a different business revenue model. From experience, this is what tends to happen when developers of seriously useful PIMs seem to focus on functionality at the loss of focus on user requirements - e.g., InfoSelect v10.

Hi Neville here, author of Surfulater and Clibu. I'm a little intrigued by your comments on "Clibu - several steps backwards" and would appreciate it if you could elaborate. I see the opposite, but may well be somewhat blinkered in my view.

13

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: RightNote 50% discount to August 31

« on: August 20, 2015, 02:28 AM »

@IainB FYI my plan is to have several Clibu package options, including one where you will be able to install it on your local PC along with your data. This is to satisfy the needs of folks who prefer not to have content in the cloud.

Please do try Clibu and tell us what you want from it as feedback is so important in helping us deliver a product that solves real issues, well.

14

General Software Discussion / Re: On data storage and applications going cloud (Surfulater, Mindjet et al.)

« on: January 22, 2013, 08:25 PM »

Hence my assertion that sw like Surfulater et al. is for "web page collectors", but of not much help in real work.

I don't and have never seen Surfulater as a tool to collect web pages. On the contrary it's focus is retention of selected content from web pages. ie. Select content and then either create a new Surfulater article containing it or append the selected content to an existing article. Of course Surfulater can also grab entire web pages, but you typically get too much extraneous content and bloat the database.

My work flow with Surfulater is precisely this: select the bits of content I want to keep and capture those, add appropriate tags and cross-references to related articles. Add my own notes and possibly highlight specific content. Next ...  The evolution of Surfulater into a Web/Cloud app (1, 2, 3) retains this same focus.

-Neville

15

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: December 19, 2010, 04:56 PM »

I have just written a blog post “Your Information in 'The Cloud' - Safe, Secure, Available or Not?” which I thought may interest some here.

Also for the first time ever we’ve got a Surfulater 50% Xmas discount offer available. Do tell your friends, family and colleagues. Visit http://www.surfulater.com and click on the Xmas Special image at the top right of the page.

Merry Xmas to all,
Neville

16

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: July 06, 2010, 09:13 PM »

Hi Jim, I can't recall nor find on our support forums any Process Monitor results from you. As I said earlier it doesn't much matter what they show and will vary considerably from PC to PC.

Nothing has changed in Surfulater that I can think that would affect any of this. There will however be major changes once everything is moved into the new SQL Database, which may also address the Dropbox issue.

Re. Crashplan, my early post here was the first and only time I have ever mentioned it, so I am more than a little baffled by your comment!

17

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: July 06, 2010, 05:16 PM »

Hi Jim,
Ok I've just done some quick tests with two large'ish KB's open. One is 25MB .Surfulater file, 809MB .SurfulaterWDB file, the other is 11MB .Surfulater file, 75MB .SurfulaterWBD file. Surfulater closes in 2 seconds. Process Monitor shows all file activity has finished after 7 seconds. Even though Surfulater has closed completely, Windows is asynchronously updating the file system. Of course your mileage may vary and this really doesn't mean much.

What is critical though is that any backup application that monitors the file system in real time, delays its file access for a reasonable period of time after all file operations have completed, before it tries to gain access to such files.

Crashplan has smarts in this regard and has never had a problem backing up Surfulater KB's. I've recently also updated my SFFS Surfulater Profile to do Real Time Sync of my KB's and so far that hasn't had any problems either.

18

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: July 05, 2010, 04:59 PM »

Nice redesign nevf. Did you ever fix that issue were Surfulator files weren't syncing well with Dropbox?

I also read something about Free Reader mode. What's that? I haven't really been monitoring the site.

-Paul Keith (July 05, 2010, 04:24 AM)

Hi Keith,
Glad to hear you like the new site.

The only issue I am aware of with Dropbox is where the Dropbox PC software caused a problem for Surfulater. I don't know if the Dropbox people have fixed this. The advisable thing to do is ensure your Knowledge Bases or Surfulater is closed when any Backup software runs. I have looked at most off-site backup services over the years and the only one that has worked well for me is Crashplan. I have this running all the time and have never had a problem with Surfulater running and KB's open.

For info on the Free Reader please see this.

19

General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software

« on: July 05, 2010, 03:48 AM »

@note_artist yes it is quite something for a topic to continue for so long.

For those interested in Surfulater we have just completed a major redevelopment of our web site and support center. You can read more about the new site on our blog post Out with the old and in with the new- new Surfulater site is live

Now it is back to work on the next Surfulater release.

20

General Software Discussion / Re: Firewalls are wonderful things except when they aren’t.

« on: March 12, 2010, 03:56 AM »

My guess is some folks read some article suggesting they install a Firewall and really don't understand what it does, other than to help protect them from badness. Then when they install an application like Surfulater they have no idea how to respond to the many prompts the Firewall pops up. The easiest thing and in there eyes safest is to simply block access. In the particular case of Peter it took an exchange of around 5 e-mails before I worked out what was causing the problem. Further he never one mentioned his Firewall.

With regard to a brief note, yes good idea. However most people won't see or read it. I go to a lot of time and effort writing comprehensive documentation and very few people every read it.

21

General Software Discussion / Firewalls are wonderful things except when they aren’t.

« on: March 11, 2010, 07:11 PM »

Firewall users can unwittingly block applications that use local web servers to serve up content to the application, which in turn prevents them from working correctly. I have written an article about this titled Firewalls are wonderful things except when they aren’t. about this issue which I hope some find useful.

The article also touches on malware and viruses and refers to Surfulater issues with regard to Firewall blocks.

22

General Software Discussion / Re: Versioning Systems, for Small Enterprise ...

« on: March 11, 2010, 06:52 PM »

If you are still interested in Subversion I wrote: "Get up and running with TortoiseSVN and Subversion in 15 minutes." at http://blog.surfulat...rsion-in-15-minutes/

23

Living Room / Re: Surfulater 3 - huge price hike (166%) + where is the Firefox add-on?

« on: December 11, 2008, 05:39 PM »

I have checked with Avi and he never received a reply from you. Who knows why. No e-mail came to our normal support address either. Maybe you could re-send it.

The best place to discuss Surfulater is over on our support forums. We also have a "Private Messaging" service there, that is a great fallback when e-mail communications isn't for whatever reason working.

Our Affiliate program is run by eSellerate who also handle our eCommerce and licensing system. For details and signup please see
http://www.esellerat...liates_retailers.asp

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Living Room / Re: Surfulater 3 - huge price hike (166%) + where is the Firefox add-on?

« on: December 11, 2008, 03:10 PM »

I asked the company for a review copy before learning about the price increase, but never heard back on that request.

-jjc (December 11, 2008, 07:29 AM)

Dear Joseph,
On 4th Nov we received an e-mail from you requesting a free upgrade to Surfulater version 3. We had previously provided you with a free evaluation license for Surfulater version 2. On 12 Nov Avi e-mailed you the following:

Joe,

Sure, we would love to have you do a review. Have you downloaded the Surfulater 3 trial yet, and just need a license?

Avi

We never received a reply to our e-mail. We have had problems communicating with you in the past. Most likely because of spam filtering at your end. We have notified you of this and asked you to check your spam folders and spam filters. I really don't know what else we can do, especially seeing you never followed up with us.

25

Living Room / Re: Surfulater 3 - huge price hike (166%) + where is the Firefox add-on?

« on: November 14, 2008, 05:15 PM »

Surfulater Version 1 was released in Dec 2004. All new upgrades and major new releases have been free and gratis until now. That is nearly 4 years of free upgrades with many major new features and capabilities added along the way. Something you don't see too often in the software industry. I take great personal offense at people saying they purchased buggy beta software. Every one has been able to upgrade all the way up to V2.52.10.0 at absolutely no charge. All of you who use Surfulater regularly and spend any time on our forums know that I provide support second to none, and have done so for the past 20+ years of my software development career.

Surfulater started off priced way too low at $35 with a 25% early bird discount on top of that, not to mention Donation Coder and other specials. Unless you have a mass market product it is difficult to build a long term sustainable business at such low prices. The time spent on one support request instantly removes any profit. So we raised the price to $59 a while back and reduced the early bird discount amount. With Version 3 we have added more important new functionality with lots more to come in the 3.x series. We have increased the price again, to $79 which we feel is reasonable and necessary. There is a $10 discount which makes this only $69 for new customers. And for the first time in four years we have charged for an upgrade. We possibly should have extended the paid upgrade period beyond two years and we will reconsider that.

Software and software companies come and go - fact of life. If you can't build and sustain a commercially viable business you won't survive. Some consumers seem to have little interest in this, just wanting the cheapest price or better still free. I predict the rate that software products will cease development and disappear from the market will just keep increasing. Development costs, cost of living, office rental etc. keep going up and the amount some consumers seem to want to spend goes down. And of course we have all the free software to muddy the water. So you do the math. You can come to forums like this and complain, but at the end of the day if you want to see products survive and thrive, someone has to pay. Simple as that.