Good news for any InfoSelect users

[SKesselman]

Sarah, I'm rapidly becoming a big fan of yours.

-40hz (September 28, 2009, 08:18 AM)

 

[bababooey]

I am stunned at/by/on/over/with (?) their asking prices, Sarah

Info Select 2007:
$250 once, or
$50 per year.
Upgrade: $100

-Micro Logic

Version "2010" better be out-of-this-world fantastic awesome good! Argh, silly me! At this price I won't be using it anyway, so what does it matter to me how incredible expensive it may seem.

-Curt (September 21, 2009, 10:40 AM)

Ditto. I used InfoSelect in its early DOS days. I also flipped when I saw the current price.

[dyuhas]

Well, now that you're in the group, why not just ask Jim Lewis what prompted him to come back? 
Now is the time to ask anything you want. 

He's answering many inquiries. From the latest posts, I assume that this is no picnic for him.
He's getting a lot of criticism, yet he's still asking people to articulate their wants and needs for InfoSelect.
Personally, I don't feel that this is probably just a flash in the pan; he has no history of showing up then leaving.

...

-SKesselman (September 25, 2009, 02:40 AM)

It's probably just an extraordinary coincidence that Mr. Lewis took over moderation of the forum (after 10 years of ignoring it) and simultaneously announced that a new version (v10) is in beta.

He has no history of "showing up then leaving" because he, or any Miclog representative, never showed up at all.

It may interest members of this forum to know that Mr. Lewis demanded that a non-laudatory post about the v10 beta be deleted by the poster/beta tester. The poster wrote that v10 consisted of a bolted on UI with very little that was new.

[SKesselman]

Post deleted.

Apparently, I wasn't being very mindful when I posted this rude and reactive response.

Sincere apologies to anyone who may have run across it.

[mouser]

I think the conversation on this thread is degenerating and becoming personal.  It seems like a useful thread for people who want to talk about InfoSelect -- can we just keep things civil and discussion relevant to the subject matter.  And most of all avoid personal attacks and back and forth.

We try not to get into wars here, and we welcome anyone from different positions, but let's not have any fighting from other forums migrate over here please.

[Khalid_FA]

1- In the past , every time I asked Miclog about any upcoming features or some kind of hint at something I would get the standard reply about company policy not to discuss any future developments ! Go to any Mac software developer and pose any question you like ,they'll most likely answer you the same day ! You think most of these guys are your best friend they reply to everything and are so helpful , they even ask you to check out the competition and identify them for you before you purchase see for example Scrivener  www.literatureandlatte.com
2-Yes you can run Windows and all applications using emulator which is just as fast as a native windows , while running Mac apps see , I use VMware Fusion .
3-Yes, Memory Mate was clean and simple !!
4-Info select is definetly over priced, the subscription I thought was a good deal , but 3 years without upgrade its not such a great offer after all .
5-I don't think they'll ever  by an IS for OS X  , they just don't have the friendly culture and customer service .

[IainB]

As a long-time user of the superb PIM software IS (I have stayed with IS8 after trialling later versions), I am just updating this thread with some potentially interesting info from some recent new posts by users on the Yahoo InfoSelect User Group discussion forum.
By the way, the versions since IS8 were IS9 (called IS2007) and IS10.

The background, as discussed in this DC thread and elsewhere, is that the Yahoo IS  forum was taken over by the IS developer Jim D Lewis (President/CEO of Micro Logic and eMachineShop), and he proceeded to gather feedback and release what was at the time the new rewrite of IS - IS10 - for Beta testing. In the forum, I and several others posted our feedback and comments.
Things turned sour with the users and their requirements apparently being disregarded, and the forum became rather negative in content and several IS users were driven to abandoning IS and seeking an alternative (e.g., including EverNote and AllMyNotes, amongst others).
Jim D Lewis apparently remains as the sole Owner/Moderator of the forum, but seems to now make little or no comment or response to questions posed in the forum, and the Miclog support desk has apparently become equally uninformative/unresponsive. From time to time, forum members still help each other out over technical problems in running the different versions of IS that they use.

In the posts below: (my emphasis)

• The first is about the latest version IS10 and asks whether there will be an IS11 version. The post is made by a user seeking information, but is in itself quite informative.
• The second post is an informative reply from another user, giving some experience about potential alternatives to IS.
• The third is a reply to the second, also informative about the risks of becoming an "orphaned" user.

For any interested IS users in the DC forum, I thought I'd post these here as I had wondered what the status of IS10 was/is, and this looks like it could be a useful indicator: (It's not too hopeful. IS10 seems to have been a relatively expensive and unfinished or poorly-finished product, not meeting users' needs, and now possibly abandoned/unsupported by the developer.)

Info Select Users
        Restricted Group,
        953 members
Topic: Will IS ever upgrade again
    Member: eckstein.nick
    Dec 18 4:01 PM

Dear All,
Ages since I've been here or posted a message.
I have a question - it's one I've written several times to MicLog about, but they refuse to answer it specifically. It's simple: will Info Select ever be upgraded again?
I first asked over two years ago without satisfaction. I asked again this week.

Here's what happened. The first reply was this:
"Thanks for your message. Unfortunately, I can't indicate when Info Select version 11 will be available. Please stay in touch with our website for Info Select news and updates."

I then wrote the following:
"Thank you for the reply. It's almost exactly the same as the one that I received when I wrote last time. But what you say does imply that Micro Logic is working on an upgrade, and that version 11 is in the pipeline: is that correct? It would be good if you could confirm that."

The response to my second e-mail was no response at all. I don't understand why MicLog refuses even to confirm that they are (a) working on an upgrade; (b) not working on an upgrade.
If it's the latter, then there's nothing to lose by saying so. If it's the former that would be good news as far as I'm concerned.
I purchased the upgrade to Version 10 but a brief initial encounter with it was enough to drive me back to Version 9, which I've been using ever since, and still use every day.
Nothing I try matches it: Evernote, despite what its fans say, does NOT match IS's search capacity, and the feature that I call "I put it here". Tagging is an essential feature, which IS hasn't to this point mastered. But tagging is not a replacement for the ability to use a flexible hierarchy. These two features keep me wedded to IS.
But what IS has never addressed is the Cloud and all the features that, as in OneNote, allow one seamlessly to store and search things that aren't straight text, including audio.

I don't have to tell anyone in this forum about any of this. My reason for mentioning it relates to the upgrade question. It's one I've written a number of times to MicLog about, again without ever receiving anything approaching a satisfactory response.
It goes like this: if Info Select upgraded to do the things that Evernote and OneNote do, WHILE RETAINING THE FEATURES AND STRUCTURE THAT MAKE IS UNIQUE, then it would again be the killer application it was years ago...light years ahead of these competitors.

All I would like to know - and I suspect that I'm not the only one - is whether MicLog has any interest in doing this. If not, fine. If the company IS interested, and were to say something like: "we are working on this...it's taken longer than we had anticipated. It may even be another couple of years before we get there, but we're doing it and it will happen", I'd be happy. And I'd wait for that release. Because even in its clunky, old-fashioned state, IS still wipes the floor with the opposition on searching and storing basic data.

But going on past form, I suspect that MicLog will ignore this e-mail as well.
With respect, and an implicity smiley emoticon, I just don't get it.

Cheers,
Nick.
_____________________________________

9 more messages
    Member: G
    Dec 19 10:19 PM

Nick
I communicated to the Owner of AllMyNotes  (AMN), a nice guy.
I also tried out AMN as a replacement for  IS9.  I found that when I started loading up AMN with about 20 mB of data
(I have about 4 to 5GB of notes in IS9)   AMN  started to get noticeably slower.
I stopped at that point
Agree with IS10 Calender - Although IS9 Calender isn't the greatest - it is useable. IS10 Calender is less  usable than IS9
Too much fiddling with controls to get the Calender to a useful setup.
IS10 has some long needed feature upgrades like the  High Low Medium Priority flags ( exclamation marks in Colour , next to a note).   The fiddly-ness of the new ribbon kills its friendliness and speed.   So many extra button clicks just to do something.  

George
_____________________________________
On Sat, Dec 20, 2014 at 5:11 PM, eckstein.nick@... [InfoSelect] <[email protected]> wrote:

    Thanks! One reason I didn't go with AllMyNotes was the quality of the website...
    And, obviously, I'm worried about being 'orphaned' by MicLog: AllMyNotes looks a great place for that to happen all over again.

    N
_____________________________________

[peter.s]

1

Your infatuation with IS is established, and I also am acquainted with the ways some people here kick up long-buried threads from the dust again, with titles having become hilarious in time, so I didn't really fell for the obvious trap "Good news", for revival of a more-than-5-years old thread. In other words, I have been zero astonished from the absence of any good news. On the other hand, you never know, there might be a chance there is, so you have to look it up, and that way, they get you anyway - it's disrespect for readers NOT interested in lies but in news, but as long as foxes do protect the hens...

2

Thus, since I have been lured into this anyway, let me say that some, "But what IS has never addressed is the Cloud and all the features that, as in OneNote, allow one seamlessly to store and search things that aren't straight text, including audio." is of sociological interest indeed, but that in fact, illiterates discuss linguistics.

Any discussion about how to group and make available files and info therin in multiple, optimized ways, is a modern one, and an expedient one, cf. http://www.outliners...m/topics/viewt/5593/ , and I do not deny that cloud access has become worthwile to discuss, too ; any whining about not all your stuff being replicated within some proprietary db repository is just completely unsexy, vieux jeu blatant amateur blah blah (not to be confounded with possible enthousiasts' rectifiable beginners' mistakes).

You simply have to conceive that smart sw designers - Mr. Lewis here - might have realized that the "put it in the pim" concept has had its day, and that they act accordingly* (and oh, that, "The response to my second e-mail was no response at all. I don't understand why MicLog refuses even to confirm that they are (a) working on an upgrade; (b) not working on an upgrade. If it's the latter, then there's nothing to lose by saying so." - that was a good one! cf. the never-ending dying of askSam) - and get some other clothes, please, your old ones are unbearable to look at. (Oh, it isn't even you? You a replica? That fits then.)

* = Look at it from another angle: One smart developer at least doesn't degrade himself to taking any more money from idiot users willing to throw their money again and again into the wrong direction. It's just that you ain't accustomed to honest merchants anymore, Slatty.

[IainB]

@peter.s: Well, if I had started this thread I would have changed its subject title to "News about InfoSelect", sorry. No intention to mislead. Fixed that now, for my comments, at least.
From what you write, I'm not sure but it seems that you may have missed the bits in those comments about IS10 being apparently unfinished/incomplete and yet still being sold as a finished product.
Having been involved in software development myself (at all levels) and over many years, I am accustomed to honest developers, and I assure you that in my experience they are the norm, in the main. Sure, they might be fallible (like all of us), and (say) make mistakes or even be incompetent, but they are usually pretty honest, notwithstanding.
I would presume Jim D Lewis to be in the same bucket - and the earlier versions (before IS10) turned out to be pretty well-designed pieces of software - to his credit.
You arguably made some valid skeptical points in your comments about the ubiquitous "Cloud". I too am skeptical. If the important thing is to be able to get the database into the Cloud, then in IS' case that can be done simply by linking the client database to a Cloud drive/directory, on the local client, so all your updates are being constantly synced to the Cloud whilst you are online and logged in to whichever Cloud service you are using as the sync target. At least, that's the way I would do it, as my requirements are to have the primary database available offline, and synced to a secondary copy in the Cloud whilst online (for backup and/or for use by other client devices on the Internet).

By the way, I wouldn't refer to myself as being infatuated with IS. I am a fan and power user of PIMs and a keen CRIMPer:

CRIMP defined
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
May 10, 2006 at 01:05 PM
 
CRIMP stands for a make-believe malady called compulsive-reactive information management purchasing. Symptoms include:
   • never being satisfied with your current system of information management
   • continuously being on the look-out for something newer and better
   • purchasing every new PIM program you learn about
   • and secretly hoping you won’t find the perfect PIM, because then you’d have to stop looking for a better one

So, when someone speaks of succumbing to his or her CRIMP, it means acknowledging that they’ve purchased another PIM program even though they really don’t think they need it.
There must be a 12-step program for over-coming CRIMP, but who really wants to? It’s too much fun.
Steve Z.
From <http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/17/0/crimp-defined>

For example, only this morning, I compulsively downloaded two PIMs for trial:

• Elephant: a $FREE PIM from http://elephant.mine.nu/ (a relatively new product in Beta).
• GS Notes: a $FREE PIM from The Golden Section Labs http://www.tgslabs.com/ (and their other software at that URL, all of which used to carry a hefty price-tag).

____________________
(Hat-tip to discussions on http://www.outlinersoftware.com )