Kinook pulls the plug on Ultra Recall

[PPLandry]

This came as a big surprise...

http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3204
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/872/0/ultra-recall-is-dead

[Dormouse]

It's not quite pulling the plug, but it's hard to see that it will be worth their while restarting development if they will be waiting for the end of the recession. OTOH, it seems to me that lots of publishers let their progs quietly languish undeveloped (eg gemx) while still selling them and without saying what plans are; refreshing to have Kinook make this announcement.

Very sad, though  .
But possibly not for you Pierre 

[kartal]

Sad news. It was a good application

[PPLandry]

Very sad, though 
But possibly not for you Pierre 

Competition is generally a good thing. Also, the concept behind both programs is not exactly the same. There really isn't anything else quite like UR, so this is very unfortunate for the UR users. Let's hope, they change their mind.

The same thing happened to Ecco in 1997: released version 4.01 and shortly after closed it up. Sales was partly is issue there too.

[muntealb]

Ultra Recall lacked two very important features:

1) It did not fully support Unicode

2) The interface and manual were only available in english.

A commercial software must widen its intended audience by offering features for non-english speaking users, it's really a must today.

[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 . 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.

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.

[iphigenie]

i remember packrat, still have it somewhere

[muntealb]

I'm not sure how much difference multilanguage versions would have made as producing them would have increased costs.

I don't think so. If a software has enough users, there are great chances that some of them would want to translate it. Usually this work is rewarded with a free license, but there are users that already purchased a license and will do the translation for free, because they like the software and want to increase the number of users.

A good localization (interface + manual) brings users and consequently money. Had Ultra Recall  been localized in the languages spoken by populations around or larger than 100 million people (french, spanish, japanese, chinese, etc.), probably it would have sold enough licenses to continue development. However, these means full support for Unicode, because asian languages need it. I don't know how difficult would have been for Ultra Recall to provide a language file (text file with the strings from the menus and options), but this could have saved the software.

[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.

Wow, I did not know I could be so prescient - it has now disappeared and replaced with

Kinook Software Forums - Roadmap
"Roadmap

Last updated on 10/30/2008

Approximate Priority for Future Releases

# Highlight search results
# HTML export
# Reminder dialog enhancements
# Calendar pane
# Editing of cells in Related Items pane
# Always-on-top drag/drop target for importing into UR
# Revamp the help file
# Add columns to Data Explorer pane
# Ability to hide completed items in tree
# Two Data Explorer panes
# Investigate desktop search integration again
# Formatting of items in tree
# Expand/collapse in Related Items pane
# Automatic clipboard capture
# Keywords pane
# Tab enhancements
# Multi-DB search
# Item notes indicator
# Custom sorting in tree
# Calculated fields
# Column totals/calculations
# Search on internal links
# Queue import operations
# Flag attribute enhancements
# Filtering in tree

"
http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3204

Maybe with the "Change" just happening in the U.S. there has been also a change of heart by the authors of Ultra Recall.

Hmm, the Audacity of Hope.