RightNote version 3.0.0 released

[rjbull]

RightNote version 3.0.0 has been released:

RightNote Release History

31 July 2013, version 3.0.0

- New Feature: Evernote (Account) Manager makes it easy to work/sync with multiple Evernote accounts and notebooks.
- Fix a number of dialogs for high resolution display
- Change sync inbox page caption to “Sync Inbox”. This can be changed under Options->Editors->Evernote.
- The “Evernote Integration->Getting Started” help topic was re-written for the new Evernote Manager.
- Added help topics: Token security, Warnings and precautions, Additional way to link a notebook, and Notes for upgrading from v2.

I bought my licence on a Bits du Jour promotion.  At that point, Bits licence comments said minor versions only.  If that's correct, then as RightNote has changed from v2 to v3, I would have to buy a new licence if I wanted to use the version 3 series.  I don't immediately see anything on the BauerApps Web site about this or any price breaks, so I've contacted Rael for information.

[Dormouse]

50% upgrade discount.

Purchases made less than 12 months ago will work with v3 until 12 months after purchase date. Looks as if users would then have to revert to v2. Purchases made over 12 months ago aren't valid for v3.

[rjbull]

If it's by date, then my licence would work.  Thanks, I hadn't spotted that.  I've not been much interested in the latest features, though, which mostly seem to revolve around EverNote Cloud.

[J-Mac]

Ouch...

RightNote Pro is not an inexpensive program, so 50% of that won't be overly affordable either. With regard to the Evernote sync, I have it all set up w/auth token from Evernote, separate notebook created, etc. but though I have tried syncing notes several times no RightNote notes ever end up in my Evernote account. I hadn't bothered to write to Rael about this as the Evernote sync isn't that important to me, at least not just yet. But if that is the main "improvement" for RN 3.0 then I think I'll have to pass for now. However I just know that future features added will probably grab me by the..  uhhh...  throat (!) at some point down the line. Either that or anytime I submit a support ticket I'll probably be told that I must upgrade for the fix.

I am fast reaching the very bottom of my software budget for this decade!

Jim

[xtabber]

RightNote is "coming soon" at a 50% off on BitsDuJour. $29.97, which is $.02 more than the cost of an upgrade.

I've had RN for over a year and haven't found myself using it. If the discount also applies to upgrades, I might take it on spec that I might find a use for it in the future, otherwise, I will pass for now.

[J-Mac]

I purchased RN Pro about two years ago - I think. I refused to purchase the Ultra Recall so-called "update" where they wanted $50 with no new features, so I started checking out other similar programs. Ones that would allow downloading web content that I need or want for reference. I started running MyInfo and RightNote in parallel and grabbed whatever content I wanted in both programs. Neither has anywhere near all the capabilities of Ultra Recall Pro, but in truth I never used all of UR's power features. Plus UR would roll over and play dead - or make itself completely useless in some other way - more and more and Kinook was not offering any help, so I figured that if I could at least get most of the features of UR that I really needed then I would be satisfied.

While RightNote failed me a few times the developer has been responsive to my support tickets and got me rolling again each time. MyInfo seemed to work flawlessly for a few months but then I ran into a host of problems with it. And the developer of MyInfo is not nearly as helpful as RightNote's.

So I have been importing a little of my data from Ultra Recall into RightNote over the past several months plus capturing web content as needed. It has held up pretty well but still is lacking some features I feel I need. Biggest negatives I have found:

• Attributes for each note/item. There simply aren't any. I was spoiled by UR's Attributes Pane! MyInfo has a feature that is somewhat similar and I guess I would call that "halfway decent". RightNote has nothing similar at all. Bummer.
• In RightNote the main UI is a window/browser with tabs across the top. These tabs are called "pages" and each item within a page is a note. Notes are listed in a tree to the left of the UI. A big problem, IMO, is moving notes between pages. Should be able to drag and drop but I have had only very limited success doing this, and I've even lost some notes for good. (NOT a good thing!) So I have abandoned drag and drop for now, which leaves me with RN's apparent favored method. Cut a note from one page and then - guess! Paste it in another page! Almost barbaric IMO, but that's how I have to do it.
• A more recent problem is the Evernote sync feature. I have it all set up as directed, but... after what appears to be a successful sync none of my RightNote notes appear in the designated notebook in Evernote. I haven't reported this yet to the developer as I am still working through my process to see if I can find where the disconnect is.

I know there are more nits I could pick but they aren't jumping into my head right away so they must be relatively minor.

Again, since the release notes for this new "major" upgrade concentrate on the Evernote sync process I don’t think there are any other improvements of note. And I don’t like the prospect of paying ~$30 for an upgrade that doesn’t really offer me anything. I was really hoping that BauerApps - the developer of RightNote - was NOT one of those who insists on releasing a major upgrade every year whether it is needed or not, but I guess that was too much to expect. Rats!

Thanks!

Jim

[urlwolf]

Wiznote blows rightnote out of the water and it's free.
Servers are in China, so it might be harder for the NSA to spy on you . Only the Chinese gov., which may well not care enough

[rjbull]

Wiznote blows rightnote out of the water and it's free.
Servers are in China

Does that imply Cloud, which is something I'm not interested in?  Also, as it appears to be in Chinese, how much can one expect in the way of Help files?

[Dormouse]

I've had RN for over a year and haven't found myself using it. If the discount also applies to upgrades, I might take it on spec that I might find a use for it in the future, otherwise, I will pass for now.

Rael has commented that the discount won't apply this time, so I'll also pass.

[J-Mac]

Running the same discount this month - January 2014.

Unfortunately the items I mentioned in my above post that are missing are still missing.

• No note attributes are available, which is important to me.
  
• Plus no improvement in moving notes, which is really poor at this time. When capturing web content I often capture it to the wrong page. Pages are like sections with each item on a page being notes. With many pages opened as tabs across the top, I would need to first open the RN window, navigate to the correct page, and only then perform the capture. I find it easier to just capture at will and then move the captured notes later, when I have more time. The weak "Move Note" feature - cut the note from one page and paste it into another - makes this a more time consuming process.

Also, the Help file is fairly sparse. It reads more like a feature list than a true Help file. And there is no forum for RightNote, so you really have no resources to assist you with the program, other than submitting support emails. I can't call this poor service, since Rael has been responsive to requests for support. But a lot of times I would like to throw an idea or question out to other users; things that don’t really belong in a support request. But there isn't anywhere to do that.

Thanks!

Jim

[superboyac]

Wiznote blows rightnote out of the water and it's free.
Servers are in China, so it might be harder for the NSA to spy on you . Only the Chinese gov., which may well not care enough

This is very strange to me.  First, which Wiznote are you talking about:
http://www.wiz.cn/index.html
or
http://www.wiznotes.com/

I'm guessing the first.  I've tried this thing, it is very plain.  It's basically a simple version of evernote with (IIRC) a couple of nifty features.  I don't understand the comparison.  Rightnote is a windows application, it's not very focused on cloud stuff.  It is very windows-ish, lots of options, lots of buttons, lots of customizeability.  I wouldn't even consider using wiznote over rightnote.

[tomos]

^SB,
IainB wrote a review which might help.

[superboyac]

^SB,
IainB wrote a review which might help.

oh wow...looks like there has been a lot of development since i tried it.  OK, looks like I may have to take back what I said!

[peter.s]

I'm not flooding the web with RightNote "hate", but since RN is described here, I'll have my word.

Switching from Ultra Recall to RightNote (as J-Mac has done) seems a little bit excentric.

Some details have been given by J-Mac above, and here's some other stuff:

http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/5264/0/am-i-just-dumb-or-is-rightnote-total-rubbish

Of course that false dichotomy was for fun (both elements), but Rael should do something about the issues with his very uneven prog, and fast.

[TucknDar]

Well, I'll add some RightNote love, to balance out the negative views.

I love RightNote, I think it's a wonderful piece of software and is perfect for my needs. 
I probably don't use half it's features, but what I do need is in there, and the web capturing is excellent. Money well spent, IMO!

[peter.s]

"Well, I'll add some RightNote love, to balance out the negative views."

Add love where you want if there's a chance for it to be returned to you, but don't call facts "views".

[cyberdiva]

I notice that no one has mentioned Surfulater, a program I have used and liked VERY much for several years.  I've never tried RightNote, UltraRecall, or others mentioned here, but they sound quite similar to Surfulater.  That's why I'm surprised no one has mentioned it.  It's kinda pricey ($79 for use on up to five computers), but it's occasionally discounted, and even at full price it seems to me well worth it, though I can understand that the price may be a dealbreaker for some. 

[J-Mac]

I notice that no one has mentioned Surfulater, a program I have used and liked VERY much for several years.  I've never tried RightNote, UltraRecall, or others mentioned here, but they sound quite similar to Surfulater.  That's why I'm surprised no one has mentioned it.  It's kinda pricey ($79 for use on up to five computers), but it's occasionally discounted, and even at full price it seems to me well worth it, though I can understand that the price may be a dealbreaker for some. 

I think the main dealbreaker has been the developer's blog posts about the future of Surfulater. Back in late 2011 - early 2012 Neville sounded somewhat uncertain as to the direction of continued development, and that always causes consternation among the users. In early 2012 he posted that he would have to re-code Surfulater in order to make it able to have mobile versions. He soon christened that re-write as "Surfulater Next-Gen". That has been in development since early 2012 and is still in development now, AFAIK. Latest version of Surfulater available now is 3.42.1, I believe, and that was released in Feb 2012 - just shy of two years ago. Whenever Surfulater is available at Bits DuJour some questions are posted there about the current version vs. the "Next-Gen" version. It currently appears that the Surfulater you have now will not be upgradeable to the new version. Next-Gen will be subscription-based and BTW: no more folders; Surfulater Next-Gen will use hierarchical tags instead. Methinks all that might have something to do with "deal-breaking"!

Jim

[cyberdiva]

Jim, I understand and share some of these concerns.  I'm not aware of whether or not current owners of Surfulater will get a reduced price for the Next-Gen version, but I expect they will.  I'm also not clear just what features/options that version will have.  At one point, Neville said that users of Next Gen could/would have their data on their computers, not just in the cloud.  If that's the case, I'm probably going to spring for Next Gen when it's available, since I have been extremely happy with Surfulater for several years.  And if Next Gen also works on my Nexus 7 tablet, so much the better.

As for folders vs. tags, years ago I would have been nervous about this, but my very positive experience first with Powermarks and now with Linkman has won me over to the virtues of keywords, which I think are essentially tags.  I can find any of my thousands of bookmarks almost instantly in Linkman thanks to keywords, and I expect the same speed and precision advantages will be true of a tag-based Surfulater.   Moreover, with tags, one can essentially have the same item in several "folders" so one doesn't have to wonder which folder one filed it in.  Another lesson learned from Powermarks/Linkman.  Yes, I have folders in Linkman (as I did in Powermarks), but what gives Linkman its speed and accuracy are the keywords.

[J-Mac]

Hi diva.

I asked Neville about a discount - like maybe a reduced subscription rate for the first year - for users of the current Surfulater and he replied that he hadn't thought about it but that he would give it thought. That was a while ago on Bits. I haven't heard anything further about this though. Also I believe, IIRC, that Neville has stated that he plans to allow cloud storage or local storage, though I don’t know if he has that in the Next Gen version yet. No word on when it will be released, or at least I haven't seen anything about that yet.

Linkman! You mentioned tags in Linkman. I presume you are talking about the keywords? I have used Linkman for a few years now though I must admit I don’t use the keywords much anymore. Rather than a separate field for users to enter keywords, Linkman takes the keywords that the website builder uses for search bots or whatever. And Linkman pulls all of those in for each URL saved. I have some bookmarks that must have 200 to 300 doggone keywords! A lot of sites put everything in their keywords imaginable, which I don’t much like. I used to highlight and delete all the keywords that come in with the bookmark and then enter my own, but that turns bookmark saving into a PITA, in my opinion. I wish the Linkman developers would give us a separate field for our own tags/keywords, independent of the long lists that a lot of sites have. Actually if they would make importing the sites' keywords a user-configured option I'd be tickled!

Thanks!

Jim

[tomos]

I'm curious if Surfulator overcomes the tag searching shortcomings of RN mentioned in the link from peter.s above (post #13)


Otherwise, and FWIW, my sense of fairness says it's not really fair to be talking about one app in a thread about another app - unless you are comparing the two  

[peter.s]

tomos, it will - but that' not the prob.

SOME people here mix up "keywords" / additional tags within an otherwise hierarchical data repository, and a tagging system (treed or not, and where such a contextual data hierarchy simply is not there) - these are two different worlds, conceptually. All about trees and tags in the outlinersoftware forum (whilst my very first musings about the difference in paradigm was here, in a discussion with Paul, some year ago).

So some current Surfulater users might be in for a shock if they really try to switch to NextGen (and if Neville does away with the non-tag tree indeed). For the casual reader who's not willing to delve into details: Just consider that today's tagging systems do not allow for "manual sort" of the items to be found in some tag tree subtree, whilst in outliners you do manually sort siblings in order to give them more "meaning", more "accessability", in a word/term, "natural order for current context", and of course, for some 20 or 30 such siblings, and for serious / efficient work, that's an important criterion for your data repository.

And yes, for SOME, very specific data collections, tags are best (here again, details in outlinersoftware.com).

But tag trees try to overcome the above-mentioned endless-keywords-lists probs, but try to apply the tagging concept to stuff that had better be put into a tree, with clones. Here again, for the casual reader: Tags are best for traditional db items, i.e. stuff that sometimes is considered in "collections", to compare, but which is treated "one-by-one"; whilst "tree stuff" is data that has to be "combined" to be useful, be it combinations of items(' partial content) in order to create additional items, or be it "just" for your "consideration", and your decision-making: Here, as I have developed illic, the "manually sorted context" of the tree concept (whilst subject to necessary amendmend, I perfectly acknowledge that (keyword here: in current realizations, no variants in sorting for different contexts, let alone subgroups / easy combination variants)) should be preferred.

Current RightNote neither has clones, nor has it viable tag M, so it's not good for anything, considering its bug make it doesn't even have working Boolean search. But there certainly will be a version 4, much better than the current one.

IM is about making available anything possibly relevant info in an optimized way, and without the (academic or corporate) user going crazy in the process, i.e. complexity reduction, yes, but not to the point of leaving relevant things out; and in tagging systems for academic stuff, it's the poverty of the tool that then triggers unnecessary manual, additional work "on arrival" - dont mix up neatness and primitiveness. Join me illac, and let's see if we can find some improvement of either concept together.

[tomos]

Very interesting post peter. Some of it is over my head - I'm one of those causal readers ;-)
I've only used tags in fairly basic manner but am curious (and would like to get more efficiently organised).

FWIW, sorting is very important to me in file management and email client so can understand your emphasis on it.

Wondering what is
           1) a "viable tag M" is?
           2) is illac a typo of illic (I could find illic online, but not illac)


On the side: I'm unhappy with the use of the word 'clones' to indicate the same item shown in different locations, but have heard it's fairly universal at this stage - is that the case?
(If that's a clone, what do you call an identical copy :-/ )

[cyberdiva]

Linkman! You mentioned tags in Linkman. I presume you are talking about the keywords? I have used Linkman for a few years now though I must admit I don’t use the keywords much anymore. Rather than a separate field for users to enter keywords, Linkman takes the keywords that the website builder uses for search bots or whatever. And Linkman pulls all of those in for each URL saved. I have some bookmarks that must have 200 to 300 doggone keywords! A lot of sites put everything in their keywords imaginable, which I don’t much like. I used to highlight and delete all the keywords that come in with the bookmark and then enter my own, but that turns bookmark saving into a PITA, in my opinion. I wish the Linkman developers would give us a separate field for our own tags/keywords, independent of the long lists that a lot of sites have. Actually if they would make importing the sites' keywords a user-configured option I'd be tickled!

Hi, Jim.  Thanks for the info about your exchange with Neville.  I guess we'll just have to wait a bit longer to find out what the features and policy on updates for NextGen will be.

I'm writing now to address your remarks about Linkman.  What you've asked for already exists.  When I started using Linkman, I quickly found that I hated the junk that often was added by companies to the keywords and description fields, but then I saw that there's a checkbox on the form we use to add and edit a bookmark to linkman that says "retrieve keywords" and  "retrieve description".  I have those UNCHECKED and so I don't get keywords and descriptions I don't want.  The only keywords and descriptions I include are those I put there.  I tend not to use descriptions, but I depend on keywords, which, as far as I'm concerned, are pretty much the same as tags.  So in Linkman not only does the user have control over which categories are used in a search, s/he also has control over what's in the keywords and descriptions sections.  

[peter.s]

Hello, tomos,

Illic and illac - well, I once attended a German "Gymnasium", and there I got the "Big Latinum", but that was ages ago, and my tries to differenciate the two, before using those terms here, by web search, was unsuccessful; they seem to be more or less synonyms, but perhaps not in all possible cases, so I'd be thankful for an expert to inform us of the minute differences in use of both (I suppose it's a "case" thing).

As for "viable tag M", "M" being "management", in all my posts (as "IM" is "information M" and "IMS" being "IM system"), but here, I just wanted to express that of course, a VERY basic condition for ANY tagging system should be to be able to (easily) combine tags not only in applicating them, but then again, when constituting any "collections" / "items' sub-groups" by combining them. (I'm even quite sure that in SOME way or another, that might be able in RN 3, but then, I asked for HOW to do this, explicitely in outlinersw forum, and, implicitely, here, but without getting any answer, and even IF it's possible in RN, it certainly is absolutely awful.)

Re clones: There's an "official" term for it used by some author, but which I quickly forgot; my today's synonym search for "clone" didn't bring it even (but brought "mimeo" which I kind of like). Again, the real prob doesn't lie in the term, but in its application:

Most outliners, once you clone an item, will NOT distinguish anymore between the "original" and the "clones", whilst conceptually, there should be an (updatable) difference, and which I call "natural parent" and "adoptive parent" - name it as you like, but it's evident any item in a tree hierarchy should have a "natural/main context", and then, perhaps multiple, "additional contexts" - and be it only for avoidance-of-recursion reasons: btw, I mentioned this problem within a discussion of InfoQube in the outlinerswforum, where the developer of IQ, Pierre Paul Landry, suberbly said (I'm citing from memory), "IQ allows for recursion"... when in fact, recursion is a PROBLEM of IM, and which has to be avoided/contained, and certainly not a feature of IM (development illac ;-) ).