• Does it solve my particular problem.
• Is it easy to use.
• Does it have the set of features and capabilities that I need.
• Will it continue to meet my needs as I become more adept.
• Does it include good documentation.
• Will it save me time (will I be more productive).
• Is it worth the cost (both financial and time to learn & use).
• Is it robust and well supported.
• Also see: Before purchasing software

Software developers must take all of these issues and more into account when we design our products. I’ve specifically not used the term software or program here as a product is a lot more than just the software. Unfortunately there are quite a few software developers that don’t realize this.

Basically we perform a juggling act, continually weighing up the pros and cons of everything we do. New feature requests must be assessed on the value they add to the product, how broad the interest for our users might be, the impact they have on usability and added complexity, extra documentation and additional support (costs).  See my Creeping Featuritis post for more on this.

So developing a product that ticks all of the right boxes  is always challenging. Exposure to customer needs, our overall depth of experience and an affinity with the product all help.

Let me finish by telling you that this was not a post that I had intended to write. Instead I was going to write about a review of Surfulater that has recently been published. The review was undertaken by three different people responding to the same set of questions. The outcome is quite interesting and clearly shows how various people can view the same product so differently. It also demonstrates the difficulty there is in ticking all the right boxes.  I’ll hold over linking to the review for another post.

Neville

Surfulater

What it is: Sure there’s lots of information on the Web, but sometimes you just want to keep those little nuggets you find on your system for safe keeping. Surfulater lets you permanently save selected text, images, and complete Web pages, then edit, annotate, cross-reference, organize, and search for information in your offline personal and portable knowledge base.     

Why you should use it: Ever find a dead link in your Favorites folder? Or discover a piece of information has been moved onto the “subscription only” part of a Web site?

Where to get it: www.surfulater.com

Surfulater is indeed a great addition to IE, but of course it also works with Firefox and does much more than just make it easy to capture web content. But you most likely already know this.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Xmas + New year break, we certainly did. I’m back at work in earnest now, after cutting back to a support only role over the break.

Tagging. Right now it looks like the next big new feature for Surfulater will be tagging. I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time and have locked down an initial design over the past week or so, which looks good, at least on paper.

I’ve re-read everyones posts on the forums, gone over the notes I’ve been taking for some time now and digested and distilled these into the initial design specification.

In order to deliver the proposed tagging system as well as other future capabilities, it looks like I’ll be replacing the fairly simple database engine Surfulater has successfully used to date with a far more powerful SQL Database engine. This will require code to convert your existing KB’s to the new database, as well as the new code for the tagging system, so it may turn into an even more substantial task than I had expected. That said the end result will be well worth it and put things firmly in place for even more interesting future developments.

As soon as I’ve got something to show you and talk more about I’ll post here on the blog.

PS. Thanks for all the great comments re. Web KB’s in my last blog post.

James Fallows mentioned Surfulater in The Atlantic in Nov 2006 in his article Making Haystacks, Finding Needles.

A relatively new entry, Surfulater, created by a veteran developer in Australia, differs from most of the others in the elaborate ways it allows you to comment on, classify, and even edit the material you have collected. For instance, if you’ve copied and stored a blog entry or a passage from a Web site, you can enter notes of your own—“There he goes again!” “This detail is interesting—right alongside the clip, and search for those comments later on. It also has a variety of special categorization tools.

A few weeks back a new customer mentioned he heard about Surfulater in the Washington Post, but I’ve yet to find out any details. Library Clips wrote an article Surfulater for PIM back in August 2006. Bob Stumbel’s EVERYTHING 2.0 list includes Surfulater in his OS 2.0 – Update section, which doesn’t seem the right spot to me.

Back to Ercan’s review which you can find at Great Information Manager: Surfulater. Ercan does a very good job of explaining the need people have for Surfulater and how it fulfills this need. Best if you go and read it for yourself.

If you write a blog or a newsletter or know someone that does and would like to help more people find out about Surfulater, please do get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.

I find the program to be very useful. In fact, I’ve come to like Surfulater so much that it’s not only a Pick but it’s also one of my Dr. File Finder Favorites and those are few and far between. Check it out … I think you’ll like it!

Michael has been reviewing software for quite some time (in the average year he evaluates 10,000 programs), and must see products that traverse the landscape from woeful to great. I am extremely pleased that Michael has placed Surfulater somewhere in the latter category.

Michael first contacted me in late 2005 indicating he was interested in reviewing Surfulater type programs and we had an interesting exchange at the time as we’ve both been involved in the software business for a long time. As often happens I didn’t know the review had actually been published until after the event. It is currently flagged on the Tucows home page which is great and I look forward to hearing from more Tucows readers.

Here is Dr. File Finders review in full:

Surfulater, by Soft As it Gets Pty Ltd is a program that I use myself to gather ideas of articles. Rather than jot down notes about a topic I might want to write about, I use Surfulater to “grab” the idea and save it for me. No typing involved. The program lets you save anything you find on the Internet. At the same time, the program makes it easy to organize information as well. It’s perfect for anyone doing research, gathering information, and so on.

Surfulater lets you put things in categories and you can even cross-reference entries. I actually have categories that are related to columns here on Tucows. So, I have a “How To” category, a “Tell Me About” category, and so on. The program is very intuitive and easy-to-use. To me that makes it perfect for users with all levels of experience. Another feature that I really like is that it supports Firefox which is my default browser. Some of the other programs only work with Internet Explorer.

Surfulater makes it easy to gather information, to save things that you want to read later, and more. Create as many categories as you want and the build your own library of information. I find the program to be very useful. In fact, I’ve come to like Surfulater so much that it’s not only a Pick but it’s also one of my Dr. File Finder Favorites and those are few and far between. Check it out … I think you’ll like it!

Thanks Michael.

My guess is that most people are fairly ruthless when evaluating software, I know I certainly am. Jonathon’s point 5 “If the UI sucks – uninstall the program” rings true to my ears. Very few people give first impressions a second chance. I wouldn’t for a minute suggest that Surfulater has the best UI around town and as sure as I’m sitting here writing this, there will be people who have uninstalled Surfulater as quickly as they installed it, but hopefully not too many.

 Without further ado here is Jonathon’s post in its entirety:

Just a quick note on this.  During the last few weeks I downloaded a ton of programs (including the ones discussed at the beginning of this thread).  I don’t see what the interest in MyBase is?  I installed this program and promptly uninstalled it because I didn’t see anything I wanted to use. 

In my view (perhaps different from yours because I am an architect/law student).  I want a nice UI and easy access to my information.  The information is what it is all about.  As far as a text only programs there should be not discussion.  There are a ton of text editors that all do the same thing.  What is important is a tool that will allow you to gather information from everywhere (the web included) organize it (usually trees) and link it. Obviously the ability to grab information from the internet is important (because there is so much information out there) but you need to also be able to use simple text or import from other sources, docs, pdfs, etc. 

With this said, I am placing my bet on Surfulater.  I down loaded this program with about 20 others and it is still installed.  My process for evaluating is as follows:
1. Go to download.com and do a general search so you get as many results as possible (then do it again so you do miss it)
2. Go through the hundreds of results, read the descriptions, look at screenshots, visit homepages, and finally download promising programs.
3. Install all the promising programs (I do it while I am searching)
4. Gather all the new shortcuts on the desktop, and open each of the programs
5. If the UI sucks – uninstall the program
6. Take a closer feature look at each of the remaining programs.  Can you import the information you want? Does it work well with other programs? Can you input data easily (i.e. is the structure of the program not so restrictive that it takes to long to input simple date), etc, etc,

I did this, and have already deleted many “promising” programs.  Surfulater is still running and here is  why:

It is a web companion yes, but I can also use it to input practically anything else with the attachment and clipboard utility.  To understand the features you’d have to try it.  A good quick view of the possibly it to look at the help section – it was created in the program and is obviously not just clippings from the web.

Here are a few features I loved:
1. I can create many different “books” (that’s what I am calling them).  I have created, Projects, Personal, School, and AEC.  The books are displayed as colored tabs along the top so I can quickly switch between each, and in each book I can have as many articles and folders I want. 
2. It is the best for capturing web articles.  I can download just the part I selected, the selection and the page (which appears as a thumbnail by the imported selection), or the selection and a link to the page.  The title automatically is inserted as well as a link.
3. Here come the best features – accessibility to data – to any note I can add comments, a reference, attachments, or “see also” (which creates a bi directional link to another article. 
4. Visibility – I have never seen this feature but I love it.  Next to each of the items noted above there is a minimize button so I can hide, the article and just view my comments, links, etc.  Also if I click on the “Roofs” folder I can see all the sub articles instantly without having to select each separately.
5. The clip board tool.  I am working on a project with about 100 pages of restrictions, and I am using Surfulater to organize these.  I scanned the document into PDF format.  When I read something I need to reference, I select it and copy it, then I go to Surfulater and create a new article base on this selection, then I put in my comments, i.e. what we are going to do to comply with the requirement

Anyway the possibilities are endless.  I really never write reviews for programs, but I am just extremely impressed with Surfulater.  I haven’t found a program quite like it, and if you guys really want the best editor  – information compiler- possible, I would at least try it.  I still don’t understand what you liked about MyBase.  I chose “General knowledge Base 2.2″ over MyBase, and even that has been replaced by Surfulater…did I miss something?  I don’t remember being impressed.

Thanks Jonathon, the cheque is in the mail.

Over the weekend I was doing some Web searching and came across a mention of the press release and a link to it. The “I guess it had to happen” bit is the web site was all about surfing of the kind you do in the water, not on the web, and it was an Italian web site to boot.

Companies like mine, who have been in business for a long time, quickly loose touch with journalists and editors we know unless we are pushing out press on a regular basis, which we aren’t. And as I’ve written here recently, getting ranked well on Google is a challenge unto itself.

Now to get to the chase, we had a boost of sales, inquiries and folks entering our competition, all in the last few days. After a bit of digging (web stats didn’t help) I found out the ZDNet mentioned Surfulater in their weekly e-mail newsletter, ZDNet Download Digest. It even took pride of place as the first product mentioned. ZDNet seem to have various sites, but the main one with Surfulater is here.

The Download.com review gave Surfulater 4 stars which is good. The review mentioned a few issues, which we are addressing. I’d certainly like to know the specifics of the error they got though, and will attempt to find out.

I have no idea how this came about, but I’m so thankful that it did because we’ve been able to reach a whole bunch of people we may never otherwise have. And we’ve got some great new Surfulater customers, who are very pleased they found out about us.

PS. Thanks Mark for sending me the newsletter.

The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Experts tell you there are some basic things you need to do:

• You need to include your search keywords over and over again, preferably in bold, on your home page. This is referred to as keyword density. If the keyword density is too high you’ll get into trouble. If it is too low, your ranking in the results will not be good.
• You need to get links from other sites to your site. The sites that link to you, need to be related in some way to what your site/product is about. Too many links from inappropriate sites will get you into trouble. Too few, will see a poor ranking in the results.
• You mustn’t make any major changes to your site, as we did with the recent Surfulater site makeover. We now have a Google Page Rank of zero, which it has been since the new site was launched, earlier this month. I’m told that eventually this will resolve itself.
• You need to create fresh content on a regular basis. Search engines apparently love fresh content. One trick some sites employ is to acquire articles from various places and publish them on their site. This must be the school of; its quantity (or size) that matters, and not quality.
• You need to have your Page Titles, Meta Tags, Page names and Folder names all set just right.
• You need to watch out for Google Dance and the Google Sandbox. Lots of people talk about the sandbox, but few will tell you anything about.
• Publishing clear, concise, honest and interesting information doesn’t seem to matter much.

During my research I was led back to the Google Information for Webmasters page. Here are some points from the “Quality Guidelines – Basic principles:” section:

• Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users.
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
• Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

This is all good stuff, which I totally agree with and follow. And it probably explains why I’m not On Google and my competitors are. Funny how it also contradicts what all the SEO’s are telling us to do, as outlined above.

I guess that as long as I refuse to clutter my pages with repeated bold keywords, artificial text just for search engines and do other SEO gimmicks, I’m doomed to hover around in obscurity.

All I can hope for is the day when we have truly clever search engines that give great results, without forcing Web sites to pander for the search engines, instead of looking after our readers.

Smallbiztechnology.com helps small-medium sized businesses strategically use technology to grow their businesses and provides news, articles, discussion boards, resources, analysis & events for the owners of small-medium sized businesses.

I’ve just discovered Smallbiztechnology.com because, I’m pleased to say they’ve written a glowing review of Surfulater which you can see here.

I’ve not had much time to dig around here yet, but it looks like there is lots of good stuff to read.