Support for an independant version of SideKick 14

[mickygriff]

I thought I would start a thread to show how much support there is for either an individual, group or company, to provide a reworked/updated version of Sidekick. Someone surely possesses the skills to do this? Please just reply to give this indication.

 

[jsc1]

Guess I didn't try hard enough - look at this:

"YourWay is often reviewed as a personal information manager (PIM), Prisma Software prefers to call it a Personal Productivity Workstation. What's that? It turns out to be a contact management-based program that handles schedules, phones, to-do lists, and basic written communication centered on the personal information database that's the hub of an office worker's day."

This was from a 1991 review in Compute! by Richard O. Mann.

This _does_ sound like Windows Sidekick.

 

[jsc1]

And look at this snippet:

Sona MedSpa Sona Management Team
... principal in Prisma Technologies Corp. whose principal product, Yourway, was sold to Borland Software Company and became ...

Couldn't find any more on the Sona web site - must be buried in the archives.

I tried the (800) number in the 1991 Compute! article just for kicks, and naturally, it was no longer Prisma.

 

[jsc1]

Found the predecessor! Found "Yourway.zip" at "

http://cd.textfiles.com/smsharew/WIN2/"

I unpacked it and just ran it on my WinXPsp2 system. Boy, does it look dated! (But it RAN!)

Okay, so that was fun, but it's not going to get us anywhere.

 

[Gyula]

Re: Have contacted Philippe Kahn

Following up on several of your earlier suggestions of using Google to track down Philippe, Gyula, the 66-year old boy detective, learned the following:

From an '04 "Wired" article learned that Philippe had founded a company called Lightsurf. Going to the Lightsurf Website learned that in April, 05 Verisign had bought Lightsurf and Philipe had not gone with the company. I then phoned Verisign and they have no record of how to reach Philippe, but suggested I got to

http://www.fullpower.com

as this was Philippe's new company. At that Website learned that the new company will begin operations this April 15th. It also has a page which allows you to contact them via the e-mail form on that page. I send Philippe the following e-mail (from that page):

For Mr. Philippe Kahn

Re: Help creating a patch for Sidekick 9x

I am a volunteer with a all-volunteer help Website--Tek-Tips.com--which has large and quite active "Sidekick" forum.

As I'm sure you know, the "ToDo" function on the later versions of "Sidekick" comes to a dead stop at the end of 2005. For over six months we've been trying to get it fixed or patched with no results.

Mr. Kahn, any chance you could help us repair or patch "Sidekick" so that the "ToDo" function would work throught at least the first decade of the 21st century.

Thank you very much.
=================================
I had come to know Philipe when I had been active with the Chicago Computer Society, which had him out to speak several times during his Borland period. He always struck me as one of those Frenchman who only speaks to God; therefore I'm not at all sure I will hear from him. But then you never know.

I was also given a name of one of his Lightsurf executives who came over to Verisign and is still there. He will be back at the end of this month and, if I don't hear from Philippe, I will try to phone him at that time.

 

[jeffbeal]

Great and thanks for your dective work- lets hope for the best.

 

[mickygriff]

Hey Gyula,

Great minds think alike (or maybe ‘fools seldom differ’!) I tried to send an e-mail to Mr Kahn through the Fullpower site but failed. I then sent one via the Lee-Kahn Foundation website, with a similar request for help and a link to this thread. Hopefully he will respond positively.

If you read through the information on the site, they go public on the 17th February 2007. I am intrigued by the tantalising description of what may be coming, but Full power are in ‘stealth mode’ till then. Definitely one to watch, you heard it hear first!

I also wrote to the guys at Individual Software (AnyTime Organiser as previously mentioned) and received an invitation to discuss our ‘needs further’ with John Connors, Director of Sales. I aim to do so this evening (UK time), 10am PST, and get back to you all.

Regards,

Mick

 

[Gyula]

Mickey,

1. Glad you corrected my mistake that Philippe's new firm expects to start business in 2007 (not '06 as I had listed).

2. By the way, I had submitted quite early on a submission on "Any Time Organizer". Unfotunately the submission was on its marketing not how it worked. I then, and still now, have not had time to seriously try it.

3. John Connors: isn't also the superhero who saved the human race in the three "Terminator" movies?

 

[mickygriff]

Hi all,

Spoke to John Connors this evening (Hey - JC, initials of a real guy who saved the human race!), who will refer me on to someone in the company who deals with this type of thing.

Having an opinion on AnyTime Organiser and its suitability would be vital to enable us to have a meaningful dialogue, so would appreciate anyone's input ASAP. I have used it, it is a sophisticated piece of software that works well, but I would prefer to hear other opinions as well. It is skinable but not to the degree I would want.

Is it appropriate to start a new thread in this forum that gives an indication of where we are based, just to get an idea of the 'global' appreciation of SK? If not, we could just identify ourselves in this thread? Let me know if this is inappropriate and I will amend this entry.

I am from Birmingham in the UK, and 49 (today!).

Mick

 

[tilltek]

I looked at Time & Chaos a couple of years ago and dismissed it as to tricky.
Because I feel that I will need a replacement for Sidekick within the next year or two (only because it will probably fail to work in coming Windows versions) I took the suggestion of a participant in this thread to look at the latest version (6) of T & C .
To my surprise, it had a feature I’ve been looking for years. The ability to highlight one or more contacts and then click a button to send out a mail merge form letter (in my case a yearly invoice) to that contact or contacts. Brilliant. But what team of programmers then insist on you finding, and then dragging and dropping the documents back into T & C for the appropriate contacts.

The help file isn’t too bad, but lacks quite a bit of information. It doesn’t tell you how for instance, how to change the apparently mandatory fields for Pager: URL: and MapQuest? You can delete, say, “Pager” (remember them) for a contact, but not globally. Try that with a couple of thousand contacts.

The interface is sort of MS word’ish, very boxed and angular, which does not suit this style of utility. The Sidekick 98 interface or the new Microsoft OneNote, both of which have tabbed interfaces, is the way of the future.

Sorry guys. You can see promise in T & C but with a few exception, they still haven’t caught up with Sidekick of 98 vintage. I’ll stick with SK98.

 

[mickygriff]

The response from Individual Software:


You are an active advocate for reviving SideKick. I visited the Tektips site linked from your email, and read most of the threads and indeed, there is much nostalgic fondness for SK. Good luck with getting P. Kahn back involved, but short of that, I'm not sure where you will find a patch.

Of course, AnyTime Organizer does not have the date problem but this is a solution only for new users, since migration from SK is not feasible due to their native file format. I read in one of the posts that someone was going to review AnyTime Organzier and report back as an alternative. We have thousands of previous SK users using AT, so this may be the best alternative. We really would not be inclined to create a "SK skinned" version.

Oh well, next hurdle...............!

 

[jimalex]

Looks like a few of us decided to contact Philippe Kahn at the same time! Alan Reiter, who knows Philippe Kahn, sent on my email to him. So I'm looking for a response as well.

 

[Gyula]

Re: Importing SK files into "Any Time Organizer"

On the box of "Any Time Organizer 9.0" it states: "Seamlessly import data from Sidekick, Lotus Organizer, .... and other organizer software." This was the primary reason I bought it. But once I loaded the software I tried to import my SK99 files and was not able to do it (I must admit I did not try very hard or for a long time). Now in their above-quoted e-mail to mickeyg they state, "... migration from SK is not feasible due to their native file format"--so who is one to believe?!

I do again want to state that from my brief attempts at running "Any Time" I do believe that, if one decided to dump SK, AT 9.0 would be a good--but certainly not perfect--replacement.

(For myself, I have decided to uninstall SK99 and reinstall SK98 [and the SK98 patch] and will keep trying to get by with the SK98 and try to live with the "ToDo" problem.)

 

[Gyula]

Re: Sidekick 9x and the new version of Windows (Vista)

I am not a programmer and have not attempted any programming since the DOS-only days when I got pretty good at modifying the execution of programs with creative batch files. So please keep that in mind for what follows below.

Several of the above commenters have stated that SK will no longer work under Windows when Vista arrives. No one has questioned this assertion. Well, I QUESTION IT.

SK 98 and 99 really had no problems with the Windows operating system. Sometimes it helped if you ran them in the Win95 or Win 98 compatible mode, but SK ran fine. So I see no reason why a program which ran pretty much flawlessly under XP should turn around 180 degrees and not run under Vista.

What did NOT run well under Windows and ran considerably worse under XP than under Win9x was the programs--True Sync and HotSync--that synched SK with the handheld Palm pda's. Under XP, no matter what you set the compatibility at, the two programs only barely worked and then had to be considerably jerry-rigged to make them work. And in my case anyway, if I had to completely reinstall SK9x, it always took me less than 10 minutes to get SK installed and up and running but at least several hours to get the synch programs working more or less properly again. I feel fairly certain that the synch programs--which barely work with XP-- that are now available will NOT work with any major revision of Windows.

I should add that it was always my belief--again, remember who's not a programmer--that the sync problem was not with SK but the two sync programs as well as with the sync program that came with the later Palm operating systems. (Note that this belief is further complicated by the fact that the last major project that Starfish worked on was a major improvement/upgrade to TrueSync [which was aimed for primarily syncing with cell phones].)

We always seem to come back to the hard kernel of truth that SK is a a pretty da*n good program and that the original people who created it must have been very talented indeed.

 

[Gyula]

Re: Receive reply from P K

Much to my surprise--if not shock!--received the below reply from P:

===========================================
From: P K" <test@test.com> Save Address Reminder
To: [Gyula]
Subject: Thank you
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:10:19 +0000 [View Source]


I would love to help you, but I can’t. Sidekick was acquired by Motorola when they acquired Starfish. Sorry that I can’t help you. – P -
===================================================

1. I guess that closes that door.

2. His mention of Motorola brings a new player into our quest. You may remember that in my recent posting--or rant--about SK and the new version of Windows (Vista) I mentioned that the last major project that Starfish was working on was extending HotSync to work with cellphones. I have a very vague memory that Starfish sold Sidekick--NOT Starfish itself--to Motorola NOT for its use as a PIM but rather as a sale of the technology behind the latest version of HotSync which, of course, Motorola was interested for its cellphones.

3. I will still go ahead and contact the Starfish exec, who came over to VeriSign with Philippe and is still there, when he returns (to VeriSign) at the end of this month.

4. Plus, if nothing else, I finally have something worth putting on my tombstone: "He got P K to reply to one of his e-mails.

 

[IanMcKean]

Not having posted for a few days I thought I would send a quick message that I too have never found anything as good as SKW and would be prepared to pay for a replacement. I am from Oxford UK by the way.

I have looked at some demo systems recently like red box and time & chaos but don't really feel they are anywhere near. So I am struggling on with SKW and finding it not too confusing that my Todos are one day (and several years) out. I

Well done Gyula to get a reply from Kahn. Has anyone now asked Motorola if they still have the source code?

 

[Gyula]

Has anyone now asked Motorola if they still have the source code?"
====================================
Ian, contacting Motorola was discussed at the very beginning of this thread. Go to top of this "page" and do a search for "Motorola".

 

[ct412]

Add another voice for getting Starkick restarted somehow. I have informtation going back ten years that I am afraid I'm going to lose when Vista starts running. I am using SK99 and it rolled over into 2006 okay.

 

[mickygriff]

Evening all,

[highlight]'100 UP' for this thread, guys![/highlight]

I am currently reviewing something called PIMOne, which is extremely close to Sidekick and its functions. There is a 20-day trial download available through Download.com (

http://www.download.com/PIMOne/3003-2074_4-10433833.html

). Its interface is 'cleaner' and works more intuitively than any of the other PIMs I have seen. I have noted some minor things, which I will let the company know about, and some review comments on Download.com. Can I ask that others review it also? However, I must admit it does feel like sacrilege to maybe find something that may replace our abandoned orphan!

Meanwhile I wrote to PIMOne Computing and put it to them that there was an opportunity to respond to our plight, and this was their speedy response.

[blue] Hi Mick Griffin,
Sorry, PIMOne doesn't support to import the data from "Sidekick". But it supports to import data from some general format files, e.g. .CSV, etc. If the "Sidekick" can export its data to the general format files, then PIMOne can import the files which exported by "Sidekick".
Of course, we will add the feature for import the data from some other products directly to our development plan. We will try to find the way to support this in the future versions. [/blue]

This shows some promise for future development I suppose, but doesn't Sidekick use the CSV format anyway? In which case it would possibly work - one reviewer commented on a problem with importing O*t***K (forgive me!) and not letting you 'specify which fields are which'. Please can others review and report?

There are a few skin variations available, so maybe we could get in there and do a ‘Sidekick’ version if we can find out how to do this. I guess I will write again to ask, unless we have the expertise here?!

By the way, I have the colour values from some screen shots of SK99 that maybe could be used for skinning purposes - are these of any use? I must get out more!

Mick

 

[mickygriff]

Drat - too early to do the '100th post' boast due to the e-mail faux pas being removed, oh well!

I think we established that Motorola said that SK was not one of their products, and I never received any response from Intellisync, so we would seem to have exhausted that line of enquiry - although maybe we should try to SPEAK to someone - any one got a number, I'll have a go!

I also meant to mention that PIMOne has been downloaded over 9600 times, almost 3 times the number of people who are members of this forum, so there might be something of worth in this software!

 

[ct412]

I downloaded PIMOne this morning and played with it for about 2 hours. You can export/import from SK but there is no way to change the destinations. Thus, "First Name" in Sidekick does go into "First Name" in PIMOne, but all Notes disappeared somewhere since there is no corresponding "slot" in PIMOne and, as far as I could tell, no way to create one. Also: I'd like to keep my back calendars and transfer from existing SK into the dream version we'd like to create and I cannot figure out how that might be accomplished.