There are only a few commercial applications I license, including various security, and there are sometimes quirks in how licenses are implemented, because the vendors may sometimes see the owners as showing the license in use (i.e., before the system reset). For example, I had to deal with one tech support analyst who heatedly said I was at fault for not deactivating the license.Of course, I might have done that--if and when I knew the system wasn't going to reboot.
But there is one product I have licensed ever since I was on the UWM faculty several years ago, before Windows 3--a fairly unique program called a freeform database named AskSam. It allows you to create databases in a very flexible manner, with defined fields or blank/freeform text; AskSam also provides a number of templates and enables you to import all sorts of files, e.g., emails, documents, pdf's, html files, etc.
To describe the full functionality is beyond the scope of this post; suffice it to say one has powerful searching and reporting functionality (including mail-merge). My principal use has been for email. The search capability is analogous to Google-like search capabilities. I normally create separate files corresponding to archived email folders. Let me provide a simple example. I have one file for outgoing correspondence. I occasionally ran into issues with Thunderbird import functionality, but my workaround was to use Thunderbird add-on functionality to convert emails into html or txt format. The Thunderbird functionality allowed the use of fields (such as date). The html file imports had to searched like freeform text. So, for instance, if I wanted to look at the emails I sent in April of this year I might enter something like 4/?/2015 or 4/??/2015 in the search field. I need the phone number for my point of contact with an IT staffing firm or the license key for my security software from the vendor file to do a reinstall. With a few keywords, I don't have to scan and reread a number of emails to find the information I want. I periodically update my files as a redundancy check on my email folders.
So I once again had to search for my AskSam software, when it occurred to me that AskSam Systems hadn't sent me a promotional email in a while; I think the last time I contacted them was over a Thunderbird import bug. I had steadily upgraded the software through version 7. I wondered if they had come out with version 8 and tried accessing their website. No splash screen within a reasonable period of time. I then did a Google search, looked at their Facebook page--and it seems as if they just disappeared about 2-3 years back. I found a couple of online forums discussing the issue--unacknowledged emails to tech support, abandoned forms, no responses to phone calls. I haven't found any notice of the company ceasing operations (maybe an artifact of my Google search), but a competing product describes itself as "suitable alternative for the discontinued free-form database tool AskSam.".
I wouldn't say I'm completely surprised because I also used the Google Desktop product before it was discontinued a few years back; they claimed, given the increasing focus on cloud-based services, the project was an effort of diminishing returns and importance.
Of course, I have backups of the software and license code. Here are some products I've installed which provide related functionality:
- everything (voidtools): freeware that searches on filenames
- docfetcher (sourceforge): freeware that works on certain desktop file types similar to AskSam functionality; you don't have to import the files in application files but you may need to manually build/update indexes.
One product, MyInfo, claims to be similar in nature and in fact offers an AskSam import plugin (see above link). Note that I have not licensed and validated the vendor's claims.
