Opinions On TheBrain?

Posted by Manfred
Jun 26, 2008 at 01:31 PM

Hugh,

actually, I was not so much thinking of traditional outliners as an alternative, but of other hypertext applications that implement links more easily, like personal wikis: Voodoopad, Zulupad, ConnectedText, for instance.

They are not hierarchical either, and they also
* “handle criss-crossing multiple connections, which unlike those in tree-form mindmappers, better represent the real world”
* “may make relationships, especially in a complex network, more understandable”
* offer “the possibility of highlighting unexpected relationships in a large database”

Linking gets done by simply enclosing a word or a phrase with “[” and “]” or “[[” and “]]” (or camelcase). And these applications do so at the FRACTION of the cost. (And ConnectedText even has a graphical interface that allows you to look at the relationships, if you so desire.)

All they lack is the fancy graphical interface, which, in my experience, only gets in the way. Let me therefore rephrase the question: “What beyond the graphical interface (and perhaps Wysywig in the notes) does The Brain add that would go beyond such applications?”

I have written about the advantages of link-based systems, their advantages, and their relation to traditional outliners in this forum before. So, I won’t flog a dead horse.

Manfred