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Posted by quant
Jul 10, 2009 at 11:08 PM
Fredy wrote:
>If anybody knows how to do in UR that the node title in full appears above your
>text, and that the current project title ( even shortened ) stays in the tab, even when
>you change your node ( within that project of course ), I would be VERY happy to hear from
I haven’t tried new beta of UR, but it sounds that what you want might be already implemented:
“Tab enhancements (Tab | Lock tab title and Tab | Go to locked item).+ “
http://www.kinook.com/UltraRecall/beta.html
Posted by Graham Rhind
Jul 11, 2009 at 05:16 AM
Like you, I do not use The Brain for any outlining or information management . For me the great advantage of The Brain is its ability to produce complete web sites from my information. I can cut and paste information from other sources into The Brain, export it and upload it - it saves me hundreds of hours writing html and delights my customers.
Graham
Fredy wrote:
>Hence, my experience with “The Brain” is at the opposite of all
>that high ( but unsubstantiated ) praise of the program you can find in several forums,
>and therefore, I would be very happy if somebody could explain to me what the real
>advantage of this program might be. I am willing to re-install it on my computer just to
>see if you are right, and why I missed the strike of genius in it - but is there, or it is all
>about hype, as in most occasions ?
Posted by Dominik Holenstein
Jul 11, 2009 at 06:12 AM
Fredy,
PersonalBrain is more than just a one dimensional outliner or mind mapping tool. You are wrong when you write you could do the same on a paper. Imagine a PersonalBrain file with more than 100 thoughts in it with links to files, websites, including notes and child, parent and jump links between the thoughts. Can you scratch this on a single paper sheet? Further, my current brain has around 4’000 thoughts, all cross-linked with other related thoughts. This gives me a pot wehere I can throw in anything without loosing too much time in thinking where to put it. Just add a new thought and link it to the most apporpriate other thoughts. When you open a tought you instantly see its context. I am using PB for information gathering, taking notes and organzing my work.
PB has a unique instant search feature. You just type one or several words of a thought (wheter it is the beginning, the end or within the thought is not important) and a little window pops up with thoughts matching your search. I haven’t found another tool that allows me to search with the same speed (Zoot is one the exception).
Yes, PersonalBrain looks strange and is completely differnt from other approaches. I personally consider convential MindMapping just as another metaphor of basic outlining. PersonalBrain makes MindMapping more dynamic.
I have been using PB since v1.73 in 1998. Now we have v5 and the user base is growing. Further, the developers are really caring about their users. Yes, their Marketing and communication style may give you the impact of a hype. But the tool itself has proven to be mature enough and to be more than just a hype.
This post is too short to give you all the advantages of PB. I don’t want to persuade you becaue you decide what best fits to you. For me it’s this visual and perhaps chaotic apporach of PB, you might want to look for tools like UR (a great tool) or Zoot (another great one).
Kind regards,
Dominik
“And that brings me to thebrain.com. I know that a lot of people think that is the best of the best ( perhaps not for information gathering, but for serving as a thinking help at least ), so I spent more than an hour with it, not counting my reading those 100 hints which take the place of any not-web help function of it, and I was very willing not only to give it a try, but to be pleased with, and better, be enthousiastic about it.
Well, it is crap, in my opinion. It?s just an unidimensional graphic outliner, like all those mindmanager.com and others, with the difference of a mildly psychedelic screen layout, and ( not necessarily foreseeable ) hiding of all those branches the program decides you do not need at any given moment ; thus I spent the major part of my time to go back to those, i.d. to search where they were hidden, and I was hampered in my thinking process, not helped in any way. It seems to me ?The Brain? intends to focus your thought attention, by ( very basic if not na?ve ) graphic means, whereas in fact it hinders you to see relationships which, by doing a scratch on paper, you would see without any problem.
Hence, my experience with ?The Brain? is at the opposite of all that high ( but unsubstantiated ) praise of the program you can find in several forums, and therefore, I would be very happy if somebody could explain to me what the real advantage of this program might be. I am willing to re-install it on my computer just to see if you are right, and why I missed the strike of genius in it - but is there, or it is all about hype, as in most occasions ?
”
Posted by Fredy
Jul 12, 2009 at 09:24 PM
Thanks a lot, I’ll give The Brain another try, serious people being fond of something do impress me. My utmost critique with TB is / was that the program decides what I am going to see on the screen, and that isn’t much, i.e. the program, not having any real intelligence ( = of course not ), hiding a lot of subjects / nodes from me of which I would prefer to have immediate view, instead of having to recur to searching for them, AND I was very disappointed by the apparent ( = ? ) lack of the “third dimension”, i.e. the apparent ( = ? ) underlining thought that the subjects were / are items in trees ; I admit I did not dig deep ( enough ? ) into this, being exasperated by the too much hiding of subjects ; there WAS indeed a link function to overcome the hierarchical scheme, and I should indeed see thoroughly what it can do for me. I had been exasperated also by the not functioning of the “stop the pulse” function : when set to zero ( which by one of the 100 hints was going to stop it ), it just slowed down but didn’t stop altogether, and that got me real nervous, so I was perhaps a little expeditive. I’ll give it another try and will report ; as I said I’m willing to be pleased with it.
Thanks a lot also with regards to UR. I know the staying of the tab with the tree / subtree instead of frantic changing with the subject is / was on the wish list ( without knowing if it has been implemented, the new beta version being only for registered users up to date ( but perhaps I have not been up to date with this ), brought there by several power users apparently having the same lost-in-hyperspace problem as mine and wishing to concentrate on the subject, not on bearing in mind a dozen or so different subtrees in a dozen or so different tabs ( thanks to hoisting ), but I also think I really NEED the subject on a line above my text ( or whatever ), since in the tree, the subject line being very often abbreviated by not having enough room for a large enough tree pane especially on notebooks ( and not speaking of subnotebooks / netbooks ), AND it’s not foreseeable WHERE the subject line in the tree / subtree is at any given time, so I need a sort of quick, “instant confirmation”, without having to search the tree for my subject, when juggling between ten or more tabs ( currently, in ActionOutline, I have 20 tabs open at the same time : I gave the projects / files ( i.e. there it’s all divided into a hundred files for me, since no hoisting, not database, no acceptable search function ) very short names, and that way, 20 tabs are visible on my laptop screen, without horizontal scolling ).
The “specialists” = program designers here should definitely have a look into ActionOutline’s printing and export functions : they are tremendous, I think ! So when it’s right that there, you don’t have a “journalling” function like in Debrief e.g., it’s even better in AO. You can have / set / store presets as you like, among these :
- Print / Export current subject / note
- idem as letter ( it’s a hint of mine, valuable perhaps even for other programs : since in AO the first line is always the subject line, i.e. they omitted an option where you could suppress it, preset that line, not in your text but only in the print preset, in 1 point white, and it will not show : it’s very basic, but very effective, no exporting, to MS Word or other text program for printing required )
- idem current ( sub- ) tree ( of course )
- idem current ( sub- ) tree with notes, and there it’s real interesting :
- for one, after each note a page break : this way, you print or export up to a whole book in a row, in perfect order, for ( intermediate ) redaction work by hand for example
- but also, just a white line after each note : this is the perfect journalling function, but without AO having any cloning function, so if you want to have different journals / to do lists, you have to copy and be aware there will not be any snych afterwards… but then, on paper, there is no synch anyway…
All this is possible with printing, or with exporting, and not just to a file, but also to the clipboard, and IT WORKS ! Thus, you are able to do a macro in AO, “Export Outline and Notes as List ( also Numbered, e.g. ), to Clipboard”, and in MS Word, you just have to do your Control-v, to have it all in your, e.g., 3 columns page set, in order to print.
( A technical detail : When you do this “as List”, with just a blank line after your notes, you don’t see very clearly the beginning of your notes, especially when you preset the subject line in bold, AND use bold lines in your notes. Just preset the subject lines - one command for all of them - in bold and underlined, and you’re done. It’s a very fine functionality upon which I rely heavily. )
Some remarks on MS Word ( I use the French version of 2003 ) and even MS Works ( I use the English version 9 ) ; when I speak of shorthand, I am referring to their auto correct function, of course.
As I had said beforehand, I currently express myself in 3 languages. I also said it’s an error to rely on outliners’ core functionality, thus deliberately avoiding the goodies MS has on offer for us, and I spoke of the shorthand in MS Word / Works Word Processor that no ( ? ) outliner is able to offer us ; recently Cassius has spoken of his son’s projects, and that his son does all his work in MS Word, not being willing to shift hence and forth between two or more softwares.
I understand him very well, but the absence of shorthand in outliners drove me crazy notwithstanding. Hence, I gave those MS products some tries, only to go back to my outliner ( AO ). But recently, I juggled with the system data files of Works, in order to have three of them, for finally storing ( and copying back ) my shorthand codes in French, German and English in 3 different files, by macros. This was well-intended but not even necessary : call it stupid ! ( When six weeks or so ago, I spoke here of my 3-language difficulties with Word / Works, no reply, so I wasn’t aware it was and is all there ! In fact, one file contains all your shorthand lists at the same time. )
In fact, in Works, and Word, you just ( by macros ) preset the language of your text ( in Europe, those 3 aforementioned, and Spanish ; I hope you get the same in the US ), and the program will offer you the corresponding shorthand preset. In those presets, you just have to delete all that crap they put into, and you replace those very long lists with your own, suited to you. For each language, plan a very long Sunday just for this work, and then, during some weeks, optimize your shorthand codes lists.
Perhaps those in new Word versions can be administered in plain text ? And of course it would be tremendously helpful if you could apply two shorthand lists at the same time ; at this time it’s only possible to use, e.g. American English, for your general shorthand, and Canadian English for a special project with special shorthand codes, but where you must administer your general shorthand codes two times, in both : There are, to my knowledge, individual dictionaries, but not for auto correction ?! It seems I mus dive into Word I own ( and have paid for ) but know too little ( too late ?! )...
So, I, these last weeks, get accustomed to juggling between AO, for storing, and Works ( which is NOT bloatware, you can just access / load the Works Text Processor directly, if you want, it’s WksWP.exe ), for writing, and of course I’m unhappy with treating with given texts, that are stored in AO, in Works, just for shorthand processing.
But Cassius’ son doesn’t work on Works, but on Word, and in fact, Word has got a rather impressive outlining function in the 2007 version at least, where the program decides for you ( remember the subject hidings in The Brain : yep, I LOVE such homecomings… ) which lines are outlining entries… but if you do your formatting right ( i.e. with adequate styles ), this function seems to work well ( up to now, I know it from the web, not by personal experience ), and, oh wonder, it’s not that old toggle between outline and text view, but your outline is in a special pane, right ( or better : at the left side ) under your eyes !
Hence, people who do their work at this time in MS Word, cannot be considered any longer as fools ( as when hampering with Word 93 when almost every other program was better than Microsoft’s ), but perhaps are just better informed of its recent developments than some of ours that were into their prejudices against MS in general, perhaps, in order to more easily awaiting the Holy Grail in various outliner softwares where in fact it is not necessarily being to be found.
I am more and more aware, and unhappy, of the fractioning of the outliner market. Whereas text processor buyers are virtually all MS enrichers ( and think of it, myself included, without even using it ! ), outliner software buyers buy some here and buy some there and get into discussions how many licenses are needed for a a given amount of pc’s of one and only but multi-powering user, and we see these good traits here, that appealing qualities there, and we stay continually frustrated, whereas Cassius’s son writes his books in Word and concentrates on writing.
Who’s the fool(s) ? It’s not him.
Hence, in closing my posting with the unavoidable kindergarten passage, I do it short : Of course, Franz, you had to react, even when you had not been addressed, since in effect, my first posting here was motivated by your asking another contributor for shutting up : you are the guy who asks for people to shut up or even better, for people to be put quiet : it’s in your nature, like it’s in mine to speak up, oven off-topic, but in a way inviting people to say I’m wrong. My style is blunt but my argumentation is differentiated ; most people are the other way round ; here a lot of people are differentiated in their style and in their argumentation, which is best. I admire those people ; I don’t admire NLP smocks ( or is it slobs ? ) ; and of course, I didn’t intend to put other people in my opinion’s sack : when I pretend to speak for others also, it’s restricted to my wishing for the best program possible, and perhaps to my well-thought proposals to get to it, but I am not in the slightest pretending to being backed in my meanderings, be it there or autour. Stay zen ! ;-)
In the past, I looked into a lot of shorthand programs ( there ain’t a lot, let’s say into all I got hold of ), and none backed use of several languages. But this is another task for me, for my next spare days ( = weekends, and again… ) : My trick with Word / Works should bring about results for some or one of them : working on the list, then copying the list into a file ; doing this for all your languages ; then copying back those backup files into the official list file of the program. This way, I could SPARE MS program use and just work in ONE outliner software. But which one ? ;-)
To JPP : I dismissed your IQ ( the program, that is ) for the main reason of your not being interested in even .rtf import ( if I’m right with that ). Of course, if you’re willing to succeed, you must give us an import function that will work for us, we cannot import 60.000 or 80.000 items by hand ( and special UR import from AO works very well, I tried ) ! Of course, you cannot do import functions for every given program, BUT : do something like a .rtf or Word import, AND implement some level recognition. AO, for example, allows for exporting with, or without indentation ; I prefer without, but for import in IQ the indentation option would be helpful. Since you cannot implement the import function for all those programs, you must implement some options that could be handled by the given customer, since it’s necessary, at the least, to have the different levels of your nodes preserved in IQ. AO to UR does it, I swear ; take some 30 outliner programs and see how people could get their data in IQ, i.e. do their .rtf or Word export function, for some 4 nodes but of 4 different levels, and see how IQ could import the results. I think this is more important a function than any other than stability. If I remember well, amode isn’t good at that either ( I am referring to their other faults in my opinion ).
Those contributors who reminded us here that by changing their programme, they lose too many qualities of their work, are perfectly right if at this time they use good programs, IQ, UR, etc. : it’s precisely the third dimension quality of their stuff they would be deprived of. But most of real users ( which are under-represented here, I elongated upon that subject some weeks ago ) would just have to retain their formatting ( hence .rtf / Word ) AND their “indentation”, i.e. their various level informations ; if they can do that ( and knew how, without having to do an off-putting search for their respective way to do so ), they would be rather willing to switch to a better program than theirs is ( at least I hope so ).
They would indeed lose the formatting of the entries in the trees, but to h*** with those, I think !
Is anywhere out there aware that there are MILLIONS of people who use indeed Word, but who would be electrified by importing their Word files into an outliner… not the dumb way, all in a node, but where the import function of the outliner would put their Word paragraphs into different nodes, on different levels ? Can this be done at the moment ? To reliable results ? It’s not my problem, but it occurs to me that there is, or could be, the real mass market…
The Brain again : I need things displayed, plenty, in plenitude ( I’m avoiding the accent here, not wanting the e replaced by a question mark ), so the concentration philosophy of The Brain, with discarding all nodes the program thinks are irrelevant on your current node, is at the opposite of what I need. As promised, I’ll give it another try, but those contributors who told me it wasn’t that bad or better, real good stuff, see I much want to believe you, but give me some hints how The Brain can enhance MY style of work, if it can ? I think the lists of discarded subjects, on the bottom of the screen, rather akward and not really helpful : in fact, they contain too scarce a choice of those, among other points.
Perhaps there should be a function just for greying out the discarded subjects, instead of really hiding them ? I see there is the problem of the screen size, but hiding elements I want to see ( i.e. to bear them in mind ) isn’t the solution in my opinion. On of yours ( Holenstein ) is the developer ? Well, I was very disappointed, but also, I gave it a try of just a good hour. Let’s see a little bit closer to it, and I WITHHOLD my perhaps rash judgement. I’m very willing to NOT decide it’s crap !
Give some advice how to make it better work for my style ; I’ll try to getting fond of it !
This reminds me of something, of an advice I gave here about two months ago, without any reaction, but I admit I didn’t develop it in any way. I said, cloning is very helpful but for normal work, not 100 p.c. necessary, I should have added that those macro-subjects are in a way arranging themselves, i.e. they have got enough “reminder value” to be remembered at least within a few weeks, the time you are working on a project ; much more important is, I said, the repartition of your micro-subject level ; I wanted to make clear that you’ve got to dedicate real effort of time, of scrutinizing, of rearranging, not so much between higher level nodes entre eux, but precisely on the latter-level nodes, in the details. The de-entanglement of those details nodes and their contents is the real work, in effort, in appllication, and, precisely, with THAT work, no wishful cloning of nodes will help you in any way, i.e. in AO, in don’t have cloning, and I regret it every day, but the real difficulties in my work would not be solved by having clones, and - put your hands, over your ears, Franz, just a moment ! - I pretend that will apply to all of yours’ works ( except for Franz : excuse our kindergarten, everybody else, but when we haven’t even got the same nationality, it’s right we have the same mother language, so we love kidding each other ! ).
Back to straight things : I want to say, donc, we all ( except for Franz, no, I’m shutting up, I’m getting disrepectful ! )... we ALL, thus, are looking here for real help in our work, when the utmost difficulty is in the atomic level, not in the aggregation level, and we really do get some help, by outlining software, at the latter, but not at the former. Which brings me to the conclusion that we are after a rather impossible thing, being assisted where at this time we cannot yet be assisted by software, hence perhaps our crimping and other forms of continuous frustration and frustration coping strategies.
And hence the ( I’m sure ) excellent work of Cassius’ son and other who do not join us in our never-ending search, but who write in MS Word : on the detail level, the crucial one, we’re not better off than them, and worse ( for us ), we’re hampered by our illusion to be assisted, when straight Word power users know they have to do the work themselves, in every respect. As we do. Let’s be conscious of it.
No kidding any more.
Posted by Fredy
Jul 19, 2009 at 06:18 PM
The Brain
I’d said it was crap. It currently is, but for other reasons than I thought. I had “tried out” ( for one hour, that’s not long, and without any help, but that’s a little bit their fault ) version 4.5, while version 5.0 is the current one. It was in English, one of the few good points. Now I discover their pdf help file ( it hasn’t got any real help function built into it, just 100 and now 103 “tips” ), and now I understand that it can do a lot more than I thought, but do not know if it is able to help with thinking since installation is not working, and hence I’m not willing at this time to work through the entire pdf file just in order to analyse virtually, for a program that is not even working ( XP 3 ).
I download, I install. Wheras 4.5 was in English, with 5.0 only the install process is in English, then the program forces a VERY BAD “German” version upon me, translated it seem by a native speaker, but ridden nethertheless with endless languague faults / type errors, everywhere. So, just like some “intelligent” web pages who detect the language of your MS Windows System, then force upon you “your” language, The Brain does the same ( guys, I buy my software in Great Britain and the U.S., in order to AVOID German or “German” software ! ), and in the Options menu, I do not find any language option. If they are not willing any more to give even Continental European customers their English version, but only pseudo-“German” crap, it’s not for me.
But I said, it doesn’t work, whilst I’m speaking of the menus ? No, I’m not a liar. I have access to the program in all its functions, except for the outline / chart itself, i.e. the main pane ! There, it’s “Loading” or “Loadin….” or “Loading” again, endlessly. I can even save my “outline” ( or whatever” ), and upon closing and re-opening, the saved file’s name is displayed on the opening page, and can be accessed, to the same result as before when it was brand-new : “Loading”...
I tried this with several files. Then I wanted to get rid of the program, so I opened “System” - “Software” ( or whatever, it’s my re-translation of the German MS Windows I must live with ). There, I wanted to de-install The Brain ( in order to re-install it, the pdf file together with your opinions here had me sufficiently hooked me ), but I was told, The Brain was running, and I should close it down beforehand, than a de-install would be possible. Well, it was not running ; I restarted my comp, when it auto-started. I closed it again, tried to de-install it again, and was again told to first close it down, and so on.
I finally re-established my computer installation ( thanks to Paragon Software ), and re-installed The Brain. It’s exactly the same, and thus replicable result : The Brain autostarts ( in their very special “German” ), doesn’t give me access to any “outline”, new or old, is just “Loading” them ( or perhaps not ), and in order to get rid of it, I’ll have to re-establish my former computer installation.
Well, that’s The Brain in its current state ; “that’s for the “a**”, as Germans say. ( And no, Herr G., this posting belongs here, not in The Brain’s forum : first, it couldn’t warn people against installing that software if it was there, whereas at this moment, every not-English-Windows user should be warned against it, not all people having the necessary Paragon Software, AND the nessary discipline in regularly doing images of their states of affairs in order to get rid of it, with that ; second, their forum, even for reading only, is highly secured : I didn’t bother to put my - or a false - date of birth and “dozens” of other “information” in their form just in order to get access to it, so I stay out, as most other would-be users probably will. And then, do we not forget that if the instruction, “all problems with specific outliners in those outliners’ forums only” were to be followed, this forum here would be left to very general discussions only, or to that and public relations communications : well, for the latter, just refer to the developers’ sites. )
The Brain developers should see about all those things, and then I would be delighted to give it a real try, as I have been before encountering those unnecessary probs.
I wrote this before seeing that “The Brain” - those “” are absolutely necessary - does not even allow me to put off the option “starts with MS Windows starting” since for this it wants my user name and a “valid” web mail address, and of course there isn’t anywhere any option to change back to English from their very special “German”. This reminds me of my saying that I had the impression they - the developers / marketers - tried to do a lot of decisions for me, in the program ( 4.5 ), now I see they do the same with the language, and they ain’t even able to do that language forcing upon their customers in a way that their crap works.
So let’s face it : a Windows program, and of such a price, that does not work in July 09 with XP 3 except perhaps for English XP 3, and does not allow to be de-installed,
is nothing more than a sort of a virus.
But then, I highly overestimated the intellectual level of some contributors here, not speaking of the general level.
Pearls before swine is always a good thing, but then good things must end. Thank you.