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TheBrain 8 beta
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Posted by Paul Korm
Oct 27, 2013 at 07:28 PM
There is a beta available for TheBrain 8 (http://www.thebrain.com/products/thebrain/download/beta/)
“Over 50 New Features” (http://www.thebrain.com/products/thebrain/thebrain-8). The first of the 50 listed is “1,500 icons” so if that is the top priority perhaps this will not be a significant change from prior releases. I’ve installed b8 to check it out.
Posted by Dominik Holenstein
Oct 28, 2013 at 09:00 AM
Paul,
You are right, there are no outstanding new features in TheBrain 8 but I like them.
I don’t expect too many wow-features anymore in tools like TheBrain because it has been on the market for 15 years now.
They are working on a better online and iOS integration at TheBrain so the desktop version has not the highest priority for them.
Dominik
Posted by 22111
Oct 28, 2013 at 12:39 PM
From their blog:
“Enhanced multi-threading technology for faster performance”
“New Timeline View gives you a chronological display of all created and modified Thoughts for maximum insight”
“Quick Create Thought box enables you to create new Thoughts with zero clicks right from TheBrain search box”
“New Quick Start Brains and prebuilt Tags and Types can be imported into your existing or new Brains for better classification and understanding of your information”
I’ve always considered TB as a possible “thinking enhancing” tool, among others, and so, I think these seemingly minor enhancements could be of some effect, though.
As for the very first citation here, it would be of interest to know if this had some positive effect, too, on TB’s slowing down whenever you trie to put extensive content into its (awful) content fields, which is currently the main obstacle for any use of TB as a knowledge repository.
But then, the question remains, WHY, from a technical side, TB’s content fields are so sub-standard, and if there is a chance to replace this element of its architecture with something correct.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Oct 28, 2013 at 01:21 PM
I would be interested in knowing what percentage of TheBrain users are Pro Licensees only. My guess is that more and more users are doing the Combo license, which is basically an annual subscription. This is what I have. It is a bit pricey, but I rely so much on it that I pay for it. Therefore, this upgrade will be “free.” As such, the magnitude of the improvements are less important, because they in themselves are not an incentive to renew my subscription. It’s enough that there is annual improvement. That said, these are all nice, thoughtful additions to the TheBrain. Although the Twitter search function seems a stretch.
Steve Z.
Posted by Paul Korm
Oct 28, 2013 at 02:04 PM
@22111
TheBrain is a Java JAR with XML for the data stores. Not a great combo for heavy volumes of data—either for individual elements or in the aggregate. Java field management is error-prone and error recovery is difficult. They would have to change the architecture radically, which is probably not a reasonable development investment.
@Stephen Zeoli
I have a Pro license. Correspondence with TheBrain sales support led me to suppose that there will be no Pro-to-Pro upgrades from V7 to V8—although their V8 pricing page suggests otherwise, the rep thought that might change when the final V8 release is up for sale.
22111 wrote
> [T]he question remains, WHY, from a technical side, TB’s content fields are so sub-standard, and if there is a chance to replace this element of its architecture with something correct.
Stephen Zeoli wrote
>I would be interested in knowing what percentage of TheBrain users are Pro Licensees only.