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TheBrain as file manager?
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Posted by Jorge Watanabe
Dec 16, 2013 at 01:29 AM
Hi,
I am thinking about buying TheBrain only to use its great file management capabilities (mind mapping features, although great too, aren’t necessary for my work). I haven’t bought it yet, however, because 219 bucks are not in my present budget.
So I’d like to ask for a help from you, more experienced guys. Do you any other similar tool? (I am seeking for it for a long time, and tested many, many ones). Any help would be very appreciated.
(Sorry for my English, as it is not my native language)
Kind regards,
Jorge
Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 16, 2013 at 09:47 AM
Jorge Watanabe wrote:
>I am thinking about buying TheBrain only to use its great file
>management capabilities (mind mapping features, although great too,
>aren’t necessary for my work).
hi Jorge, check this list (though it’s arguable):
http://alternativeto.net/software/personal-brain/
Freeplane (it’s predecessor, Freemind tops the AlternativeTo list) is a cheap (i.e. free) alternative, in terms of being able to drag and drop links into a hierarchy, where you can further organise the nodes, annotate them, and even link them to each other.
Perhaps less obviously, but ConnectedText can also be used for this purpose, with the usual caveats (learning curve, wiki markup etc.). Manfred Kuehn discusses how CT can be used to emulate TheBrain (somewhere on his blog or on the CT forum, I can’t remember exactly).
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Dec 16, 2013 at 12:17 PM
Hi, Jorge,
I don’t blame you for not wanting to spend $219 for TheBrain (TB) if you don’t have to. However, in my view, you’re not going to find a better solution (but I admit to not having a very thorough knowledge of other file manager apps). To help others come up with suggestions, it may be useful to list some of the advantages of using TheBrain as a file manager:
1. Flexible. You can add virtually any type of file to a thought in TB. You can attach multiple files to the same thought or have a different thought for each file. You can embed the file in TB or leave it as a link to an external file. If you embed the file, it becomes fully searchable (at least the most common file types do).
2. Visual. You can indicate how files are related to one another using the link and plex geography. The links can now have labels to further explain the connections. You can add icons—from the icon collection or from screen clips—to help you remember or otherwise illustrate what’s in the files.
3. Meta-Data. You can include additional information about the files using the notes tool, the type tool, the tagging tool, and even the calendar (add a tickle reminder to do something with a specific file). Include URLs to sources as attachments. Drag a related e-mail note from Outlook as an attachment or a child thought.
4. Find stuff. If you’ve used the meta data, you can run remarkably sophisticated reports to locate your data. The search function is powerful. Type a string into the search box and a list of thoughts including that phrase in the name appears. Hit enter and the search tool window goes into action, providing a list of thoughts that match your search string, separated by whether the string was found in the title or in the attached file (only if the file is embedded in TB).
5. Ease of use. Drag stuff in, move it around, draw links. It really is easy. Also, you can pin commonly accessed files to the top of the plex, so you can access them quite quickly.
I really can’t think of another app that provides that much power for file management, but I hope others are able to suggest alternatives.
Steve Z.
Posted by Jon Polish
Dec 16, 2013 at 01:07 PM
I agree that The Brain is quite useful in this regard, but for what you want (and your budget), I would suggest Ultra Recall. It indexes your files and has a pretty powerful search tool. You can link easily enough. It can be set up to display meta data on which you can search. Hoisting is there to help navigation without clutter. You can also make notes for your files. Think of UR as The Brain without the attractive visual.
Jon
Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 16, 2013 at 04:35 PM
Dr Andus wrote:
>hi Jorge, check this list (though it’s arguable):
>Freeplane (it’s predecessor, Freemind tops the AlternativeTo list)
>
>Perhaps less obviously, but ConnectedText can also be used for this
>purpose
Just to clarify, I was suggesting these two for their use as project dashboards (dropping into and keeping project-specific files in one place). Otherwise neither of them are what you’d call a “file manager.”