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TheBrain as file manager?
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Posted by Jorge Watanabe
Dec 16, 2013 at 08:01 PM
Dr Andus wrote:
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).
Hi Dr Andus and thank you for your information. I will investigate Freeplane and Connected Text more deeply. By the way, Connected Text is from Brazil (my country). I’ve tested it some months ago, but then I was not seeking for a file manager, so my evaluation took a different direction. Kind regards
Posted by Jorge Watanabe
Dec 16, 2013 at 08:05 PM
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
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.
Hi Steve, and thank you. I agree with you. TheBrain is great, almost perfect for my needs—and expensive. If it was half the price, I would buy it today.
Posted by Jorge Watanabe
Dec 16, 2013 at 08:13 PM
Jon Polish wrote:
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
Hi Jon, and thank you. In fact, I own Ultra Recall 5. I agree that it is useful, and I really tried to use it as file manager. But it does not read files and folders directly from OS; instead, it is necessary to import them. This process is very slow in my case (hours to import or update a single directory). So I quit. TheBrain is very fast in this task. I don’t know the technical details, but it seems to read files and folders directly in “real time”, smoothly integrating itself to OS and extending Windows capabilities with great features. It is not perfect for my needs, but it is the nearest I’ve ever found.
Posted by 22111
Dec 21, 2013 at 12:37 PM
I commented on this here:
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/5217