Bumped into a fascinating presentation by Jerry Michalski on his use of TheBrain for 15 years: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzQkJ4lleKk

I found it to be a very interesting and thought-provoking video, regardless of your views of the underlying application platform. Highly recommended!!

His 15-year TheBrain model can be accessed online at http://www.jerrysbrain.com/

A couple of notable points for me:

13:22 Reliance on Wayback machine vs. importing and creating a massive local index

14:02 The view of tools like TheBrain as an instrument and not as an appliance

22:36 Collaborative Sense-making

23:36 The impact of the business models of "industries of culture"

Enjoy!
PIMfan

Cool presentation, thanks for sharing!

Thanks, PIMFan. Very interesting.

Jerry mis-stated that there is no semantic meaning in the plex, as the area where the thoughts reside is called. In fact it has a definite geography. At the center is the active thought. Directly above this are its parent thoughts. To the right are sibling thoughts -- that is, thoughts that share at least one parent with the active thought. Below the active thought are child thoughts. And to the left are jump thoughts, those thoughts that you consider related to the active thought but not in a hierarchical way. This aspect, in and of itself, is very powerful.

You can also label links to add meaning to the connections. That may have been an addition to the app made after this presentation was recorded.

Steve Z.

An interesting aspect of how Jerry uses TheBrain is that he rarely adds any content to his thoughts. They frequently have URL attachments, but no files or notes or meta data in the form of tags or thought types. He mentioned that this was an artifact from using the first versions of TheBrain, which didn't have all those extra features, but he also said or implied that he eschews adding that extra information because it would a.) inhibit his willingness to drop information into TheBrain, and b.) he was fearful it would slow TheBrain down.

I am absolutely certain this is atypical, but I can also see the appeal. Still, having the ability to combine all that information in one thought is one of TheBrain's strengths. But it is food for thought (pardon the pun).

Steve Z.

I didn't find the presentation interesting at all, he seems to be just dumping all webs in there as he crawls the net (and links only at that).

I toyed around with an older version of PersonalBrain. I think its really cool in concept, but generally expensive for what it does. To top off the expense, the insistence for online activation is a major off-putting part; especially considering Storybook just disappeared out of the blue.

It seems like very little actually changes between versions except for small conveniences, and I really wonder if those conveniences are worth the hundred or so dollars that upgrades seem to cost. I might actually use this if it was more accessible, since the concept is neat.

Joshua,

(welcome to the forum by the way, unless I've missed you in much earlier posts)

I expressed a similar impression here http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3223/5 but I believe I stand corrected. You might want to take a look at that thread and others on TheBrain in this forum.

The original 'plex' user interface itself remains at the centre of things and looks relatively unchanged, but there are actually quite a few improvements around. Whether they are useful to you as a user is another thing. Also, my impression is that during TheBrain's history quite a lot changes have been implemented 'under the hood', gradually supporting, among others:
- Cross-platfom compatibility (re-engineered from the ground up in Java)
- Web access and synchronisation across devices, for the same user
- Collaboration between several users http://www.thebrain.com/products/teambrain/

The latter seems to be associated with the latest version of TheBrain (8). I had checked several times while 7 was the active version, and TeamBrain was always in beta.

I looked at the presentation and found it interesting. I decided to give The Brain another try.

I was intrigued by the interface, but the lack of an Android app is a real killer for me. If I can't use it on my mobile devices, it can't replace Evernote for me.

It's possible today with webbrain.com (theBrain Cloud Services) to work with a brain in a browser on a mobile device. I do not see this as an Evernote replacement, however, now or any likely time soon. I've settled for now on using a brain that I've created just for mobile devices -- and then later back at the desktop harvesting thoughts from that and moving them into a main brain. This is because the mobile device displays are too small for me to work comfortably with a large brain in WebBrain.

Garland Coulson wrote:

If I can't use it on my mobile devices, it can't
replace Evernote for me.

Hi Paul,

I often work offline on my smart phone and Evernote handles this well, just synchronizing when I reconnect. The webbrain.com service only works if you are totally connected, I believe.

So the lack of Android app really makes me cross it off of my list even though I would like to try it. I just can't invest that kind of time building my personal knowledge base if I can't take it with me on my mobile devices.

Garland

Paul Korm wrote:

It's possible today with webbrain.com (theBrain Cloud Services) to work
with a brain in a browser on a mobile device. I do not see this as an
Evernote replacement, however, now or any likely time soon. I've
settled for now on using a brain that I've created just for mobile
devices -- and then later back at the desktop harvesting thoughts from
that and moving them into a main brain. This is because the mobile
device displays are too small for me to work comfortably with a large
brain in WebBrain.

Garland Coulson wrote:
>If I can't use it on my mobile devices, it can't
>replace Evernote for me.

TheBrain users may be interested in the new video about the iOS version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9kYulDtoSFc

I don't think it is publicly available yet, but it must be getting close. One thing it does not yet include, I'm sorry to say, is the Calendar function. I hope they add it one of these days.

Steve Z.