Yes, i know, theBrain (http://www.thebrain.com
it looks so confusingly jumping & view-switching
and so very "too strange" all-together,
to be considered for any serious
information management.

And then on top of that the hefty price-tag of $219 for the Pro Version,
all just seems simply too much of an INITIAL "turn off"
that makes it just soo easy to simply reject & forget
theBrain all-together.

But after having myself for years
dismissed theBrain countless of times
and after having instead spend years
using & trying out a gazillion of other
outliners & mind-mapping tools,

i FINALLY found myself "concerned enough"
to re-examine once therefore theBrain for real,
so that after truly spending time to get to know theBrain
(like reading the 240 pages User Guide for a start!)

i finally began to SEE THE LIGHT, and to realize,
that theBrain is nothing short of simply one of THE
most powerful & flexible info-managers of all !


But before you think, i am just writing this
in the height of my sensational excitement,
allow me to present now the reasons for this,
of what amazing little hidden features theBrain has
that i wished someone had told to me years ago.


And to make this more profitable,
i have divided this app-praisal into:


1. THE BASIC benefits (for newcomers)

2. THE ADVANCED benefits (for the balanced ones)

3. THE EXTREME benefits (for info-maniacs)


so, here we go !!

___________________________

1 - THE BASIC benefits
___________________________


- TheBrain is available truly FULLY cross-platform
(Windows + Mac + Linux + iOS + Android !)


- there is a fully FREE VERSION available,
that has about 70% of all the PRO-features
and then there is of course the $219 PRO version
that offers all the extreme features mentioned below
and that also includes an online viewing & syncing ability
of your files as-well - but you can of course also use
the PRO version entirely OFFLINE ONLY if you so want.

see here the free vs. PRO feature comparison:
http://www.thebrain.com/store/version-details/


- Now, the whole idea of theBrain
is about creating a network of relations
between pieces of information,
which are referred to as "thoughts",
so that from there on the software
ideally will help you see & discover
new "associations" that you didn't think of
and wouldn't have seen otherwise before.


- and each current "thought" that is being examined and fleshed out, is displayed in the center
(or top left or where ever you want it, depending on what view you choose)
with the thought's 4 basic core-relations displayed around it:

1. its bigger category parent concept = that appears ABOVE it

2. its deeper into going child concept = that appears UNDER it

3. its same level category siblings = that appear to the RIGHT of it

4. its otherwise related from where-ever = that appears to the LEFT of it


- and with then a click on ANY of them, making then that info-piece
now the new focus & center of attention,
with once again all the new 4 basic levels shown around that one.


- while at the same time there are 7 side-panels available
that can be additionally populated with all kinds of relevant meta-information about that "thought",
from simple "Rich Text Notes" to "Tags" to "Custom Properties" to "Filters",
"Reports", "Searches" and even a "Todo's/Calender" pane there being as-well.


- additionally, the initially often disturbing "zooming out & in jumpy-ness" can be turned off,
and converted into a much more smoothened-out simple & calm up and down or left to right moving
via the Options/Preferences dialog.


___________________________

2 - THE ADVANCED benefits
___________________________



________ on the NAVIGATION


- exactly that which initially seems to be the biggest "turn off" of theBrain,
turns out to be exactly the greatest STRENGTH and BEAUTY of theBrain
in that it namely constantly is AUTO-HOISTING THE VIEW
into a pre-define-able custom range of 1-4 levels deep around it,

with at the same time fully automatically AUTO-CENTERING & AUTO-FOCUSING the view always
without any MANUAL SCROLLING and/or MANUAL ZOOMING and/or MANUAL CENTERING whatsoever at all.

and which is exaclty UN-LIKE every single other mind/concept-mapping software out there
(yes, even un-like the king of MindMaps, Mindjet Manager Pro that costs $349 dollars)
these all together have the fundamental core weakness and limitation,
in that they are really nothing much more than just a "static canvas" where you either constantly have to
SCROLL AROUND all the time, or where else when they let you so called "focus in"
it only works just 1 LEVEL DEEP (such as in MindJet, iMindMap, NovaMind etc.),
or else letting you focus-in to only 1 horizontal section view-able
(like a pre-defined view of jump-markers that are spread all over the map)
and even then WITHOUT ANY DYNAMICALLY RELATED INFO AUTO-PULLED IN right into the view,
(such as theBrain soo naturally does) but as said again, for the most part only
ends up displaying a bunch of dead "static" shapes, that is ordered in a mostly just
graphical hierarchy/tree/org-chart fashion only for the most part.


so that exactly this auto-hoisting & auto-focusing in (similar to GOALSCAPE)
but more COMBINED WITH the extra related-info pulled into the view as-well,
is again exactly the CORE benefit that sets theBrain apart
from virtually any other info-manager on the market.


- next, there is also a running auto-generated "infinite breadcrumps" running at the bottom,
to which one can quick-jump back & forth but also direct link-establish to & from to a thought


- and then there is also a custom manual "favorites pin-bar" at the top,
to which one can add the most important thoughts, as a kind of quick navigation
and also from & to which one can likewise relations establish.


- then there is even an "automatic wandering" feature, where you can let theBrain
at a custom defined speed (that is set in the Options) "wander" through your whole map,
(at a much slower speed, that the default setting is) so that you can simply look at it
and ponder the relations in a relaxed state of mind, in the hope to maybe thus see
a new and not noticed before connection and/or else simply for a presentation purpose.


- all elements that surround a thought can be automatically arranged
either "alphabetically", or by their "type" or else by their "creation/modification date"
(with the ordering by TYPE being/offering the most flexibility)



________ of the NOTES PANEL


- the Notes panel is full HTML Rich-Text, including Images & Tables with many table options,
to even the insertion of fully-functional checkmark-boxes right into the text note itself.


- the entire notes panel is automatically structured by paragraph-breaks,
so that the note can be viewed in a auto-generated "paragraph outline view"
or as simply the regular content.


- then also advanced Text Formatting functions, such as a "Format Painter",
a "Paste Special" command, a "Find & Replace" function,
a "Bookmark" function and a "Code View" are available too.


- And a "spelling checker" and "Word/Character count" are there as-well


________ of the SEARCH PANEL


- there are 2 search fields, one instant search field on the bottom left corner,
that is TRULY INSTANT with even thousands of results!

and then another more fully fledged "Advanced Search Panel" that can be fully customized
to search by any specific criteria / type / tag or whatever else of these COMBINED.


- the search results are color high-lighted and even sort-able after active / selected / relevance / date.


- boolean AND/OR searches are also fully supported having an extra search field just for that


- and there is even an extra search field for an "without these words" exclusion search as-well


- attachments are also indexed and searched as-well



________ on THE REST


- every meta-info pane can be detached and placed into a pane of its own,
or else all-together combined into a single one, and then by tabs divided.


- every meta-info pane also be moved where-ever one likes,
left / right / top / bottom, or all-together hidden
and only into-view triggered when one needs it,
and thus maximizing the screen space fully for the Brain map


- everything is auto-saved immediately, so that no saving whatsoever is needed


- and everything can be backed-up into a single file


- attachments can be linked or internally included


- thoughts can be set as "forgotten" (but not deleted)
which can be made visible again, or permanently "deleted",
in which case of course they are really gone.


- and any view can be printed out, with even the option
to do a "multi-page poster printing" :-)




___________________________

3 - THE EXTREME Benefits
___________________________


________ on REPORTS


It is called a "report", but it is exactly NOT a list of results.
Instead, a report in theBrain is a native view that but is TOTALLY custom attributes pulled-together
either by a combination of tags or types or any of these together combined

so that a "report" is more like a fully customizable search folder/filter
that can be SAVED into a one-click-button that with a single click can trigger that custom view again
and again not just a "view" but all this is totally dynamic and fresh-updated whenever you look at it.

and MORE than just a "filtered view", because (and that is the KEY) it does NOT display the results into a "dead list" text pane

but instead:

1. shows the results DIRECTLY IN the native concept map itself
by either fading out all the thoughts except your filter,
or else showing everything BUT your filter (aka. an "inverse filter")

2. but again MORE than just a filtering, because it actually COMBINES TOGETHER
from your entire database ALL the related information under a new single parent (your report name title),
while YET perfectly retaining the entire individual thought-maps structure and hierarchy

3. and giving you thus the flexibility to collapse/expand and explore the "live search results" (no duplicates)
in real-time in the map itself as they really are, and NOT in a dead row of text pressed-in results list.


- furthermore reports are not only able to search for "thoughts"
but amazingly also for "link types" that are THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN thoughts
(that is actually the LINES themselves, since you can type/tag/name even the lines/links as-well)


- then there are also numerous of special reports already pre-defined trigger-able, such as
"parentless-thoughts", "orphaned-thoughts", "thoughts with notes", "broken URL thoughts" etc. !



________ on TYPES & TAGS


- types & tags on the other hand, are the more classically true filters,
that once assigned can then with a single click show & pull together
all the thoughts out, that belong to that same type and/tag or MULTIPLE tags or types.


- each type & tag can be pre-defined to have a custom colored text or background or icon associated,
that then of course gets assigned unto all the items that are classified with it.


- then there is even something called a "super type", which enables one to create a hierarchy of types,
that is, to put them together under GROUPS of types, so that when you click a "super type group"
it will pull out the thoughts also of ALL its "under types" as-well.


________ on the IMPORT & EXPORT


- TheBrain offers also a most amazing flexible way to mass-import from so many "raw" sources,
and turn them all into brain-concepts with very little or no manual effort at all,
with even automatically for duplicates-checking right at the moment of the import itself.

It offers IMPORTING from:

Excel (either as a simple range selection and dragging over into it, or whole file import)

Word (either from a simple bullet points/outline copy & paste, or whole file import)

TXT file (either comma / tab / or line break separated)

Folder Files

Internet Explorer Favorites

MindManager file

OPML file (from other MindMapping apps, such as Freeplane etc.)

and even more...


and EXPORTING into:

HTML

XML

Images

or Folders



________ on the DATABASE


- the database is able to endure an "unlimited" amount of thoughts (at least 300'000-500'000 thoughts)


- everything is ULTRA-fast because it has not just a "Search Index" but even a "Website Index"
and even an "Instant Activation Index" (= their Quick Searches/Instant re-ordering function)




________ on the REST


- there is even an option to do a WEB SEARCH and a TWITTER SEARCH and to pull information out from that


- there is an ANALYZING MAP function that marks & ranks the "most connected" subjects
and puts a correspondingly sized circle according to their rank of importance around the thoughts' titles



___________________________



Well, that's about it.

Surely theBrain is one of a kind of a software,
that through its auto-hoisting uniqueness
(when smoothed out into a calmness)
clearly helps to increase focus & associative clarity,
without loosing any of the "big picture" of all the rest of the database,
as all these pieces too, no matter where they are hiding,
are being pulled-into together systematically into focus as-well,
through theBrain's so many ways of tagging, filtering and reporting
- all once again, right on the actual live data as it is viewed natively.

greetings
donleone

donleone,

Thank you so much. I know how much time it takes to do a write-up that detailed.

I've tried TheBrain a couple of times but didn't get far with it. The "jumpiness" was an issue for me, too. More than that, I just didn't like the idea of organizing information in a mind map. I could see how mind maps would be useful as infographic displays, a kind of cheat sheet to show a lot of information in a small space. But I could never see how it would be useful for organizing information in detail. It seemed to me like I'd get lost in a swarm of boxes and connecting lines.

I like to see things in lists, tables, and outlines...all of which seemed the opposite of a mind map.
You have me re-thinking that.

Wayne

Thank you, @donleone -- an excellent review

A few of my favorite aspects of TheBrain

- attachments can be internal or external -- they can be almost any kind of document, and new attachment types (new "templates") can be added to extend TheBrain's capabilities

- an external folder hierarchy can be added as "virtual thoughts" -- similar to what DEVONthink does with indexed folders, the document contents of the folders appear inside these virtual thoughts, which are updated when the contents of the folders change in the filesystem

- calendar entries can be assigned to thoughts, and the calendar sync' d with a Google calendar -- I find this useful when working with TheBrain to keep a log of what I was doing

- there are numerous ways to add indicators to thoughts: Types, Tags, and Labels

- link lines can also have Types and custom labels

- TheBrain 8 Pro has a "clock face" that when clicked shows a list of all the thoughts in the current brain, grouped by last-modified date, in descending order

- TheBrain recognizes just about every custom URL scheme (I haven't found one that it doesn't recognize) such as evernote://, x-devonthink-item://, and so on -- if you include Evernote URLs in a thought's notes, then sync that brain and Evernote to your iPad, then TheBrain's iOS app provides clickable links that will open that document in Evernote.

TheBrain is much more than a mind mapping software -- the standard products in that category are highly limited when compared to TheBrain. I consider it more as knowledge management software, but even there I think TheBrain busts the category.

It's also worth mentioning the extensive tutorials and use cases on TheBrain's site -- Shelley Hayduk and Matt Catan put up new very in-depth videos almost weekly. These explain all aspects of the product and are a great help for quick answers to how-to questions as well as for seeing how others use TheBrain.

I've long hesitated over The Brain. In fact I seem to recall owning a licence years ago, on Windows. In those days, the revolving of the animation at the centre of the view appeared to devour most of my computer's resources!

Then there came a stage when The Brain seemed to concentrate on the corporate market, and went into hibernation for personal customers. Now it seems to have re-emerged, refreshed and much more powerful (and more expensive). But what does The Brain do that is better than any other personal software tool does, for the price?

As a mindmap/graphical outliner for articles, speeches, reports or the equivalent, there are other tools that will give you more than four "levels" in one view, and quickly deliver OPML output - neither of which as far as I can see The Brain can do.

Its strength seems to lie, as Paul Korm says, in knowledge management. But can it do more than DevonThink, say, with its "See also" functionality? I guess if you tend to visualise information, logical arguments and the relationships between ideas strictly in graphical terms, The Brain may be for you. But is a series of graphical links innately more powerful, memorable or expressive than, say, an indented list that also uses clones or replicants?

Excellent in-depth review of TheBrain!

I recently tried to move from an info management centered on TheBrain to one centered around OneNote, but couldn't do it. OneNote, for all its great features, just was not as useful to me as TheBrain -- mostly because of the way in which TheBrain makes information easy to find and relate. Of course, one thing that is easy to do is to link any thought to a section or a page in OneNote and vice versa, so the two make a nice system. But, for me, TheBrain is definitely the front end, the main dashboard. And, it should be said that such a system doesn't translate when you sync brains between computers. (Any files embedded in the brain being sync'd will sync to the other computer, but any files external to the brain will not be.)

Another nice touch, when you open the dialog box to create a new thought, it behaves much the way Notational Velocity and its clones work... it immediately searches for existing thoughts and presents options, should you want to link to one of these, or it lets you create a new thought. The search box works the same way.

To get the most from TheBrain, though, you need to constantly "garden" your data. (Garden is the term the developers use.) That is, you need to prune it and trim it and replant it to keep it from overgrowing in some areas... think of some thoughts as weeds that may need to be removed from time to time. I guess what I mean is you need to keep grooming your information in order to stay in control. This is a good thing, though, as it makes me continually reflect on my information.

Finally, it is way too limiting to think of TheBrain as a mind map. (Sadly, the developers contribute to this misconception by so often comparing TheBrain to mind mappers.) Yes, you can do mind mapping (if you use that term in a more generalized way) in TheBrain. I think of each brain as a galaxy of information that matters to me, and each thought then becomes its own little solar system, with related information orbiting around it. Unlike our solar system, however, it is constantly evolving and accreting data. (Okay, I've mixed metaphors, shifting from garden to galaxy, but they are both useful images.)

Steve Z.

Hugh wrote:

As a mindmap/graphical outliner for articles, speeches, reports or the
equivalent, there are other tools that will give you more than four
"levels" in one view, and quickly deliver OPML output - neither of which
as far as I can see The Brain can do.

That's where the comparison with mind mappers leads to underestimating TheBrain, because I would agree it isn't ideal for plotting out a speech or a paper. Where the mind map usually represents one particular project and the pieces that make it up, TheBrain doesn't work that way, at least not optimally (though you can do that kind of work in TheBrain should you want to).

Its strength seems to lie, as Paul Korm says, in knowledge management.
But can it do more than DevonThink, say, with its "See also"
functionality? I guess if you tend to visualise information, logical
arguments and the relationships between ideas strictly in graphical
terms, The Brain may be for you. But is a series of graphical links
innately more powerful, memorable or expressive than, say, an indented
list that also uses clones or replicants?

I certainly would not urge anyone who is satisfied with DevonThink to switch to TheBrain. For me, DT has never worked, even though I appreciate the number of great features. TheBrain is not my data dump (that's Evernote for now). It's my primary project dashboard and management system, so for me the comparison with DT isn't even really appropriate. I can't do that kind of work in DT or any other info manager that uses a hierarchy, because that is too structured for the way I think.

The best way for me to illustrate this is with the demonstration I put up on my blog three years ago (TheBrain has changed a lot since then):

http://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/personalbrain-as-a-management-tool/

Interesting review! In terms of categorising TheBrain, it sounds to me like it's more of a graphical type of a desktop wiki, than a mind mapping software.

I find "mind mapping" a rather unhelpful category because it seems to be applied to two entirely different uses (which creates confusion).

Apps like Freeplane etc. effectively provide just another type of hierarchical outlining, and are more suited for working on individual documents, rather than serving as some sort of a database for everything that's in one's mind (even if that was possible). This category probably never should have been called "mind maps." They are more like "thought maps", in the sense that they pertain to single documents or other defined projects.

TheBrain might be more deserving of the "mind mapper" label, as it seems better suited for serving as a single database for all ideas and documents. However, since this label was hijacked by the previous category, it just creates confusion.

Given that TheBrain's strengths seem to be in linking disparate info and then enabling their easy navigation and search, it sounds to me very much like a desktop wiki.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

That's where the comparison with mind mappers leads to underestimating
TheBrain, because I would agree it isn't ideal for plotting out a speech
or a paper. Where the mind map usually represents one particular project
and the pieces that make it up, TheBrain doesn't work that way

Oh, sorry Steve, I didn't see your post before I posted mine. I was making a very similar point.

I use DEVONthink extensively, and I use TheBrain extensively. I suppose they both fit into a "knowledge management" -- though that category is a bit like the proverbial nailing jello to a wall.

I integrate DEVONthink and TheBrain in several ways.

In DEVONthink, the results of just about any search or "See Also" display can be selected and exported as a group. I have an AppleScript of my own creation that will take any selection of documents and build an XML file using TheBrain's DTD -- when this "Brain XML" is imported as a child of a selected thought in TheBrain, I now have individual thoughts for each of the documents I selected in DEVONthink, with a link-back to that document. Click the link and the document opens in DEVONthink. So, I can do my research, note taking / annotation in DEVONthink, get to a point where I want to link specific results or suggestions from DEVONthink's AI to one or more thoughts in TheBrain, and with a click on the menubar in DEVONthink I'm good to go. I find this to be a very flexible procedure that makes good use of the strengths of both products.

(The script is probably posted somewhere in the depths of DEVONthink's forum -- it's in a horrible state, today, from a development perspective -- good enough for me; confusing for anyone else -- and needs to be ported to a different language. I might make a SWIFT version of it when Yosemite comes along in its public release.)

No worries, Doc. You said it better than I did anyway!

Dr Andus wrote:

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>That's where the comparison with mind mappers leads to underestimating
>TheBrain, because I would agree it isn't ideal for plotting out a
speech
>or a paper. Where the mind map usually represents one particular
project
>and the pieces that make it up, TheBrain doesn't work that way

Oh, sorry Steve, I didn't see your post before I posted mine. I was
making a very similar point.

I'm hesitating over TheBrain somewhat less than I was.

What has struck a chord with me is Steve's description of it as a "primary project dashboard". In other words, it sounds as if it could perform the function of project "front page(s)", with the heavier lifting (to mix metaphors) performed by, say, DevonThink or the Mac Finder itself, effectively behind the scenes. I do need some such tool, in order to enable me to (mixing metaphors again) distinguish the wood from the trees.

Hugh wrote:

I'm hesitating over TheBrain somewhat less than I was.

What has struck a chord with me is Steve's description of it as a
"primary project dashboard". In other words, it sounds as if it could
perform the function of project "front page(s)", with the heavier
lifting (to mix metaphors) performed by, say, DevonThink or the Mac
Finder itself, effectively behind the scenes. I do need some such tool,
in order to enable me to (mixing metaphors again) distinguish the wood
from the trees.

I am finding TheBrain very good for this type of work, as I mentioned. I do want to point out a few limitations, so as to not mis-lead you:

1. It has a nice calendar system that syncs to Google Calendar (I don't do this, so can't vouched for how that works), but it does not sync directly with the native Mac Calendar app.

2. The iOS app works well, but does not include the calendar.

3. If you are going to be syncing TheBrain between two or more Macs, note that you will not be able to keep links between external documents in sync. That is, if you're linking to a specific document in DevonThink on Mac A, that link will not work in Mac B (and I am pretty certain that is the case, even if your DevonThink database is sync'd between the two computers, though I am not sure of that). One thing I haven't tried (maybe someone else can answer) is what happens if you have the external link leading to a file or document in Dropbox, which is sync'd across computers -- my guess is it won't work, but don't know for sure.

On the other hand, you can embed almost any type of file within TheBrain and that will sync across computers just fine. Of course, you've got to have the proper app on both computers to open and edit the embedded files on each.

TheBrain works for me, because I have one brain for my day job, which I use most of the time on my Windows PC, so I don't care if the links to OneNote files don't work on my MacBook.

Anyway, I'm in no way trying to discourage you, Hugh. I just want to make sure I don't OVER sell TheBrain for dashboard work.

Steve Z.

Understood. Thanks for the advice, Steve.
Hugh

here is an excellent "thoughts" provoking argument in favor again of TheBrain:

We are all very familiar with our "Tree" way of thinking & organizing
(after all it's been around for at least the last 20 years,
and surely everyone on here has used it extensively
at one time or another in their outlining career)

But now imagine that you could
AT ANY TIME with just a SINGLE CLICK,
TURN AROUND your entire Tree
up-side down & criss-cross wise,
from any chosen sub-item that you wanted,
and see then your whole tree and its relations
now from THAT sub-items perspective?

Wouldn't that be powerful ?

If your tree outliner could offer that,
would you not want that ability too?

And all that with just 1 single click,
without re-arranging or changing,
any of the actual order of your database

THAT to me is the big power of TheBrain.


So that you are not forced kept into a fixed top-down hierarchy
that once you establish stays pretty much forever like that.

But you can at any time chose to "tree-shape-shift" the entire thing :-)
and re-examine all of your data from simply a whole other perspective.




And now a 2nd point, as an addition to the review:

after having played now with TheBrain for some time,
i must say, that out of the 4 views possible in Version 8,
i ONLY find the so called "Outline View" (which again i initially dismissed)
to be actually after all the most user-friendly and most efficient of all,

since

a.) the Outline View almost completely avoids any lines overlapping subjects
as all the other views, as soon as they get many cross-connections in-between them,
truly start to become self-confusing, especially when the "expanded all" is enabled.
But the Outline View does NOT become confusing, because it always blends in only
the current level linkages only (just test it once and you'll see what i mean).


b.) and furthermore the "Outline View" because, it alone is able to show the MAXIMUM DEPTH
automatically and natively (which "depth" in the Outline View is going "left to right" ways,
instead of top to down as in the "Normal View", and with the BIG benefit again
that in the Outline View you can have an infinite left to right VISIBLE-retained depth,
whereas the "Normal View" all items that go beyond the 4 levels of depth,
become invisible and faded out, for the sake of "focusing", but i find the infinite visibility
on the contrary to help me MORE focus as the whole thread is somehow "retained" in your mind,
instead of being always 4 level hoistingly cut off.

and "unlimited" of course in the sense, as far sideways as your screen space goes,
but also with the left & right arrow's holding you can super speedily "fly through" all the open side-levels,
should there be very many that are open simultaneously.

Lastly, in that "Outline View", the auto-hoisting is by necessity more an "auto-centering",
and on purpose not hoisting, so that you CAN see more depth beyond just the 4 levels,
and thus indeed seems to me, a nice golden mean "view" between the traditional Tree outliners
and the more confucius views of theBrain, apart from its Outline View.

greetings
donleone

Hello all,

This is definitely a great review!

Further, I have just done the same experience with OneNote / TheBrain like Stephen Zeoli:
"I recently tried to move from an info management centered on TheBrain to one centered around OneNote, but couldn’t do it. OneNote, for all its great features, just was not as useful to me as TheBrain—mostly because of the way in which TheBrain makes information easy to find and relate. Of course, one thing that is easy to do is to link any thought to a section or a page in OneNote and vice versa, so the two make a nice system. "

I moved to OneNote in March this year and I am moving back to TheBrain right now. As Stephen writes, TheBrain makes it easier then OneNote for me to add, relate and find information. It is quicker in finding information and the information looked for is not "so far away" like in OneNote. Another stumbling block in OneNote for me is its reminder system as it is linked to Outlook. I do not use Outlook, neither at work and neither at home. TheBrain provides a simple and integrated calendar with a reminder system and you can sync the calender with your Google calendar for example.

TheBrain is not a MindMapping tool for me. When I have to outline a presentation, a speech or a text then I use a MindMap app or the outline mode in Word.

Dominik

Stephen - in DEVONthink (I assume this is also true with TheBrain) if an external "indexed" file or a link is located on Mac A and Mac B at the same relative path from the root of the current volume on both machines, then the links will continue to work. E.g., if you have a link to "~/Dropbox/..." or "~/Documents/Meaning of Life/Part 249.docx", then the link (or a indexed file) should work on both machines. This doesn't apply to iOS devices, of course.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

3. If you are going to be syncing TheBrain between two or more Macs, note that you will not be able to keep links
between external documents in sync. That is, if you’re linking to a specific document in DevonThink on Mac A,
that link will not work in Mac B (and I am pretty certain that is the case, even if your DevonThink
database is sync’d between the two computers, though I am not sure of that). One thing I haven’t tried
(maybe someone else can answer) is what happens if you have the external link leading to a file or document
in Dropbox, which is sync’d across computers—my guess is it won’t work, but don’t know for sure.

donleone wrote:

But now imagine that you could
AT ANY TIME with just a SINGLE CLICK,
TURN AROUND your entire Tree
up-side down & criss-cross wise,
from any chosen sub-item that you wanted,
and see then your whole tree and its relations
now from THAT sub-items perspective?

I know I'm repeating myself and indulging in my pet obsession of classifying outliner etc. software, but this description further suggests that TheBrain is better characterised as a graphical kind of a wiki, since wikis are also meant to be helping with overcoming the limitations of the hierarchical tree structure, and they are also all about linking and attaching stuff.

Is this Outline view in TheBrain just a visualisation tool or does it also allow you to restructure the hierarchy somehow?

Dr Andus wrote:

Is this Outline view in TheBrain just a visualisation tool or does it
also allow you to restructure the hierarchy somehow?

you can do actual hierarchical changes by either:

a.) pulling a line out from a thought to any other in your view (the simple method)

or, which is far more powerful

b.) pull a line out of a thought into empty space, and then have a automatic search box appear,
in which you type a couple letters and have it instantly show all your ENTIRE DATABASE's
matching thoughts to which you can thus link to, even if they and especially when they,
are exactly so far out and away from the visible view.

All this creates then a simple "line" relation in-between and also auto-pulls that previously "distant thought"
now right next to it into view as-well, that is unto the left corner side to it,
where these so called "jump thoughts" appear. (a "jump thought" being, a lateral relation to anything whatsoever)

OR

you can do also unlimited re-visualizations of your data, without changing any hierarchy at all, by either:

c.) just clicking on any thought to make that the new center,
and have then all its relations re-arrange themselves around it (the simple method)

or, which is far more powerful

d.) just clicking on any tag/type/report (aka. saved search)
and have then the view itself instantly "re-hierarchi-ze" itself automatically
with the tag/type/report name now becoming the TOP parent of all
and the search results appearing below it but in still full retaining of their actual hierarchy they have



But let me make a JUMP THOUGHT on this point:

since exactly became interested in TheBrain because i like to have a lot of criss-cross connections,
i am actually starting to get tired of all these "lines" criss-crossing all over the place so much,
that is un-avoidable if you got (and love to make) a lot of side-connections,
so that it all becomes simply not effective in any sense anymore, to retain the lines.

For that purpose, i am experimenting with the "outline view" with NO lines showing at all,
since the lines can be disabled all together in the Options/Preferences/Look&Feel/Links > draw links = uncheck

and then to still know what belongs to what, using instead the option to PULL the Outline View maximumly tight together,
(again in the Option/Preferences/Views/Outline View/Distance+Intentation = pulling both to maximum near)

so that the whole thing actually starts almost to look like a tree in like 4 directions,
similar to the app "Tree" on the mac that can do both vertical & horizontal trees (see here http://www.topoftree.jp/en/tree/
with the only real difference being that TheBrain is more flexible in pulling lateral content in via its "Jump thoughts"

and your eye can easily distinguish between the relations even without any lines whatsoever,
because all the different types of relations always appear in their same "corner",
so that i found myself seemingly clearer thinking, knowing that all things are "related",
but without having any need whatsoever, to have to ALWAYS see these lines all the time.

Finally, the ideal is achieved, with the great feature that even with the lines "turned off",
whenever you hover over a relation, instantly ONLY THAT particular RELATIONAL LINE,
becomes visible and high-lighted, making it thus to me the best golden mean usage,
that helps you fully stay clear-minded (and not confused)
by only showing 1 particular line, only when you actually want it.

Dr Andus wrote:

I know I'm repeating myself and indulging in my pet obsession of
classifying outliner etc. software, but this description further
suggests that TheBrain is better characterised as a graphical kind of a
wiki, since wikis are also meant to be helping with overcoming the
limitations of the hierarchical tree structure, and they are also all
about linking and attaching stuff.

Funny, I too have thought of TheBrain as having more in common with wikis than with mind maps, as it represents a more organic network of related ideas. As I'm sure is evident, there are significant differences, too.

- With a wiki, links exist with ideas within notes -- that is, you parse the links to relate to specific ideas within the note, where as links in TheBrain are generally made among the notes themselves (you can add wiki-style text links in notes in TheBrain, but it takes a little more work than a useful wiki).

- A wiki eschews any idea of hierarchy in its links, but links in TheBrain represent relationships, depending how they flow. Hierarchy can be circular as this example: Pets > Dogs (child of Pets) > Fido (child of Dogs) > Pets (child of Fido). You can't really represent this in a mind map or an outline without at least some extra gymnastics.

- Links in a wiki would tend to be stable and unchanging (at least I think so). Where as, links in TheBrain are made to be changed as needed -- and TheBrain makes this easy. For example, if you want to use TheBrain as a Kanban for your projects/tasks, you would then change the parent for a specific task from a thought called ToDo to the next state, In Progress. This is easy to do in TheBrain. A sophisticated wiki like ConnectedText could handle this, but you probably wouldn't use links to manage that kind of categorization.

Anyway, just some further thoughts.

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

- With a wiki, links exist with ideas within notes -- that is, you parse
the links to relate to specific ideas within the note, where as links in
TheBrain are generally made among the notes themselves

Oh, I see, so these are higher level document-to-document connections then. Thanks for pointing that out. As you say, a standard wiki link is between a bit of text within a document to either the entirety of another document or to a particular section or anchor within it.

@donleone

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

donleone wrote:

i am actually starting to get tired of all these "lines" criss-crossing
all over the place so much,
that is un-avoidable if you got (and love to make) a lot of
side-connections

This reminds me of a recent feature in ConnectedText's Navigator tool (which is for visualising the network of links as an outline) that allows you to remove specific individual nodes (representing documents) one-by-one manually, exactly to 'thin' the outline, so it becomes more easily analysable for a given purpose (by reducing 'noise').

This is so true!

donleone wrote:

i am actually starting to get tired of all these “lines” criss-crossing
all over the place so much,
that is un-avoidable if you got (and love to make) a lot of
side-connections

But you can change the appearance of the lines weaker by changing its color.

Further, to avoid to add too many jump connections you can add links within the notes section of a thought to another thought. This gives you more the feel of a Wiki.

Dominik

Does the latest version of the Brain handle notes any better than the older versions? Specifically, does the plex still slow to a crawl when you have a lot of information in the note fields?

I gave up on the Brain because it wasn't scalable and the note field was so flaky. Until the scalability problem is fixed, I don't see how the program could be used as a real information manager.

I've never had any trouble with the Plex relating to notes, but that's because I never put a lot of information into a notes field. I don't think TheBrain is intended for that use... i.e. using the notes field to store lots of information, the way you would Evernote or DevonThink. I think if you try to use it that way, even with the latest version, you will continue to be disappointed.

This isn't to say the notes field isn't useful. It is handy for short notes or logging times and dates.

You could put long documents into TheBrain as Word files or RTFs. If they are embedded in TheBrain, the search function can find text inside them fairly easily.

Anyway, this is my experience with the app.


Gary Carson wrote:

Does the latest version of the Brain handle notes any better than the
older versions? Specifically, does the plex still slow to a crawl when
you have a lot of information in the note fields?

I gave up on the Brain because it wasn't scalable and the note field was
so flaky. Until the scalability problem is fixed, I don't see how the
program could be used as a real information manager.

I tinkered with an old version of TheBrain, and I think its a neat application of the semantic web concept however the ~200$ pricetag (coupled with the need to web-activate it at that!) is a bit excessive. The only other program I've seen that is that steep is maybe Tinderbox, though in fairness there is a lot more that Tinderbox can do for you than simply display a springy semantic web.