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An in-depth TheBrain app-praisal !
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Posted by Dominik Holenstein
Jul 11, 2014 at 10:47 AM
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
Posted by Paul Korm
Jul 11, 2014 at 10:54 AM
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.
Posted by Dr Andus
Jul 11, 2014 at 11:32 AM
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?
Posted by donleone
Jul 11, 2014 at 12:55 PM
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.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jul 11, 2014 at 01:52 PM
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.