Anyone have experience with Southbeach. I am looking for alternatives to TheBrain for visual thinking beyond standard mind mapping.

Thanks for any input.

I use Southbeach modeler. I think of it as a concept mapper on hyperdrive. But I wouldn't put it into the same category as TheBrain. A product similar to Southbeach is ThinkComposer. I don't recall either Southbeach or ThinkComposer having any significant updates for 3 years or more, and I wonder if they are actively supported. Not that anything breaks. Both sites have extensive documentation and trial use is permitted.

TempusFugit wrote:

Anyone have experience with Southbeach. I am looking for alternatives
to TheBrain for visual thinking beyond standard mind mapping.

Should I infer that you also use TheBrain? My Holy Grail is to find a Visual idea capture tool that shows interrelationships, dependencies and also allows fast assignment of temporal characteristics like "due" or "review for further action" dates.

TheBrain misses the mark as the UI for adding metadata to the "Thought" is amazingly clunky... and - they haven't got temporality figured out yet.

My only hope is to master GraphViz within ConnectedText - in the near term. (So far as I have seen.)

It is all my own fault for never having learned how to Code.

-TF

Paul,

Further to last post...

1. You use Southbeach *preferably* to ThinkComposer??

2. You use TheBrain currently? Or abandoned entirely?

-TF

TF -- I use all three -- TheBrain, SouthBeach and ThinkComposer

TF wrote:

My Holy Grail is to find a Visual idea capture tool that shows interrelationships,
dependencies and also allows fast assignment of temporal characteristics
like “due” or “review for further action” dates.

For that requirement I would be using a mind mapper like MindJet MindManager (preferably) or another mind mapper that supports task scheduling. I agree that TheBrain's methods are slow -- there is much improvement in the forthcoming version 9. But the developers are saying version 9 will eliminate the calendar integration, which is a big step backward. (My comments on v9 are based on beta testing, and the beta is open to all currently paid-up license holders, so there's nothing secret about it.)

I like the way MindJet plays with Outlook and OneNote. MindJet has the "idea capture", "show interrelationships and dependencies" and "fast assignment of temporal characteristics" down cold -- far better than the other tools you've mentioned. (ConnectedText of course meets all these needs, except easy graphical visualization.) In my case, I use the MindJet clipper in Outlook to send links to emails, tasks, calendar entries to MindJet -- where I can rearrange these items on the MindJet canvas, make connections, add notes and quickly build a visual planner.

TheBrain v8 (current commercial release) does a good job of importing MindJet files and so if you want to use TheBrain for collating a large volume of info and notes gathered over a long time (a typical use case for TheBrain) it's easy to bring in data from individual MindJet files into a Brain that consolidates that data into a large framework. The downside is that it's really difficult to get data back out of TheBrain.

Paul-

Thanks for the info.

While I didn't DL a trial of the rather pricey MJ, it looks like it doesn't do an important thing that TB does - and that is enable those "Jump" links to many other tangential Thoughts which when clicked really give you that "neural network" imagery which for me is Key to TB.

For Mind Mapping I have tried Freeplane and Freemind and find Xmind to be my visually-favored variant of the Freemind source code.

As for ConnectedText, I wish Eduardo would beef up the Navigator and allow sequential expansion/contraction of levels for each Topic. That would simplify things.

My workaround for dating in many apps that are weak is to use Searchable Tags that correspond to ISO Week Numbering (this is week 12). I tend to think in Weekly increments. 52 tidy blocks of time within which to execute tasks. More granularly, I use ToDoList, which for a free Win app is phenomenal in hierarchical tasking.

I may have to give Vue from Tufts U. another go.

Yes, you are right about TB's sub-optimal Export capabilities. I am not a subscriber and will have to wait for v. 9 through normal upgrade channels. Hope the de-bugging is not elongated.

-TF
###

TempusFugit wrote:

As for ConnectedText, I wish Eduardo would beef up the Navigator and
allow sequential expansion/contraction of levels for each Topic. That
would simplify things.

Not sure if I fully understand your requirement but if you're talking about unfolding/refolding outbound links by double-clicking on a topic in the Navigator, it is possible to set up that behaviour by changing some of the options.

Hello, Dr. A.

My desired outcome with CT is to assign an F-Key to make Topic Links either expand out or contract to the Parent. In case of expansion, to more than just the current capability of the first level of the Topic.

It would be great to enable also expansion of Links to 2nd, 3rd and even 4th Levels. [One can do this in "TheBrain"]

I realize that, given the current UI layout of Nav in CT, with many Topical links, this could be a messy affair with some Projects, but one could remedy this by making Nav an independent, full size window.

If you know a Tweak, would be all ears!

Best regards,

TF

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Dr Andus wrote:

TempusFugit wrote:
>As for ConnectedText, I wish Eduardo would beef up the Navigator and
>allow sequential expansion/contraction of levels for each Topic. That
>would simplify things.

Not sure if I fully understand your requirement but if you're talking
about unfolding/refolding outbound links by double-clicking on a topic
in the Navigator, it is possible to set up that behaviour by changing
some of the options.

TempusFugit wrote:

My desired outcome with CT is to assign an F-Key to make Topic Links
either expand out or contract to the Parent.

As far as I can tell that's not currently possible, as Navigator seems to be more configured for mouse use. So it's a double-click instead. But you could request it as an option at the CT forum.

In case of expansion, to

more than just the current capability of the first level of the Topic.
It would be great to enable also expansion of Links to 2nd, 3rd and even
4th Levels. [One can do this in "TheBrain"]

Yeah, currently it's manual, you just need to keep double-clicking on individual topics.

I realize that, given the current UI layout of Nav in CT, with many
Topical links, this could be a messy affair with some Projects, but one
could remedy this by making Nav an independent, full size window.

Yes, for Navigator to be of good use, it's better to make it a full sized window, ideally on another monitor.

FWIW, here is my setup:

In Options, I have "Double click expands/collaspes topic" selected. And in the Navigator I have "Vertical outline" view set. To me that gives the cleanest result, when there are many links. Then I just click away, if I want to expand to further levels.

Another visualisation option is to add the following to the footer of the project, so it is displayed in every topic:

[[$GRAPH:(($CURRENTTOPIC))|Height=300|Width=600|Levels=1]]

This then displays the outbound links from the current topic at the bottom of the current topic, as a star-shaped graph. The levels displayed can be adjusted.

I was a long time (ten years) user of TheBrain. Ultimately, with the new subscription model, I didn't renew my professional subscription after years without significant updates.
TheBrain is still a unique tool, and there is nothing quite like it.

Thanks to this thread, I discovered Southbeach Modeller. What a silly name. Just search the web for Southbeach and Modeller - I was looking for YouTube videos. Don't go there. Not safe for work.

Having said that, besides the poor product marketing and promotion, Southbeach is a fantastic piece of software. I immediately fell in love with it. Can you spell CRIMP?

Differences between TheBrain and Southbeach: They are opposites, in that TheBrain doesn't require any order or specificity in relationships between nodes. This lack of specificity to a modelling notation that supports the task of "world building" very well - capturing concepts and associations (relationships).
Southbeach Modeller, in turn, is based on argument mapping: The fundamental abstraction is that of "good" and "bad" elements. Relationships follow systems thinking principles (and beyond) in that polarity and impact between nodes play a central role.

Possible applications (with a grain of salt, this is just my personal history):

The Brain serves as an excellent container to capture thoughts, references, etc. when venturing into a new (research) domain. I'm still tempted to pick it up again for that purpose (my perpetual v8 Pro license), despite my annoyance with the author and the ever fluctuating roadmap, stability issues.

Southbeach Modeller - any strategy or ideation process will greatly benefit from it. Its expressiveness is unmatched by tools that are as (relatively) user-friendly. The report generator is ingenious (often, graphical models are not acceptable for executive reviews and group collaboration - this is a life saver). It doesn't really work as well as TheBrain as a tool to collect facts and serve as a large-scale reference database. DevonThink might be a better candidate for that (striking a balance with its associative inferences between TheBrain and Evernote).

I agree with moritz's post. Southbeach Modeller looks most impressive (ignoring its name). On the Mac, of course I can't use it (without the fuss of, say, Parallels, which I'm reluctant to return to). Hard to tell without being hands-on, but in circumstances where Southbeach seems likely to have been designed for the purpose, I've been using Flying Logic (http://flyinglogic.com another "argument mapper" but one which is cross-platform. However, Soutbeach appears to be significantly more sophisticated and helpful than FL.

I too agree with the distinctions between The Brain and - what I understand to be - the functionality of Southbeach. I'm a relatively new user of TB, but I've never really seen it as a "modelling" application, although I understand how it could be used for that purpose.