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TheBrain 9 is out of beta
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Posted by Graham Rhind
Mar 1, 2018 at 04:15 PM
Thanks Steve and Paul. It’s interesting how people’s requirements differ so widely. I, for example, aren’t bothered that software’s been written in Java and I don’t need multiple instances of brains and my diary is on paper, so I don’t use the timeline. As for speed, I’d rather have steady and reliable than flashy (it was only four months after I started paying for the syncing that it actually started working ...). Similarly, I never saw any improvements making it worthwhile to upgrade to versions 7 or 8 either.
As for the notes: no table support, no ability to set font and font size, many bugs with cut and paste, default double return at the end of a paragraph, no html editing view - actually, loads of stuff available in previous versions for note editing is missing. All stuff for me that stops me using the notes at all, and that’s a major failing in my view.
Maybe as I work with it I’ll have a eureka moment and become a convert. But I reckon that moment’s a long way off, if it comes at all.
Posted by Harlan Hugh
Mar 19, 2018 at 12:49 AM
Hello all,
Thanks for your posts. We’re thrilled to have completed the release of 9 and are already working on version 10.
Obviously, we think version 9 is great. ;-) The underlying architecture is vastly superior and so much more reliable. As you will see, this new platform will enable us to develop future versions faster and more ambitiously. FYI, the #1 most important improvement in version 9 based on user surveys is the redesigned user interface.
Yes, the new notes editor has been a little controversial. We decided to focus on making notes more reliable, easier to use, and more consistent. While version 8 allowed basically anything inside of notes, version 9’s notes are concentrated on performing on core editing features very well. As seen here, some people love the change and others miss version 8’s notes. In any case, the notes editor as it stands is a solid foundation upon which we will continue to build.
We’ve known for some time that Java’s lifespan as a platform for desktop applications is approaching obsolescence - that was one of the many reasons we under took the 5 year process of rewriting TheBrain from scratch.
Graham, I found your support ticket history about sync not working for you. Since we were in beta it did take a little more than 2 months to solve. Apologies for that. I extended your service by several months as a token of our appreciation for your patience and support.
Regards,
-Harlan (from TheBrain)
Posted by doablesoftware
Apr 6, 2018 at 06:49 PM
hey Harlan
can you make a list of the main specific uses of ‘brain’ with examples?
for now or next release?
i saw this once when looking for something and eventually found it on quora,
but ppl said it was highly limited, and i didnt know what it was for exactly and specifically
at this point, im still thinking of what a good solution to the particular need would be
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jul 13, 2018 at 01:44 PM
I remember that in the past (more than a decade ago) TheBrain had attempted to enter the enterprise world as the BrainEKP (Enterprise Knowledge Platform). While completely out of reach for all the organisations I’ve ever been a part of, I found the concept really powerful. One of its most interesting features was the ability to link specific items from an external database to a thought; this way, one could link e.g. a project task to the contact details of the relevant person in the company contacts database.
Do you know if this is/was something that the commercial version of TheBrain can/could do with contacts in Outlook or other contact database?
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>The one feature that I really miss in TheBrain 9 that was in version 8
>is the ability (working in Windows) to drag an email out of Outlook and
>onto the Plex. That was so handy for reminding myself to tackle things
>on certain dates. Other than that, TheBrain 9 is superior in every other
>way.
Posted by 22111
Jul 14, 2018 at 05:58 PM
“with contacts in Outlook or other contact database”
That would be realizable on a 1-to-1 base: this specific external db, that specific code in order to access it… if that db in question allowed for it (generically or in accord with that specific setup).
Data dispersion at this very moment in time is a nightmare; many current projects in order to integrate such data fail (systematically after having dispersed millions of dollars or euros to no avail whatsoever), and where’s AI or just simili-AI available for such (then, at last, integrated) ventures?
My impression is that it’s only the very biggest corporations in the industry which are able to resolve such problems, henceforward: Them only can deploy the necessary hard- and software to integrate, step after step, component after component, corporate users’ currently dispersed db’s, all of the latter with their own elaborate functions (and possibly sub-standard documentation).
At the end of the day, AI (and even simili-AI) is there in order to not have finite code too specific, and which then opposes integration of the parts into more general systems (or enforces loss/sacrifice of analysis and/or reporting power), and your usual 40-people systems trader simply doesn’t get the necessary (more-or-less) AI power in order to deploy it further down to your needs.
Any wishes for AI, voiced in this user forum, are doomed to be only and partly fulfilled by providers who’ll get more and more hold of your data. Since, very simply, your data can’t cope any more, but not at all, with all the data accumulating out there, and which you will need to process, too, in some way at least, and in order to get by at least.
Really smart people will have discovered already today that I’m deriding PIM (“bucket”) software, but then, in these days, your file system, too, has become obsolete: It’s not so much anymore about selecting, it’s become straight about missing things, missing the potentially, very probably pertinent, crucial things now, and that’s why AI will be the superpower of the next decennials: Because, simply spoken, your usual mom-and-pop venture (including any entity that’s below 2,000 people or so) simply cannot afford the manpower necessary to replace even some 10 p.e. of the research, analyzing and integrative, composition power (advantage) real AI will very soon have (over them).
What was it again, that Mac software every felt second line in this forum raves about lately? Obviously, you all sense the power of even just simili AI which is deployed in there, and which always consist of a set of rules though, just in some more elaborate way.
I’m certainly not ridiculising your discriminatory efforts, but when I then read upon MyBase and such things of the Nineties, in an age where real AI is overtaking and subjugating all of your possible data > information > identities of all sorts (ie your, very sparse / badly selected already, raw data (be it by judgement, be it by simple availability, and then tries to value the little you’ll have got), and then including all of your possible inferences from it), I’m asking myself if you really don’t see it, or if your - quite similar - upbringing (since around 85 p.c. of you are academics or at the very least have enjoyed academic education) makes you agreeably blind for current reality: Zuckerberg does know almost anything important about most of you, whilst you don’t now anything about Zuckerberg which you’d ever be able to instrumentalize in any way whatsoever: the whole world of today has become the old days’ stock exchange: only the initiates get access to the real info, whilst all the rest of the pack deludes themselves with pseudo-info.
I’m well aware that here and there, there’s something valid, valuable to be found indeed, but no rule without its exception, as they say, right?
When I coded some of the very first PIMs in 1996, I wasn’t aware of those developments, or better, of those factors which were hard facts even at the time; I idealistically thought that you could devise some valid albeit partial reflection of that bigger reality out there, and just incorporate the pertinent (pertinent-for-you) items into that, your, little world:
I didn’t see yet that even most of that pertinence to you, and whatever it may be, and whatever that “you” may be, some individual, some intermediate corporation, even some little, powerless country like Liechtenstein or Andorra (hohoho!), very simply never will get access to the really pertinent info, and that’s why, for example, corporations buy politicians, so as at the very least to the field of - purely national - legal basics to rule then, they get to some info, and ideally, from their point of view, even some means of deflection.
About my around 2 million “information” items now, administered by heavy use of any trick (the file system) NTFS can provide you, and some 20,000 lines of AHK code. As it already dawned on Sokrates, at a certain point of knowledge, you realize that your knowledge is very limited, and that’s exactly what large amounts of data do: You realize that you selection is necessarily faulty, by its inevitable omissions - while on the other hand, whenever somebody who satisfies himself with very specific selections (aside: but you know now why I’m in absolute need of bolding entries), this comes hand in hand with his illusion his specific selection to be a pertinent, comprehensive one: ho, ho, ho!
As the smarter readers will have grasped already, I’m preaching for trying to get that part of info which isn’t readily available but which is - technically or by intention, resp. by both means in the latter case - withheld from you, and sometimes, I’m asking myself if that “big data” hype isn’t but about throwing sand into your eyes: e.g., for German-comprehending readers, David Kriesel’s lectures about “Spiegel mining” are highly entertaining and instructive, but SO WHAT?
Getting proof, at last, for what you had been feeling anyway, and quite some precisely, all the time? What’s that good for? And with so-called “constructive, really useful big data”, it’s similar: Never ever did I get any really new information from any such data, it just confirmed that very impression with regards to things I’d had anyway: From my experience, big data is proof for what you “know” anyway, but without having been able to prove it to third parties: At the end of the day, big data is some corporation’s handyman (read: middle management) opinionative justification…
And again, you’re left without the real data, the one which finally would permit you to pursue your means, effectively.
Here and there, I’m musing about TheBrain, why? It’s regularly mentioned in this forum; in spite of their allegations / advertising, it’s certainly not suitable for data gathering and then displaying on big scale. But such graphical representations come with some big advantage which is too rarely mentioned I think: Non-pertinent items (“thoughts”, oh my!) quickly clutter the screen in such programs, whilst in list/tree-based programs, they don’t annoy that much - especially with bolding the supposedly relevant items (which isn’t the same thing as relegating the non-relevant ones to child status, as I’ve tried to communicate in this forum some years ago).
As you perhaps know, the interrogation mark isn’t allowed in file system entries (folder/file names); in the last resort, you could always replace it with its Spanish variant, but anyway, in bucket software, there’s no such admissibility problem left, and so, in some - carefully purged - TheBrain - screen, almost 2/3 of items (“thoughts”, yo, yo, yo!) should come with some end-”?”, but do they in reality?
In other words, whatever should present itself as doubtful, as debatable, will present itself as a given fact, in your generic outliner - and it’ll be all your fault, let’s be positive about that! -, and then, MyBase and similar will probably do indeed.
That some users even seriously consider db-driven “outliners” which don’t even offer “cloning” of items (RightNote) / (future) substructures (MyInfo) - let alone making that functionality readily and as easily available as any other, “regular” item creation (here again, UR is currently “best”, but by immediate comparison only, in fact, it’s abysmally imperfect in this respect indeed - and of course, there’s nothing simpler than distinguishing between “ToDo” or other ephemeral “clones”, and then permanent secondary ontology (or if you prefer: taxonomy) entries) -, makes me speechless.
Again: NO PIM will get you a relevant, pertinent subset of reality, of any reality out there: You’re simply not up to it, nor do you have the practical means, to realize that, Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull just being some fairy tale among oh so many others. But there’s no reason to let incompetent and/or stuff-it developers reduce your possibilities even more, I’d say.
Another thought again: Even quite big corporations don’t see any horizon anymore, in-house, so they do what I’ve just described above - and you really, seriously think that some PIM, with some connections, will do it for your 1-man shop? (I have the most frequent situation in mind here, not the OP’s.)
Anyway, bucket softwares are just even more wedged-in subsets of that mandatory subset of it all, your file system, and even with just horrible interaction between the two, to start with, and don’t you think that by receding more and more from what you’d been initially striving at, you’re crippling your capabilities more and more, then desperately asking for some links, for some connections (cf. this thread’s gateway), while your whole setup has been a mistake from its core?
I know: Behind any subset, there’s that - illusionary - idea of enhanced pertinence, but from then on, it all went bonkers… and those, from year to year more biased and impinged, google result sets are certainly not the answer to your problem… since even by paying them for it, you will never succeed in making them act their AI, today or tomorrow, in your interest, all to the contrary: they will always withheld insight from you, and worse and in order to pursue their own interests, they will make you take decisions which aren’t in your best interest - but that’s one thing.
The other thing being that you’ve been deceiving yourself all along with your cascading subsets for grasping that world out there. Just have some regex count theirs titles’ question marks’ ratio, for proof. While by having access to Zuckerberg’s data mountain, you’d know about people and (always: subsequent) things, and could act on that, accordingly… or just make your detached guesses.
Or in plain English: They don’t function around facts, but around synapses’ malconnections, then only organize matter around them, respectively, and hence, how could you ever expect some PIM mapping that - real - reality around us? Oh yes, go on negating, defend even RightNote: I don’t give a heck.
Big data sets inspire you doubt, small ones risk to bring you false certitudes. It has always been about mapping the human brain in some incredibly grossly simplified way into crap software, and that’s why it doesn’t work for you, and that’s why you’re endlessly searching.
At the very least, distinguish between your PIM’s “second (whilst failing too, for lack of input, or then even organizational mishaps) memory” function, and it’s idea-organizing function - see why you’d need optimized cloning, instead of what you get today? And since you grasp those needs, you endlessly copy things around within your “workflow”, among up to 6, 7, 8 or more different tools for some of you.
But when someone’s striving at some more integrated solution for your needs - Zoot? -, there’s almost all thumbs down - not that I’d ever be surprised by such behavior now, nor would Zuckerberg ever be.
LOL. Just LOL.