Personal Brain development

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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Dec 2, 2008 at 09:50 PM

From the Personal Brain newsletter:

Introducing Outline View, Tags, Mind Map Importing and More
New features hot out of TheBrain Development lab for you to beta:
? All New Outline View
? Saving of Expanded Views
? Visual Tags
? Mind Map Importing
? Presentation Mode
? Plus many more features and improvements

Download PersonalBrain 5 Beta today and see what all the excitement is about.
http://www.thebrain.com/#-53

Buy 4.5 Now and Upgrade to 5.0 Free: All users who purchase after June 1, 2008 will be upgraded at no charge. For other users of 4.X, the upgrade will be $74.95.

Posted by cpb
Dec 3, 2008 at 03:56 PM

Just tested the beta,
PB still cannot filter the display by node type or (more importantly) link type…
Lack of filtering options defeats the purpose of a node based UI (clear overview of data relationships & contexts)

It could also use an auto-link-type per node-type option to speed up data entry.

Also sorely lacking is the ability to publish as a wiki, where:
The connections to/from a node (page) are listed as hyperlinks in some sensible manner,
The exporter (optionally) links text in the body to other nodes whose title is of the same spelling.

Otherwise a fun toy!

-cpb

Posted by Graham Rhind
Dec 3, 2008 at 05:31 PM

cpb wrote:

>Also sorely lacking is
>the ability to publish as a wiki, where:
> The connections to/from a node (page) are
>listed as hyperlinks in some sensible manner,

It depends how you define “sensible”, but the registered pro version, in any case, has the ability to export to html in two ways: including a Brain-like navigation system; or as simple html where the connections are represented as links in a menu to the left of the page. It’s one of the ways in which I use The Brain the most.

Graham

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Dec 4, 2008 at 07:38 PM

cpb wrote:
>Otherwise a fun toy!

I understand that Personal Brain may represent the state of the art in eye candy, but I cannot agree in calling it a toy, especially given the praise it has received in this here forum by several people at times (myself not included).

I think I first registered Personal Brain in 2001, impressed at the time by its graphics, but also finding it way ahead of anything else I had tried in its ability to present complex relationships. Its main drawback for me was the inability to print, for which I turned to programs such as Cmap Tools.

I would have gone on using it, but for its lack of development. Its company focused on US-size enterpises (I remember calling them and learning that our 20-people organisation was too small to be considered a customer for their Brain Enterprise Knowledge Platform) and even withdrew the ‘brain publishing’ feature and the development kit that enabled users to share their ‘brains’.

Notwithstanding, I have done quite a bit of work with PB, including using it in rather undocumented ways for some impressive presentations. Obviously I was not the only one; 5 beta sports a dedicated ‘presentation mode’.

It should be noted that PB’s main concept, the graphical representation of relationships, is probably the most scalable such application that I have seen. Try building a software mindmap with a couple of hundred items and you’ll know what I mean; PB can easily handle thousands of items and you won’t see the difference in speed.

Last year’s announcement of a new version (even if its Java reincarnation slows it down comparatively) was excellent news, and I must say that its development remains impressive; it is quite clear that its company has listened to its users.

I am sure there’s more feature one could desire and some of it may be accomodated. Frankly, I cannot imagine how filtering could be one; if the nodes in between are filtered out, how would one navigate?

Anyway, the standard disclaimer holds: I am not in anyway connected to PB’s developers, I’m not even an everyday user of the software; I just think it is worth taking a look at with an open mind.

alx

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