So I spent many hours watching the tutorials about TheBrain. A couple things I really like is that One they been in business for a couple of decades. I have been been burned many times with software companies going out of business or discontinuing packages so I am very apprehensive about making commitments to new software.
Secondly, I really like the amount of user training screencasts with ongoing live training sessions showing various uses.
I am using the 30 day free trail but probably going to purchase it as it seems to match how I think about things
A new release of TheBrain on iOS (9.3.1) adds the ability to capture PDFs and other file types into the “inbox” of the app, and then add them to one or another “thought” (the cutesy name for notes ). Initial impression is that this feature is more significant than the desktop upgrade.
Thanks for that update quorm…do you think that makes the price easier to justify?
I’ve been looking and looking for an alternative, that does the thought connection, and can hold large amounts of thoughts/nodes. I haven’t really been able to find a comparable…(not just for storage, but making connections between ideas/thoughts…)
Sounds like a job for a zettelkasten.
I just finished this excellent book on reading, thinking, and using an external ‘slip box’ (zettelkasten) to aid in making connections. website of the book’s author
I think my software of choice will be The Archive, DEVONthink, and Bookends.
TheBrain is a very smart company and I took up on the trail offer. Now I am addicted like a drug to it and finding my self looking to link other thoughts together in other MIndmapping software that just is not there. So it looks like I am forking out the investment in this software.
A couple things that I like are:
The company has been around for a long time. I have been abandoned (as many of has) on software companies that their business model is not lasting. Another reason why I plan to invest my money with them. I am of the opinion that users must support the developers that make their users more productive. I view it more as a partnership.
They put a multitude of video tutorials out there and care about their user education.
They are continuing to develop the software based upon user feedback.
But you do have to get into their definitions mentioned “thoughts” = notes “brains” = workspace
With the ability to set types for the actual links, and types, label and tags for the thoughts you have an organizer’s dream
Yes, I do, and it takes persistence. I have a “brain” document I call “Mulling” that I’ve keep going for many years. A journal + research + topical index thing. The tagging, typecasting, timeline, calendar integration with Google, and inter-note linking features helped me build up a complex mesh of references among the documents, site links, and notes in that “brain”. I use the “brain box” Safari bookmarklet in version 10 to grab web sites. And capturing to The Brain on iOS (iPad and Phone) is very good. I don’t edit much on iOS, preferring to use the larger screen on my MacBook for that.
Working with The Brain doesn’t seem like work. It’s relaxing and quite a different experience than most software. In fact, I prefer not to use it for income-work just to keep TheBrain as an enjoyable space for time-off reading.
It’s pricey, no doubt, but difficult to match in capabilities.
I never played with it because all previous versions were (ugh) Java apps. But I know someone who uses it on Windows and Mac and likes it a lot for emergent structure, though that’s something you could also get from a wiki or Tinderbox or Notion.so (which is mostly a real pretty wiki).
From doing a hexdump/hexfiend of the executable, it looks like they’ve moved to Mono, the open source cross-platform .Net framework from Microsoft. I assume it is written in C# now too.
Interesting. With Mono/Xamarin they have an open source route today to making native cross-platform apps on macOS, iOS, tvOS, watchOS, Android, and Windows. If the environment gives them what they need (and gives us speed without reduced features) it’s probably a better option than waiting for an updated UIKit that keeps devs in the Apple ecosystem.
The last Java-based version of The Brain was v8. The major change in v9 was to move off Java to the current architecture. The v9 beta was very long – over a year if I recall correctly. Though v9 had some new features, it also saw the removal of key features so the beta received a lot of pushback from the beta users initially. The current v10 was faster to market – because of the re-architecting in v9 – and more stable than Java versions v5, v6, v7 and v8.
