CNET Editors' review
PersonalBrain is a full-featured mind-mapping program, designed to create a "digital home for your mind" that can help you visually organize almost any sort of process or project as a dynamic, interconnected system of Thoughts (called a Brain). PersonalBrain gives you a fairly intuitive interface for collecting, organizing, viewing, and navigating ideas, tasks, Web sites, related documents, and more.
Whether you're building a complex Web site or conducting academic research, this app can help you build searchable networks of information with tools for taking notes, creating shortcuts (pins), zooming out to get a higher-level view of your Brain (with "Distant Thoughts" and Outline views), and even generating reports. WebBrain publishing lets you sync a Brain between multiple machines, or upload a version for fellow collaborators to see. A new Transparent mode also lets you view a Brain directly on top of any other application without obscuring it, for a futuristic HUD vibe--and a related Mini mode makes it easy to keep a floating search box handy. PersonalBrain also has nice extras like a global system of tags and types, a calendar that can sync with Google Calendars, a full-screen Presentation Mode, support for HTML export, and integration with Outlook as well as Spotlight, QuickLook, and core Mac apps like Address Book.
Personal preference can be especially finicky for this sort of software, so definitely try before you buy and check out the app's user guide and tutorials (and even weekly Web trainings). PersonalBrain offers a 30-day trial of its Pro version, although a cheaper Core and much more lightweight Free version are also available.
Publisher's Description
From TheBrain Technologies:
See and do more with TheBrain's award-winning, dynamic user interface and advanced linking software. Organize ideas, projects, contacts, files, and Web pages associatively to capture your thinking and perspective. Use your Brain for business projects or as an "everything in your life manger" so you can get the big picture on all your information and drill down to the right file or detail within seconds. -See key relationships and ideas at glance -Map out your thinking and complex business processes -Visualize folder structures, business relationships, contacts and ideas -Navigate across all key topics and information within your Brain's Thought network and connections -View your Brain online or from your desktop. Synchronize your ideas and information on multiple machines Key features include: -Must see animated visual interface -Expanded Information Views -Easy, Drag and Drop of files, folders and Web pages -Advanced search and editing features -Secure Online backup of your Brain and data synchronization
What's new in this version:
- More frequent auto-save of notes
- Fixed: Auto-save prevents the use of the notes editor's undo/redo functions.
- Fixed: On auto-save, the text caret position sometimes moves, especially when writing bullet points
- Support for activation without an Internet connection on the host computer
- Choose Help > Upgrade to TheBrain Pro Edition, then select "Activate offline."
- Fixed: Drag and drop of URLs from IE and Firefox does not work with Java 7 o Fi... See all new features
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All versions:
3.1 starsout of 7 votes
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Current version:
3.0 starsout of 1 votes
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"So much potential! Such bad pricing. Does anyone use?"
Version: TheBrain 7.0.4.1
Pros
Gorgeous Interface
Really helps you keep organised - but only as an individual - team tools are still weak and expensive.
This product still has so much potential - but it needs attention.Cons
Terrible pricing model
Unreasonable lock-in
Nearly useless free product - should just be called a "taster"
No iOS version
Manual Sync model - really in 2012? If you're built on Windows backend, how about using Mesh? Or even DropBox?
No live team modification (Groove and MindManager did that in 2005) so having team modify a brain in a meeting is out.
Suggestions to TheBrain: Add more to the free client, price the pro at $49, and build a better sync. People will happily pay monthly to use the online services if they get a reasonable amount of development attention. Adoption will go through the roof once you put something into the back-end. You could sell professionally build "brains" for all sorts of organizations - for example, if a help desk had50 people using Pro and could buy a brain with a starter pack of a question tree to traverse with linked articles, they would value something like this. If you could see public "brain of the week" picks that customers sold, you could get a cut.Summary
I loved the interface back when TheBrain launched about 10 years ago but it looks as though it's not been updated since then. Their sync model is weak (shared brains don't atomically stay up to date when everyone has an internet connection and I can't see how there aren't hundreds of update conflicts if they rely on manual syncs). They also still don't have an iOS version so I can't take it with me where I go. But the big drawback for me is the pricing and rather unorthodox lock-in they force on the product. Information in it is so hard to get out that it will mean you will always struggle to get a whole team to use it. The pricing doesn't work well either: The free version is so limited that it really should just be called a taster because no one could use it productively for much. The price of the client is so high that an organization would really have to think long and hard about making such a commitment. I so wish this product could be mainstreamed. I love the presentation.
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