Jiri’s Notepad

Martin, a friend of mine, commented on the last post mentioning that I forgot to mention the Brain.

That confused me a little but then I realised he means the piece of software we used when we worked together several years back. What is the brain? Apart from the stuff between your ears it is a kind of a personal information manager, and a bit of a mind mapping tool. Apart from giving you the ability to draw mind maps, it also provides mindmapping-like interface bookmark lists, file system, acting as a kind of a PIM system. The company is really serious about the mind mapping and so at some time I think they had an generic http interface allowing you to surf web as a kind of a gigantic mind map.

Sadly this, is the main disadvantage. I just have this thing about mind mapping. I never made it work for myself. I try to use it once a year or two, but I always give up realising that still nothing has changed and I am more productive with simple outline lists.

And then there is the second thing - more related to the content of my last post. Brain, although very good at what it does, does not seem to provide that many common collaborative functions. That’s probably because it was meant to be mind mapping PIM (which can be used in a collaborative way) but not a weblog, wiki, or a  collaborative bookmarking tool.

So in a summary, if you a visual person, and mind-mapping tickles your fancy, go for it. I will personally stay with wordpress, del.icio.us, linkedin and plaxo for the time being.