The Brain

Jim Whitehead (ejw@ICS.uci.edu)
Wed, 28 Oct 1998 17:18:33 -0800

Well, admitedly I saw it in Wired first, but for the past week I've been
playing with a tool called "The Brain" which allows you to make graphs where
each node can have a link to a file or Web page, and also has associated
text which you can edit using a small editor which comes with the tool.
Arcs are either containment relationships or cross-hierarchy jumps. Of
course, the tool uses marketing-speak to describe all these things.

But, the UI is pretty slick, and so far it seems to be useful. It can be
thought of as a graphical way to create a web and hard disk favorites list
with personal annotation of each page. I plan on using it for collecting
snippets of information while writing my survey paper. The feature which
animates your graph is fun.

Anyway, there's a free 30-day trial, and it doesn't muck with your OS when
you install it, so it's relatively pain-free to give it a whirl.

http://www.thebrain.com/

Oh, yeah, they claim the tool can be used to model the relationships in your
brain, hence the name.

- Jim