Personal Brain 5

Posted 04/07/2009 at 9:50am | by Florence Ion

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Whether you’re a college student with a demanding schedule, or an obsessive-compulsive neat freak, here’s one program out there that can help you get organized. Personal Brain caters primarily to business executives and project managers -- whether you’re simply a quick note taker or a detailed archivist. This visual information management tool combines a vector graphic outline design with drag and drop storing features to organize all of your thoughts into one comprehensive brain map – this is your brain on paper.

At first glance, Personal Brain’s default outline view appears difficult to navigate, and at times it can be. However, once you get the hang of it, the software can actually provide a detailed and organized way to take notes, prepare lists, or outline a paper, all the while maintaining a decipherable structure that makes it simple to cycle through items. Drag out one of the bullets from your initial thought bubble to formulate another connecting theme or subject. From there, you can continue mapping based on association. For example, if you’re cataloging your inventory of electronics, you could create parent threads titled “media players” and “computer peripherals”, and then list the respective electronics in their appropriate thread.  Additionally, there’s also a presentation mode that allows you to communicate your ideas to an audience without the use of an often long-running and humdrum slideshow.

A text field at the bottom left-hand corner of the window allows you to type up a thorough description for every bullet point. So, if you’re in class, you can type up definitions and dates for a specific mapping point based on your professor’s whiteboard scribblings. You can then print out your notes if you need to.

Each individual point can also be tagged, which is incredibly useful for organizing different subjects so that they don’t have to share a common theme and can easily be found with the search tool. The Windows version also works with a Tablet PC and includes enhanced Outlook support, which allows you drag text or image items from your email.

Though there is the ability to color code text and add a customized background, there is no ability to free hand with a pen tool on the mapping palette. This definitely affects the usefulness of Personal Brain—the user loses the abilty to manage a stream of consciousness while mapping out their ideas. Surely, even your unorganized thoughts deserve the personality of a scribbled, free-hand note.

But despite its aesthetic deficiencies, Personal Brain works well for its intended purpose. We recommend this software to students looking for an alternative to typing up notes in Word, or for those who are meticulous about keeping inventory of their Mighty Muggs collection.

Edit for clarification: We mistakenly reported that Personal Brain 5 was only intended for students and that it did not have drag-and-drop image support, and have now corrected the details in our review.

Personal Brain 5

Brain Age

Drag and drop, note support, presentation view.

Brain Freeze

No image support, bland interface.

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