Back in the late 80s and 90s when Windows especially was just emerging from its DOS cocoon, as well as being a review journo, I was also a software distributor, lucky enough to have some major products in my kitbag such as Filemaker, Lotus Organiser, Omnis V, RFFlow, Wingz, Panorama and Asymetrix Toolbook to name but a few. These were exciting times, as every day, vendors in the US would announce products that did things we had never even thought of and created whole new categories of applications – I have especially fond memories of Thinx, Opus I and Pinboard. After a while though, these revolutionary products either died (such as Thinx), were snapped up by larger companies (Organiser is now a Lotus application) and Pinboard simply vanished.

The might of the big four (Microsoft, Lotus, Borland and WordPerfect/Corel) became the might of the one (Microsoft), mainly due to Office, a concept pioneered right here in Australia by the then MD Daniel Petre – a truly lovely bloke and gentleman – and software development became very yawn. I cannot think of one application since - new or updated – that has really grabbed my imagination so that I go “ Wow! Wish I had thought of that!” The closest would be OneNote – also from Microsoft, their probably most radical, but largely I am guessing, least unused package. (Where oh where is Project for Windows 7 by the way?)

Today that has all changed. I have been introduced to “PersonalBrain”. This is not radical, but it IS astonishing! I have been very fond of suggesting people use Microsoft Word and its outlining option to muster, order and categorise their thoughts, but PersonalBrain takes that much, much further, with a graphical representation on screen of thoughts, sub-thoughts (children), siblings and jump (associated) thoughts. Categories can be defined, icons created, files from other applications or even web pages dragged into thoughts and all sorts of links created between thoughts to show relationships. Integration with Outlook Mail, Contacts and Calendar plus OneNote also exists.

Different views of your data can be seen and specialist views also created and saved for future use. Every aspect of PersonalBrain can be customised and there is an online suite of tutorials taking you through all aspects of the package.

As many know, I have been busy relaunching Auscam magazine (www.auscamonline.com) as a companion to the existing website; I have a background in project management so tend to look at such things in a logically oriented way with resources and tasks and milestones being utilised. Using PersonalBrain has taken this a step further and allowed me to see relationships I didn’t realise existed and therefore make the process much easier and more streamlined.

The amazing thing is, while PersonalBrain is quite at home doing this job, it can equally be used to plot out film scripts, production routines, catalogue assets, monitor on-set staff and skills – it is superbly flexible. You can even collaborate with others via a “save to web” option and set permission levels letting only those sections (thought levels) applicable to a person be visible. Each person can add their notes to any section of a PersonalBrain and it is fully searachable.

In this web and smartphone world, where many are used to “apps” for a few dollars, PersonalBrain may seem expensive at $299 for the Pro version (there is a basic free version), but trust me, having used it, PersonalBrain is exceptional value for money and will quickly become a major program in your workplace tools along with Word, Excel and their ilk.
If there is any criticism, it is with the tutorials. While amply doing their job, delivery off Screencast.com is intermittent and choppy.

Simply, PersonalBrain is stunning and a perfect example of what personal computing should be all about. It is available for Windows, LINUX and Mac OSX from www.thebrain.com.