PersonalBrain is a "thought organizer" for the Windows operating system. It was created in 1998, by Natrificial, which eventually became The Brain Technologies Corporation.
It allows users to define a non-hierarchical structure of thoughts, which are displayed graphically to the user on the "plex". A thought can have Parent thoughts, which are displayed above the given thought. A thought can have Child thoughts, which are displayed below the given thought. And a thought can have Jump thoughts, which are displayed to the left of the given thought. Sibling thoughts, those that share the same Parent thought, are displayed to the right of the given thought.
The actual meaning of Parent, Child and Jump is subjective and generally means that Parent thoughts come before or are the owners the Child thoughts. Thoughts related as a Jump are something other than this Parent-Child realtionship.
A thought can represent an idea, person, date or anything the user wishes its name it to stand for. Physically, a thought can be either a URL pointing to a web page on the Internet, or a file or folder on the users local computer, but only one of the three, or none at all. Thoughts can contain Notes in Rich Text Format and can have a single graphic attached for local display.
No single thought is considered more important than any other one. The thought that is at the center of the plex is considered to be the “focus” of the user. Relationship lines show the connections between thoughts, but there is no notation or naming given to them.
PersonalBrain is a trademark of TheBrain Technologies Corporation.
http://www.thebrain.com A similar Open Source web based application called Lucid Fried Eggs can be seen at http://www.memes.net. Memes is much like Wikipedia in that it too allows communal editing.
