It’s that time of year again! Ode to the exhilaration, goodwill, and ever mounting work that comes with closing your business year while maximizing your holiday festivities.

During this busy time of year let your PersonalBrain be your digital assistant so you can stay focused on your key goals and events. Here are twelve must have Thoughts that will make your holidays richer and your work load lighter; so you can spend more time with the people that matter most to you and end your year with a bang.

(more…)

PersonalBrain 5.5 has been released!

PersonalBrain 5.5 Feature Highlights

• Advanced reporting with display filtering. Powerful custom reports can now be defined utilizing multiple criteria including types, tags, and attachments.
• Faster, more flexible information visualization options. PersonalBrain’s popular outline view now enables unlimited parent-ward expansion. Additionally there are many improvements to the expanded view including automatic saving.
• Revamped calendar with recurring events. Users can setup events and reminders to stay on top of all project deadlines and key timelines.
• Keyboard shortcuts for virtually every feature. Power users can further customize features with their own keyboard commands.
• Integrated screen-capture capability. A powerful and convenient method for grabbing any portion of your screen to use as a zoomable Thought icon.
• Expanded preferences, Thought spellchecking, streamlined user interface and more. There are over 150 new features and improvements in PersonalBrain 5.5.

Download now.

It’s Time to Close More Deals and Increase Your Revenue with PersonalBrain

Understanding where you are in your sales process and what your next steps should be is critical to your success.

However, with multiple proposals and projects, gaining control of all relevant information can be a challenge.  By creating a Brain your understanding of those many ingredients to win more business becomes instantly visible. Seeing is knowing.

(more…)

Want to build a Web site without having to worry about how people are going to navigate around it? Would you like to just put your Brain up on your site and have the linked pages show up in an area on your site? This slightly more involved than basic Brain publishing and embedding, but not difficult really. This short tutorial will walk you through everything needed to get TheBrain’s slick navigation, visualization and search up on your site quickly and easily.

To build a Brain and set it up for use as your web site navigator, you will need the following:

• A web site
• PersonalBrain 5
• The ability to edit the source code for the home page of the site
• A basic understanding of HTML, including how to layout a page using div tags

Ready? Let’s get started…

(more…)

Can Google see my Brain?

Yes, Google (and other search engines) can crawl your Brain and index it for searches, whether you just publish it on WebBrain and even if you embed it on your own site. The only exception is private Brains (obviously) and in some cases unlisted Brains. Keep reading for the nitty gritty details about how this works…

(more…)

It’s All About You,
Really.

Accidental Autobiography:  Your Digital Mind

Navigating through someone’s PersonalBrain gives you a very intimate look at who they are. You can learn a lot about that person not only by the Thoughts they’ve chosen to add, but also the way things are connected.

Creating a Brain that moves beyond the sum of its parts usually happens by accident as your Thoughts and ideas grow. But actually taking on the task of self-reflection and exploration using PersonalBrain can be just as fun and rewarding. With this in mind, let’s explore some ideas for purposefully mind mapping yourself.

(more…)

The new WebBrain hosting service is now in beta. It lets you easily publish Brains online in just a few steps. You don’t need a Web server, all you need is your Brain. Just use the File > Create BrainZip command and then upload the file at http://webbrain.com. Once published, your Brain can be viewed from just about anywhere. It’s currently still in beta, but there are a lot of features in place already.

To put your Brain online:

• Sign up for an account at http://webbrain.com/signup
• Create a BrainZip from PersonalBrain 5
• Click the “Upload” button and submit your Brain
• Your Brain will appear on your “My Account” page within a few minutes
• When you want to update your Brain, just upload it again

(more…)

Use PersonalBrain for Outstanding Presentations

We had a great webinar today with a ton of questions.  Thanks to all attendees for their participation. We focused on how you can use PersonalBrain as a presentation and persuasion tool for more effective communication before, during and after your meetings. If you missed the webinar, feel free to watch the on-line recording.

Template Brains from Webinar

• Here is the BrainZip I used for my presentation. A PersonalBrain on “Presenting with PersonalBrain…”
• Here is the sample Brain of an executive annual meeting presentation done with PersonalBrain.

(more…)

Tons of Fun Going Though It!

Jerry, Harlan and I had a most entertaining and productive get together at TheBrain corporate headquarters last month. We’re so used to bumping into Jerry at every tech event on the planet and cruising through his virtual Brain that it was really nice to sit down with him in person to do a complete Brain dump… and with a video camera no less .

(more…)

Adding People and Mind Mapping Social Networks in Your Brain

If you don’t have your family or colleagues in your Brain you are missing out. Adding people in your Brain whether it’s their name connected to a project or their contact info will help you get the big picture on your relationships. Creating a people centric Brain will improve the quality of your interactions so you can remember key details that might otherwise be forgotten.
Visualizing Teams and Organizational Expertise

Getting a handle on complex projects can be challenging. Part of the equation in any large project is people. Connecting people to projects will help you understand who is responsible for what and yield more productive meetings.

(more…)