TheBrain Cloud Services is host to millions of digital Thoughts from users around the world. We are super excited about our latest release to the cloud that give you even more online authoring features as well as faster response time and synchronization.

TheBrain Cloud Service Update Includes:

• Increased Performance for Online Brains
• Drag and drop files to upload instantly to Online Brain
• Online notes editor enhanced with checkboxes
• Thought Types and Tags can  be added a new context menu online
• Expanded Web Client Preferences for font, wallpaper and hint options

Read our press release for the full scoop or watch our new features tour.

Public Brains may be viewed at http:///www.webbrain.com/explore

Features Galore!

TheBrain 7 has over 50 new features and enhancements including:

• Next generation data visualization and mind mapping
• Enhanced linking and relationship mapping
• Seamless integration between cloud and client
• Increased performance and improved database backend
• More tools for getting things done

You can watch our features tour at  http://www.thebrain.com/thebrain7

TheBrain 7 features new curved links!

TheBrain 7 Upgrades

TheBrain 7 is a complimentary upgrade to registered PersonalBrain 6.0 Pro users who purchased after April 30, 2011 or $100 if originally purchased before April 30, 2011. Existing users can check for upgrade discounts at http://www.thebrain.com/store/upgrade/

TheBrain Service Plan

Today also marks the official unveiling of TheBrain Service Plan. It’s an all-inclusive software upgrade and cloud services for $159 per year. TheBrain Service Plan includes:

• All upgrades as long as your subscription is valid
• Online access of your Brain from a web browser
• Backup of your Brain online automatically
• Synchronization of your Brain across multiple machines

For more information on TheBrain Service Plan, please visit thebrain.com store, call 310-751-5000 or email sales@thebrain.com.

Yup…it just keeps getting better… You gotta luv technology!

Topic focused Brains are ideal for sharing and publishing. They are a great way to enter into the publishing arena on WebBrain.com and are a ton of fun to create.  Here’s how to create a compelling Brain in 6 simple steps.

1. Select the Right Topic: Breadth or Depth?
If you want to attract attention on your blog or webbrain.com choosing a topic that’s engaging is a must. If you are pressed for time and want to publish, keep your topic focused. For instance, instead of mind mapping out the entire history of the United States you could choose a more specific topic  like “the Effect of the Industrial Revolution” or American Entrepreneurs.  Narrowing down your topic will help you avoid any gaping holes in your content and ensure that your Brain covers all key ideas on your subject.

 

Conversely, if you start on a very narrow topic and find you are running out of ideas quickly you may need to broaden your theme. For instance, a Brain on yoga might need to be broadened out to one on healthy living.  If this happens, remember there is really no beginning or end to a Brain. Simply add a new Parent Thought above your main topic and branch out other themes from there.

Publishing more of a general overview or visual outline of key ideas from a meeting, conference or subject is also a quick publishing project. Creating a Brain on a broad topic that highlights all the key areas of its subject can be a very effective communication of your point of view.

Agendas and overviews are easy to create and a popular published Brain for teams

The general rule here is to be consistent. If you have one area in your Brain that has 20 child Thoughts and goes 5 levels deep and another area that’s sparely populated will leave visitors to wonder what happened. Define your topic and parameters in advance and be realistic about what you can map out.

Pick a topic that you love or want to learn more about. Then your experience of creating the Brain becomes very rewarding. For more ideas on topic selection browse some of the most popular Brains on http://www.webbrain.com

There are many approaches to creating a Brain. You can create one Brain for all projects in your life or get focused on a single topic. (For more information on which approach to Brain development is right for you see my blog entry on: “One Brain or Many”)

 
2. Pay Attention to Fundamental Thought Architecture
Start with the name of your topic then create child Thoughts for key areas. Phase one of topic expansion is idea capture and category creation. Create Thoughts under your topic in a free flowing manner. At this point don’t worry about Thoughts that may not belong just capture all your ideas. You can always delete a Thought or move things around later. To create multiple Thoughts at once: separate them with a semicolon in the create child box.

Add in multiple Thoughts at once.

Then under each of these header Thoughts start to build a supporting Thought structure. Though you can create your Thoughts from any direction I recommend creating subcategories AKA “child Thoughts” down from your main Branch, moving from general to more specific Thoughts.

For more information on Thought relationships see Parent, Child, or Jump…Which Relationship Should I Choose?

Once you have your basic Thought structure down you will probably find that an idea or two fits under a couple different categories. This is where the fun comes in. Just type in the first couple letters and select it from the existing Thoughts list to make a connection. These connections will serve as paths of discovery for people browsing your Brain.  

Connect Your Thoughts to anything else. No Limits

3. Attach Content and Create Web Guides
To build and grow areas of my Brain, I like to use PersonalBrain’s Search Web Feature (in the Options menu or F5). This takes your active Thought and initiates a Web search. Now you can drag and drop the best web sites below your Thought for even more resources on your topic. You can drag and drop any URL or file into your PersonalBrain.

One of my favorite sites to map out and add into my published Brain is the Wikipedia. One entry on a topic always has a dozen links to something else but they are all embedded in the text and it is difficult to see the connections. This is perfect for your online Brain. You can attach various Wikipedia pages to your Thoughts and their connected concepts.

You can also copy images onto your Thoughts as icons. Copy any web image and then right click on your Thought and select “Paste Thought Icon”.

You can also drag and drop files. When you publish your Brain your viewers will be able to download that file or open it in their web browser. If you are dragging and dropping files from your desktop into your PersonalBrain be sure to move those files internally into your Brain. Right click on the file in the Thought menu and select “Move File into Brain”. Otherwise you might end up with a shortcut to something that is pointing to a folder on your desktop instead of being online. (If you are adding a lot of files to be viewed online I recommend you change the preferences in PersonalBrain from drag and drop to Move rather than Link.)

If you don’t have any content attached to your Thought you can add notes. Your notes on your Thoughts will appear below the visual interface in the content frame. So spend some time developing a nice style and make sure your formatting of notes is constituent for a more professional finish in your published Brain. This is a great place to include a brief introduction on what your Brain is about. Right under your first Thought.

When published, the content frame below your Thoughts
will display your notes or any attached files.

4. Edit and Fine Tune
Now that you have a basic structure for your Brain with most of your content, you will want to do a basic review of your Thought structure. Pay attention to the number of Thoughts you have right below your root Thought. If there are there too many you might want to subcategorize further. Additionally, are the Thoughts engaging? Review your top level Thought names. Keep them short and to the point so they don’t get truncated if made bigger. Shorter Thought names also make it easier to browse through large Brains. To rename a Thought right click and select Rename.

To learn more about fine tuning and auditing your Brain read 6 Ways You Can Improve Your Brain.

Most likely, in this phase you’ll have some Thought relationships you want to change. You can change relationships by moving Thoughts around your Active Thought or linking and unlinking. You can check out our quick online tutorial movies on Editing Thought Relationships to learn more.

5. Optimize for Your Target  Audience
Once you’re satisfied with your structure and content, add some finishing touches. Set your home Thought. In most cases it will be the first Thought you started with, but sometimes, if you are publishing a large Brain, you may want visitors to start on a different Thought. In the heart of your Brain, for instance.

You should also create pins. Pins are like bookmarks to your Thoughts. They appear at the top of your Brain and serve as hot links into key areas of your content. The nice thing about pins is each Thought that is pinned can be in a completely different area of your Brain. This will encourage visitors to activate key Thoughts you want them to see and go to areas that might otherwise be overlooked.

Finally add a background to your Brain that conveys the theme of your content and makes your Brain standout. For instance in my Writer’s Brain I selected a mysterious stair case to convey conflict and intrigue for storytelling.

Wallpaper and Thought icons are uploaded when published.
The Pins you set appear at the top of your Brain.

Be careful not to select something too busy or high contrast so that your Thoughts are still very readable.

6. Publishing and Sharing Your Brain
Now you are ready to publish. Publishing is done through WebBrain.com. Simply create an account on WebBrain.com then enter your account information in the synchronize options in PersonalBrain 6.

Watch our Quick Publishing Tour for more details on how to publish online or sync your Brain across computers.

Note: when you first publish your Brain the default setting will be private. You can then go in and modify your settings for public listing or unlisted web access to share your Brain online.
 
To share specific Thoughts with colleagues and friends, click on the share button in the corner of your published Brain. You can tweet or copy and paste the URL of specific Thoughts in an email. Now you can share your perspective and idea with the world in a whole new way. People can see your ideas and how everything is connected.  Your online Brain will make it easy to share vast amounts of information and provide an engaging medium that guides people through your content for enhanced understanding on any subject.

This unique ability of PersonalBrain makes it ideal for visualizing and organizing large information networks as well as moving beyond standard mind mapping applications

Many users take advantage of PersonalBrain’s scalability and create an all compassing Brain for everything. While others opt for smaller, separate Brains. In this article I will explore each approach to creating a Brain and provide some guidelines for what might be best for you. 

 
One Brain for Everything
The idea here is to digitize your mind. It starts with a single Thought and grows more powerful as you use it. The best way to get started on this type of Brain is to start with your  name as the first Thought, then create a business and personal section, and continue creating Thoughts for all aspects of your life.

Now there really is no limit. This is your mental space.

In fact Jerry Michalski. a well known technology analyst has a Brain of over 123,000 Thoughts

Browse through Jerry’s Brain on WebBrain.com

To best represent the one brain approach I asked Jerry Michalski the following  questions for our users: 1.       What approach or goals did you have when you started your Brain? “I was an analyst in the tech business when the Internet showed up, so I started with wanting to note the many players and their relationships. I discovered quickly that I could have a startup, their investors and PR agents, their industry category and competitors, all neatly tucked into one screenful and very easily navigated. That had been impossible for me with prior tools like Ecco, HyperCard, FileMaker and several others. I was happy.”   2.       Do you recommend starting with one Brain or many? “I’ve poured all my Thoughts into a single Brain, which is all I recommend doing. The pleasure of adding something to an existing rich context is immense. It compares very favorably with starting from scratch every time.” 3.       How did your Brain evolve over time? “Every now and then, consistently, I get an Aha! experience that leads me to add a new Thought, or divide some Thoughts into sub-categories and move them around. I call it gardening, and it’s constant. That plus natural growth of new areas is how it grows.” 4.       How often are you adding new Thoughts and how do you maintain your Brain? “I’m at 123,000 Thoughts added consistently over 12.5 years, so a little under 30 Thoughts a day, every day. Slowly ”

I also have one large Brain where I store all my information and then a few topic oriented Brains for presentations I do and things I want to publish on WebBrain.com.

For me having one Brain with everything allows me to move very quickly to different topics throughout the day and shift focus quickly. My day changes a lot. I might be in the marketing area of my Brain and my contractor calls me about some work. I can activate that Thought in a second and have a more productive conversation by referencing the area for the renovations I’m planning. It’s also very interesting to go back to an area that you haven’t been to in a while. PersonalBrain becomes your digital memory. You will discover ideas about your life that would otherwise be forgotten. And yes there is a degree of ego in this. I love having a big Brain. It’s one of the best gifts you can give yourself.

Even if you don’t have one Brain for absolutely everything, I do recommend having a single Brain for all the Thoughts you will use within a single setting or workflow. For example, if you are a marketing executive you probably want to have a single Brain that has everything on marketing including sales and customer service since you will probably be juggling multiple projects in all three departments throughout your day.

 
Create One Brain for Everything When:

• You have an intermingling of personal, business and everything under the sun projects happening throughout your day
• You want to activate different subjects/Thoughts concurrently. Make sure those topics are all in the same Brain to take advantage of PersonalBrain powerful Instant Activate feature
• You want to create an expansive knowledgebase or digitize your thought processes on your entire life

This approach of “One Brain for Everything” will be quite different for those of you coming from a mind mapping perspective. Mind mappers are forced to create topic specific maps because mind maps are file based rather than database driven.  Practically speaking a mind map cannot hold more than a few hundred topics. If you’re used to conventional mind maps, PersonalBrain will open up a new modus of thinking and working for you. With PersonalBrain you can even import your mind maps into your PersonalBrain to get that master view of everything and leverage all the work you have done in other programs.

That being said, you can, of course, continue to create separate Brains if you prefer, which I will discuss next.

 
Topic Specific Brains
If the thought of having one large Brain on everything in your world seems daunting, you are also in good company. There are many PersonalBrain users who create separate Brains for their projects, areas of study and life. In fact, there are many situations where a topic oriented, separate Brain might work better. 

Matt Caton, our director of customer solutions, prefers to work with separate and distinctive Brains. Matt has a Brain for support, hobbies, special projects, travel and dozens more. Each of these Brains is separate with different wallpaper and topic focus. Matt also uses Brain buttons to move quickly between each Brain.

Matt’s Topic Oriented Brains help him dive into the separate projects and responsibilities of his life

When you have a topic focused Brain your instant active list is more targeted and you can share this file based on its topic easily.

 
Creating a New Brain is Recommended When

• You are publishing or sharing a specific topic with other users
• You would like some firm lines between business and personal projects
• You need a fresh start on a new topic or want to take a new direction from your existing Brain

Like most users, though Matt has multiple brains, he still has one major Brain he has opened. It is his “CyberHome” Brain.  Matt also imports several of his smaller brains into other brains from time to time.  (To learn more about Matt’s Brains join Matt every Friday for PersonalBrain 101)

 
Going from Small to Big Brains or the Reverse…
Not sure which approach to take? Don’t worry about it. We make it pretty easy to change your mind. If you already have multiple Brains and want to bring them all together you can import one brain into another. Just go up to File and select Merge to get the Brain you want to add and merge it. Conversely if you have a larger Brain and decide you want to make a set of Thoughts into a separate new Brain, you simply select all the Thoughts in that area and copy them into a new Brain.  The first tutorial below covers both these scenarios:

 
Related Tutorials and Tips

1. Copying Thoughts and Merging Brains. Simply right click to copy and then paste Thoughts. You can do this between Brains or within one Brain.

   

2. Brain Buttons. Setup Brain buttons to switch between your favorite Brains easily.

Regardless of the approach you take, your PersonalBrain will help you see and organize information in ways that just aren’t possible with lists and folders.