Project dream

[David LeBlanc]

>
> John J Lee wrote:
> > ... I looked at the web site (www.thebrain.com), and decided that
> > life is too short to decode marketing hype <0.5 wink>
>
> I'm with you there. :-) But if you have Java enabled in your
> browser, you're
> actually getting a test run of their software right there at the
> top of the
> page. That's "The Brain" running up there. Go to Demos and then
> WebBrain for
> a more comprehensive demo.
>
> BTW, that twirling thingamajig in the middle is an important
> feature--it has
> to do with releasing your intuition or something like that. It's
> interesting, but all the swoopy zoomy stuff is not really to my taste. I
> guess I like my information plain and simple.
>
> -Mike
>

"The Brain" is an example of so-called mind mapper[tm] or mind map[tm]
software. Some developers seem to conflate the idea with outliners, but they
are virtually the opposite of those in my mind. They're great at mapping
non-linear/3-d ideas. General idea is a graph of graphs. Each node on a
"parent" graph can drill down to a sub-graph with the node clicked on in the
parent graph as the central node. Use of colors and iconography is supposed
to make it more useful, but...

"The Brain", as a company is also an example of smug arrogant twits who
charge far more than their product is worth IMO. They have a patent on some
aspect of it, probably to do with how the graph rotates to put the selected
node in the center of the diagram. I recall reading on http://www.memes.net/
that there is some dispute about the patent. (Paper) mind mapping itself
dates from the 50's.

Incidentally, memes.net is a great site and it's software, Lucid Fried Eggs
(PHP), is pretty interesting in it's own right.

Interesting project I just discovered Fenfire:
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/fenfire. Oiks! it's in Python! (I'm
writing this as I look into the software, so shoot me! ;) ). It's RDF based.
It's CVS is behind SSH which I'm not running on Windows - if anyone can
snarf it and send it to me, I'd be obliged.

More later - Windows seems to be losing consiousness.

Dave LeBlanc
Seattle, WA USA