PersonalBrain for iPhone
A version of PB for iPhone that would sync with the desktop version. To be able to bring our "brain" everywhere would be really nice.
iPhone access is now available by syncing your Brain to http://webbrain.com. It is currently read-only, but read-write access (and much more) is planned for the future.
Use PersonalBrain 6 to sync just the changes so you don’t have to upload your entire brain when changes are made.
As noted by several users, this item is marked completed, but no native iPhone application is available. If you want to to vote for a full native iPhone app, please do so at this newly created suggestion: http://thebrain.uservoice.com/pages/4597-personalbrain/suggestions/269288
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It is no longer necessary to brainzip and upload to WebBrain.com. In PersonalBrain 6, just click the sync button and just the changes are uploaded automatically.
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ppeach commented
Having to save as a zip and then upload to webbrain is too much work for a rapidly changing brain. Ideally, save to a dropbox folder and have this displayed on their "shareable link". You'll lose revenvue from Webbrain.com but you'd get much more publicity for your main product.
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Dylan Addison commented
Brad, let's back up. I've been using personal brain pro for the past year and love this software. I love it so much that I've become hopelessly dependent on it (my entire life is now in the brain). I want The Brain's source code to be the underlying basis of a more organized global knowledge base than the internet we already have. Is that a communist/socialist ideal? I don't really care how we label it. It will greatly benefit our species and I'd like to hasten its arrival.
I want the same things you've suggested on this forum (ie collaboration features, export functionality etc.). It may be that I am misguided in thinking that an open source business model might help it all happen more quickly. You clearly have a wonderful mind and I'd love to hear any ideas you might have for making this Uservoice system more streamlined. Perhaps we could vote with our dollars instead of an arbitrary 10 digital votes per person.
I apologize for discussing this here, but I don't have your e-mail address. I would like to discuss it further. My e-mail is Dylan.A.Addison@gmail.com
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Tommy, I agree - there's a lot of iPhone users out there. But there's also a lot more Mac and Windows(!) users. Unfortunately bringing the app to additional platforms does is not a magic bullet. To address your other point, I'd love to be able to let users choose whether to leave their data hosted or local, but in order to give them that choice, we have to build them both... And building the (much) harder one first just doesn't make sense. :-)
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Brad, you are right in many respects. I did not intend to close off the possibility of syncing brains for offline access via iPhone forever. In fact, WebBrain will serve as the sync point for offline Brains on the desktop and could do so for an iPhone app in the future also. However, this is a much bigger and more difficult proposition. I'm not going to debate the relative difficulty of porting PB to iPhone here, but I will venture that PB is significantly more complicated than the vast majority of iPhone apps out there. In any case, the best way for us to deliver the most functionality as quickly as possible is via a hosted service. After all, if we did everything at once we'd have nothing to do tomorrow, right? ;-)
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Brad Konia commented
Dylan,
Please take your socialist/communist political views elsewhere. This is not the appropriate forum to be discussing the merits of open source software, nor is it appropriate for you to use this forum as your platform to attack Brain Technologies for <gasp!> trying to make a profit. As a long time customer, I'm very happy to pay the license fee for PB, just as I would happily pay the license fee for an iPhone version. Contrary to your opinion, all software will not eventually be open source. Open source is just a different business model that is not inherently better or worse than the commercial model. It certainly has its place but the idea that open source equates with free is ridiculous. Anything of value has a price, whether you directly pay it out of your pocket or not.
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Dylan Addison commented
I cannot help but think that a native iPhone app would have been accomplished by now had PB made this an open source project. In my opinion, making PB open source should be at the top of the Uservoice list.
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Tommy commented
Thank for the update Harlan. The webbrain.com website is a good idea and it's better than nothing, but it's true that the original idea behind my post was for a native iPhone app. You wrote that a native application on the iPhone with access to the hosted data is planned. It's nice to see that, but I think you should let users decide if they want to access data locally or hosted. PB on iPhone would be a great feature for actual users, but I think TheBrain has more to win to release such an app. Just think about the marketing and visibility... You would have to spend a lot of money to have the same visibility. You can reach more than 40 millions peoples with an app. Those who will like PB for iPhone (and many of them don't even know that this software exists (desktop version)) and buy the desktop version, that will represent a lot of new customers and a lot of money. Regards.
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Brad Konia commented
Harlan,
I'm sorry, but I strongly disagree with your approach of making the iPhone app a remote client only. While it's true that SOME users may have brains that exceed the capacity of the iPhone, I would bet that 90% of all brains would fit on an iPhone without any problem. For instance, my brain that I use every day and has several years worth of accumulated notes and data, uses 1.3 GB of space on my hard drive. A brain several times that size would easily fit on my 32 GB iPhone. Your assertion that other mindmapping apps are not comparable is also incorrect. There are personal note taking iPhone apps, such as Evernote that allow the user to attach files without any limitation on size, other than the capacity of the device. Evernote will automatically OTA synchronize its database between the iPhone, your desktop computer and the Web. Furthermore, it seems that Apple has been doubling the capacity of the iPhone ever year, so even if some users are constrained by its current capacity, it's likely that within the next year or two, that will become a non-issue. I would suggest that you take a more forward thinking approach and follow the Evernote model of making data available anywhere, with or without a wireless connection. One thing to note (no pun intended) is that Evernote allows you to create multiple "notebooks" and to choose individual synchronization options for each notebook. Thus, users who have archived large amounts of data in a particular notebook may choose to not sync that notebook with their iPhone. You could adopt the same approach with PB. Each brain could have separate synchronization options. Every user's situation is unique. Some people have 8GB iPhones, others have 32GB. Some may have access to WiFi, while others may have to make do with 3G or Edge connections. Some may have their iPhone filled up with music, others may have plenty of available space. The point is, you should leave it up to your users to decide how they want to sync and how much data they want to store on their iPhone. We don't want the developer telling us that our iPhones are too puny to hold our brains, particularly since this is clearly not the case for many users such as myself.
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As noted in my comment, presently this is read-only access and read-write access is planned. This has been marked as completed so that users who voted for this can apply their votes elsewhere, not because the present version all there will ever be. :)
Given the possible size of a Brain, a hosted solution for access is the only way to offer full access to a Brain. Comparison to "other" mind mapping tools is really not applicable since others are extremely limited (you cannot have thousands let alone hundreds of thousands of items in them for one).
That said, a native application on the iPhone with access to the hosted data is planned. However, keep in mind: I love my iPhone more than most people, but it's still an iPhone - it's never going to behave the same way PB does on your desktop. ;-)
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vesterli commented
This feature is NOT completed as I understood the suggestion. What I was looking for when voting for this was a native iPhone app with the great PersonalBrain interface, not just a web page.
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Brad Konia commented
Harlan,
While it's nice that you've created a public repository for people to upload their brains to, I think it's EXTREMELY disingenuous of you to suggest that in any way, shape or form, this accomplishes the goal of putting PB on an iPhone and to mark the ticket as "Completed", LOL! The expectation of users who created and voted for this ticket was that PB would be ported to the iPhone as a NATIVE application, enabling users to create and edit brains on the iPhone. Having a public upload repository accomplishes little or nothing. Users already had the ability to export brains to HTML and can just as easily upload exported brains to any existing website. There are numerous mindmapping applications available for the iPhone, as well as applications such as Evernote that run as native iPhone apps, so there is no technical limitation that would prevent you from creating a native iPhone version of PB. As a long time PB user, I'm frankly disappointed that your company would attempt to pass off this half baked "webbrain" concept as an iPhone application.
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path commented
Please not only iPhone, but also Samsung or LG or other TouchScreen cell phones.
Most of them have some kind of "widget" support, so plz dont make it iPhone only. -
sheppardk commented
I think read only with the ability to edit notes would be a 90% solution.
This would be my priority:1) Read only access
1a) Search
2) Adding notes to thoughts
3) Adding thoughts
4) Deleting thoughtsEven simpler: If I could simply search for a thought and view that only and add notes that would be the enough for me.
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Geoff Saulnier commented
PB only? Or EKP too?
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David Wetherow commented
I've looked at the other iPhone / Touch mindmapping apps. Nothing comes even close to PersonalBrain. Harlan, if it's possible to build an app that could tap into a PB file on MobileMe (read/write), that would be the next great step. In the meantime, just being able to see (and show) PB in action on the iPhone / Touch will (as other posters indicate) explode the PB market.
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Tommie N. Carter, Jr., MBA commented
This is a good idea. Let's remember that most phones support Java applets including the Blackberry. I use a Storm on my Mac in case anyone ones to start a alpha/beta test list.
:-)
TC
Engineer/Developer -
tom.chapa commented
My Iphone has become my main computer on the go, except for my personal Brain I can do everything on my iphone. I know that there are technology barriers, but if they were tackled, watch out the Personal Brain usage will explode. ;)
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ygerman commented
It can not work with the pocketpc Java. I tried a long time ago. It has to be a little bit re-written,
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path commented
What about Tablet PC support? (for example: Windows Journal)
Maybe together with OCR Support?
I think if i use my brain on iPhone or iPodTouch or similar devices, i would like to be able to use several other features of these devices too.
It would be much faster on these smale devices.Maybe NOTES should be PDF's and i should be able to ANOTATE them :)