PersonalBrain 6 is Officially Released Today

Marina del Rey, CA – October 5, 2010 – TheBrain Technologies, the leading provider of dynamic visualization and knowledgebase software, announced its newest release, PersonalBrain 6, which augments PersonalBrain publishing and provides synchronization of Brains across multiple platforms and machines.

Like the human mind, with PersonalBrain, users can make associative connections so ideas and files can be related to anything else. There is no limit to the number of connections an idea can have. PersonalBrain’s highly scalable user interface and database enable a virtually unlimited amount of information to be stored and visualized in a digital Brain. PersonalBrain has been downloaded by over a million users. Over half of the Fortune 100 organizations use PersonalBrain to organize information, brainstorm, manage projects and communicate complex ideas more intuitively.

PersonalBrain’s context rich interface provides an intelligent platform for sharing large information sets. Business managers, researchers, teachers, hobbyists and users worldwide publish their brains online at http://webbrain.com. PersonalBrain 6 takes Brain publishing to the next level by enabling one-step synchronization to WebBrain.com. Now users can share, backup, and synchronize across multiple platforms for universal access to their digital thinking.

“With PersonalBrain 6 you can access your Thoughts and information from the cloud or desktop,” said Harlan Hugh, Chief Technology Officer of TheBrain. “But what’s really unique is the desktop synchronization so whether you are on the road or even offline you can still take your Brain with you. With encrypted data transfer users’ mission critical information can be safely and quickly synchronized across multiple computers.”

PersonalBrain 6 has over 100 new features and enhancements including:

• One Click WebBrain Publishing – Share your Brain with the world on WebBrain.com. Users can publish publicly, unlisted or privately. Send links to key Thoughts or areas in their Brain and track comments from the WebBrain.com community. Published Brains can be embedded in blogs or Web sites and are searched and indexed by all search engines.

• Secure Synchronization and Backup – Get access to your complete digital memory and knowledgebase anywhere. Synchronize your Brain across multiple machines, platforms and location. One step WebBrain publishing gives users and their coworkers instant access to information online or offline on the desktop.

• Increased Performance – Work at the speed of Thought with twice the navigation speed powered by an augmented database backend. PersonalBrain’s dynamic user interface enables one to visually navigate across all relevant information quickly and intelligently. PersonalBrain 6 makes digital Brains even faster and more reliable. This increased speed further enhances the ability to easily create Brains with hundreds of thousands of Thoughts while increasing productivity.

• Transparent Visualization – Connect your thinking to your work patterns. With PersonalBrain 6’s transparent mode users can float their Brains over top of their desktop or any application while still working. This revolutionary view enables Thought visualization to be seamlessly integrated with any activity.

·         Windows Explorer Integration  – Organize files and documents under multiple topics so you can move beyond linear file folder structures. With PersonalBrain 6 in addition to easy drag and drop of files, users can now right click on any file and use the “Send To” command to instantly add it to their Brain. Now, no file is more than two clicks away from your Brain.

·         More Tools for Getting Things Done  -  Get complete task management and mental clarity by creating Thoughts for all key tasks and projects in your life. Action-oriented PersonalBrains enhance productivity. With PersonalBrain 6 users can gain control of projects and to-dos with checkbox lists in notes, a more powerful calendar, and Google calendar synchronization.

·         Augmented Thought Type Visualization –  Create key information types and tag information with a wide variety of attributes to further delineate information and contextualize tasks. PersonalBrain 6’s new Thought Type display lets you visualize relationships between types and centralizes management of types.

PersonalBrain 6 Pricing and Availability

PersonalBrain 6 is a complimentary upgrade to registered PersonalBrain 5.0 users who purchased after February 1, 2010. Upgrades are $119.95 for other PersonalBrain 5 users. Upgrades can be purchased online at http://www.thebrain.com/purchase

PersonalBrain 6 is offered in three editions: Free, Core, and Pro (the most powerful edition). PersonalBrain Free is offered at no charge. The Free edition does not expire and lets anyone link ideas and Web pages on their desktops. Pro and Core editions are priced as follows: PersonalBrain Pro $249.95, PersonalBrain Core $149.95.

PersonalBrain 6 is cross platform and runs on Windows, Mac OS and Linux machines and is available in 7 languages. English, German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and Dutch.

WebBrain Services Pricing

WebBrain.com is a hosting service for PersonalBrain users. You can share your Brain online or browse other published Brains at http://webbrain.com.

WebBrain Free Services – Users can publish Brains for free with WebBrain Free Services which includes:

§  Publish Brains to share with the world

§  Unlimited Thoughts including support for Web link attachments

§  Brains can include Thought images/icons, notes, custom colors, and wallpaper

§  Brains cannot include file attachments

§  Upload as many Brains as you want

WebBrain.com Premium Services – Enables users to securely synchronize their Brain across multiple machines and publish publicly or privately. This service includes all types of file attachments – up to 50 MB each

§  Use your online Brain as a back-up – you can download it whenever and wherever you need offline access to it

§  Upload as many Brains as you want – up to 10 GB total

§  Subscriptions are $7.95 monthly or $74.95 annually.

About TheBrain Technologies
TheBrain® Technologies helps people see, share and find information faster. TheBrain’s Enterprise Knowledge Platform, BrainEKP™,  provides a complete knowledge management solution for companies that includes visual search, content management and powerful access control for mass Thought collaboration. TheBrain’s PersonalBrain™ Software helps users organize and capture ideas, projects and information on their desktops and synchronize their digital knowledge hubs online or to any machine cross platform.

Over half of the Fortune 100 use TheBrain, now downloaded by over a million people. TheBrain’s Government customers include the Department of Defense, Navy Special Warfare, as well as multiple state and municipal organizations. Everyone is encouraged to download PersonalBrain at http://www.thebrain.com to visualize their thinking or e-mail info@thebrain.com for more information.

TheBrain, PersonalBrain, BrainEKP and WebBrain are trademarks or registered trademarks of TheBrain Technologies LP. All other corporate names or trademarks stated herein are the property of their respective companies. Copyright © 2010 TheBrain Technologies LP.

PersonalBrain 6 and Moodle Perfect Together

Over the years I have been a big fan of the PersonalBrain and having used the PersonalBrain 6 Beta Release, I am really impressed with the feature set and the direction of the product. I  have used the PersonalBrain as a way to store and easily find information that is important in the work that I do in the field of assistive and educational technology. The PersonalBrain is a great way to visually store information and see the relationships of the data and thoughts that are embedded in your brain. I particularly like the fact that the PersonalBrain is a flexible tool and one that never locks you into a corner. If you want to keep your PersonalBrain structured by all means do so, but if you want less structure just feel free to drop information into your brain and everything is automatically indexed. Using the Search feature or the Advanced Reporting feature allows you to have the information you need at the tip of your fingers.

The PersonalBrain 6 is very tightly integrated with the WebBrain making it very easy to synchronize your brains to the web and back them up. I was particularly interested in the embedding function since my college is in the process of moving our Learning Management System over to Moodle. The question I had, would it be possible to embed one of my brains into Moodle so that students could visually search the database and use it as part of one of me courses? One of the things that I really like about Moodle is how it handles embedding code. I have successfully pasted embedding code from other sources and was able to render videos and flash objects without a hitch. I decided to see how well the embedding code worked and if I could integrate a Webbrain into one of my Moodle courses. This was a lot easier to do than you would think and within minutes I had my Webbrain working with my Moodle course.

I'm sure you want to know how I did it so here are the steps.

1. Log into your account at WeBbrain.com and open the brain you would like to embed.
2. Click on the Share icon on the top right of the Webbrain screen.
3. Copy the Embedding Code from the dialog box
4. Open your course in Moodle and Click on Compose a Webpage
5. Name the Resource and then Click on the icon <> Toogle HTML Source in the Compose a Web page section and past the embedding code
6. Save the page and watch how your WeBbrain is automatically rendered

Once you get the steps down there is no telling what you can do and how you can use PersonalBrain 6 to enliven your courses using Moodle.This is a wonderful way for me to share information and I for one know that I will take advantage of this synergy when using Moodle in the courses that I teach.Here is a sample brain for you to look at.