OpenSource Alternative to TheBrain?

m1cajah asks: "Been scouring the Net for an open-source alternative to The Brain. Specifically, I'm interested in a web version to use for creating a small intranet/portal site at my company. Does one exist out there? I've looked at some of the mind-mapping stuff out there and what's available just isn't as elegant, easy to use, or intuitive as TheBrain. TheBrain has a web-version called "SiteBrain" but it's cost is WAY too high for our little company (only 15 of us) and requires far too much "consultation" to make it work. Does anyone know of a nice alternative?"

Comments

Or is the company called "TheBrainless"?

[Futurepower(R)]

Did you ever notice that one company is taking over the Internet? The company is called "Click here to get the plugin."


Okay, okay, maybe it's because I don't like this:

By editing the Flash header (SWF), it is possible to run any code on the computer of a visitor to a web page, according to an eEye Digital Security Alert. The vulnerability exists in all versions of Flash and in all browsers that support Flash, making it "... trivial to bypass firewalls and attack the user at his desktop." eEye reported a previous vulnerability last May.

I've always disliked how Flash tends to be an advertisement for Flash. Visitors to a page with Flash often get upgrade notices.

TheBrainLess could realize that a lot of people deleted the Flash plugin during one of the previous security alerts.

A couple of alternatives

[Will Sargent]

There are a bunch of java graphing tools around if you don't mind hacking them a bit. Some are more useful than others, of course.

One interesting one is TouchGraph, best known for the google set vista.

Plumb Design also has the Visual Thesaurus, which is cool looking even if it's not really practical.

For Palm?

[jafuser]

I would love to have something like this for the Palm. It would make a lot of sense for quickly recalling information without having to scribble in a search term.

use a Wiki...

[metacosm]

I personally would recommend using a Wiki. It does all the jazz about connecting resources without contaniers and natural linking information. It does it more naturally as well. I am guessing that someone could write a plugin for any wiki system todo the pointless little map of information with little lines on it -- but I am not sure what purpose it would serve. I don't see what little GUI tool adds that a hyperlink (as a wiki would do it) wouldn't?

That is my recommendation. www.openwiki.com

TheBrain UI is patented

[Anonymous Coward]

If you find an open source version, you might want to warn them that TheBrain UI is patented (6,031,537).

Re:use a Wiki... yeah!

[khodsden]

I agree with the wiki suggestion. They're very easy to use, encourage everyone to participate, and (usually) have revision control in case someone messes up.

That said, they can also be very chaotic. If you aren't careful with how you organize your pages, they can become unwieldy. Of course, so can using the Brain. Fortunately, reorganizing a wiki structure is easy (if time consuming).

That said, if IIS & ASP don't work for you, look into other flavors of wikis. For example:

1. TWiki for a perl cgi-bin based wiki
   
2. phpwiki for a php based wiki
   
3. jspwiki
   
4. even palmWiki!
   

Lots of choices!

Hate to be a luddite...

[abulafia]

Sorry to recommend against what you're wishing after, but I have to say that "mind mapping" software leads to really poorly thought out structures.
I've dealt with this concept a few times (both as a full-time employee and, more frequently, since I became a consultant), and every time someone comes to me with a Mind Map, it takes an absurd amount of time to straighten out what they actually want, and how to implement it. I'm sure that the method is great for brain storming, or getting stoned and coming up with ideas, or whatever, but it simply sucks as a substitute for coming up with a plan of action.

Every time I've encountered this sort of behaviour out of people, I end up first sitting in endless meetings determining what people actually care about, then turning it into a prioritised outline, and finally coming up with a plan that roughly fits what they started with. All at a rather serious cost to clients, now that I'm working for myself. (I'd like to say that that's fine because I'm making money doing it, but I hate the process of reverse engineering a client's crappy notes. If they'd just plan correctly in the first place, they'd be richer, and I'd have more hair.)

Do yourself a favor. Instead of a Mind Map, start thinking about what you want to say/do, what is most important, and if you have to draw, use a real graphical business system modeller, like Visio or Kivio. (I must say I hate Kivio. Visio sort of sucks, but Kivio sucks more. Sure, flame me.) If you're more technical than I'm giving you credit for, forgive me first, and then whip out a note book, and start combining scribbles with words. That's my personal dirty secret - I have a business diary (coming on, I think 18 volumes shortly) that I take endless notes in and - yes! - draw in. I use that to model proposals that I send to clients. Those proposals are almost always in words, but occasionally I do draw a diagram, but only after I have the full gameplan and the processes to support it in my head.*

That's the difference, I think. One doesn't submit one's class notes to a professor, and one doesn't submit Mind Maps to people who actually have to implement things.Sure, I'm sure this software can turn your mental process into a web page. Please point me to a site developed that way (besides the parent corp.) which is relevant on a frequent basis to others.

Don't mean to be harsh, but I've hard learned lessons that this is not a model to push for efficient business practice.

-j

* For the zealots out there, I've been using almost nothing but Open Source software in my personal business for over a year. I frequently have to do something for clients with software like Oracle and a host of small providers of commercial software, but aside from the W2K box to test web interfaces with (and that's a dual boot server that also has my ripped CD collection on it), there is no commercial software in our office. I still miss Mathematica, and might end up making an exception for it. I haven't given up yet, though.And at least Mathematica runs on Linux.

Re:Hate to be a luddite...

[neripunk]

You are making assumptions about what the person who asked wants to use the software for. It may not necessarily be a finished, polished, perfectly smooth document.

I've been looking at something like this myself. I am writing a PhD dissertation and I need a place to keep my notes, link them to related notes, organize them and be able to do a text search easily. While I know that when it comes to the actual writing, I will have to sort them out and give them full coherence, it would not make sense to follow the same process for research notes: a note can fall under more than one category and be related to multiple issues/other notes, so a full hierarchical and linear distribution would not help. Sometimes it pays off to break away from this mode of thinking, not all bits of knowledge are related like a well-planned report or book, even when you have to get them into that shape later.

Now, for something that may actually be useful to the person who made the question, I found two possibilities: OpenReference, but I never could make that one work on my computer; currently, I am looking at Pile, which looks interesting, I got it working in my machine, but I have not had enough time for a close look.

Dia is a free graph prog like visio

[Tril]

http://www.lysator.liu.se/~alla/dia/

Yes, it's been done

[drew_kime]

I am guessing that someone could write a plugin for any wiki system todo the pointless little map of information with little lines on it

Take a look here and here and here. Someday I'll have the time to start digging into these more.

Re:use a Wiki (and/or other software)... yeah!

[Rademir]

Usemod is another popular wiki, and there are dozens more WikiEngines, many of them licensed open/free.

There's also the book, The Wiki Way.

You could probably build something on top of Zope (which comes with a ZWiki component), and might find a href="http://www.gzigzag.org/

Proper wiki etc. info (public embarrassment)

[Rademir]

Please ignore the last paragraph of my last comment.

. o O ( Preview button...oh, yeah! )

You could probably build something on top of Zope (which comes with a ZWiki component), and might find gZigZag interesting.

Tinderbox, and Userland's products, though not open/free, are two other platforms to build on or learn from.