The tool that will change the way you thnk about information and your computer for the next ten years. An absolutely phenomenal tool for which I am finding many, many uses. You can download your personal copy of PersonalBrain at TheBrain Site.

I have also expanded my process of Book Writing from this initial introduction written below to an eBook of over 45 pages which you can download free, "Build eTexts Faster and Better using Rapid Text Construction Techniques".

Writing a Book
While this is now my fifth month of retirement (I retired at age 49), I have taken to writing books. I am now onto writing my third book in six months. Success in doing this is due entirely to PersonalBrain. I could not have done this without this great tool. Here is how you write a book with PersonalBrain.

1. Idea Collection
   First up is the idea collection stage. Using the graph-interface that shows connections between ideas, I simply start amassing in any order the ideas for the book. PersonalBrain uses the metaphor of 'thoughts' -- you simply create a whole lot of thoughts, connected in any manner, to anything at first. As long as you capture the ideas that you discover through research or think about the topic as you go. It is amazing how after awhile connections are being made by PersonalBrain and instructing you which thoughts are not becoming main thoughts and which ones are now becoming subordinate thoughts.
2. Chapter Organization
   My next step is then to organize all those thoughts into chapters. My chapters now look something like the following picture with a thought for each chapter; and if a chapter was selected it would open out to ideas as sub thoughts for each chapter:
   
   
   
3. Explaining the thoughts
   For each thought in a chapter, I then use the function "Select Content" which provides me with a list of templates and connections to programmes installed on my machine. I select a MS WordPad program that has a predesigned template of heading style and body style. And simply I write three to ten paragraphs to explain that particular thought.
4. Logic analysis
   I then step through each of the chapters from the beginning thought to the last thought and consider the logic of what I have just written. Some reorganization is done to introduce some ideas before others, and so on.
5. Building the book
   Now, I look at that thought count and copy one "include" statement in a MS Word document for each thought. A macro in MS Word then copies the name of each file into each "include" statement. Now I press F9 and presto my book text appears. I then select all headings and assign a style to each. Then, add a Table of Contents, and an Index and a book is built. THEN, I publish it by converting the text into Adobe Acrobat format, or convert it into html for use on a website, or convert it into some other format for publishing in a variety of contexts.
6. Updating the text
   Any changes to the document, re-organization, added information is done in PersonalBrain. Then simply pull up the document in MS Word, press F9 to update all fields and the book is updated.
7. Using the BookBrain
   Now this is the exciting part. All the thoughts associated with content are searchable, re-usable, and can form parts of other texts I build. I merge the BookBrain with my main Brain "Knowledge" and then form links between my other knowledge and this new BookBrain. It is amazing to see the links and learn new information by linking currently known or forgotten information. This started me on an equiry that then enabled me to build another book on several occasions. What is more, as a part of the Book when I publish it, I can provide links to websites and other linked iinformation that all is composed in the Brain.

THIS would have to be one of the key tools of technacy into the future. A great way to work from brainstorming and knowledge generation to formatting and publishing.

More information about PersonalBrain:

• ThoughtsOnThinking (Harlan Hugh Co-Founder of TheBrain weblog page)
• Conceptual Model of PersonalBrain (Brief Discussion)
• Download from ZDNet a copy of PersonalBrain
• WebBrain Paper from another viewpoint
• Very Cursory look at PersonalBrain but gives a few other links to thinking type software
• Review of the Concept of Mapping Ideas -- the problem with this review is that the writer has a limited understanding of the possibilities of PersonalBrain
• Personal KM Tools - an interesting list that includes PersonalBrain
• Evolution of TheBrain - a great roundup of where the Company is today. Note that even though there is much ado about servicing the Business Community with this product, Hugh Harlan identified in ThoughtsOn Thinking that the PersonalBrain will continue to be supported.
  

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