I’m trying some new stuff because I had an idea that ‘The Brain’ would be good for encapsulating and displaying a concept that is as web like as I have found interlibrary loan to be (yeah, this is library stuff).  But ‘The Brain’ is not so accessible when you’re traveling from computer to computer.  So, I wanted to scope out some other ways of concept mapping.  I found  bubbl.us.  It’s pretty good and a free account gets three maps worth of storage that you can share and link to.  (Yes, this is all about Interlibrary Loan – it’s what I do)

What I’m really after, now that I’ve been shopping around, is a way to insert the finished mind map into my web site.  There I could host and share it forever (even password protect it if I wanted).  Unfortunately bubbl.us ‘s HTML export just looks like a colorful list with anchor tags:

So I am still looking.  Though, to be completely on the up and up I have to admit that a pro version of the brain offers an HTML export that creates a working online brain when loaded into a web server.   It might very well be what I am looking for if I could just be satisfied with what I’ve already found.

How did I not know about this?  Years moaning over the inability to affix tags and notes to word and excel documents to make file browsing more coherent.  Years of making lists and documenting and organizing my creative pursuits in unwieldy Microsoft folder systems.   How did I not know or even consider that someone with more code intelligence than I had already tackled the problem?  HOW?

Can you tell I’m broken up about this?  I am both frustrated and excited.  So this is how it works.  Somehow, in the midst of looking for something else I found code {4} lib.  And I thought, ‘Wow, this is a fabulous online journal on stuff I’m professionally interested in, in speak that’s a little over my head’ – which translates to: learn new things LeEtta, go go go!   code {4} lib is also a blog, conference, community and listserv.  I promptly subscribed to the listserv because I could find no other way to feed information from code {4} lib into my head and I didn’t want it to be forgotten in my plethora of bookmarks.

The listserv lead me to The Brain -a mind mapping software that allows for mapping and organizing files and thoughts, interrelating those thoughts, adding notes and tags to those thoughts, and finally, making everything searchable.  It’s fabulous.  The introductory webinar recording (oh, and they have live webinar question/answer sessions weekly), mentioned a few other products.  One of these was FreeMind – an open source and free mind mapping software.  FreeMind is also nice enough to list out alternatives so I’m not going to go into them here.

I’m thinking of trying out The Brain‘s free version/trial.  It looks a little more like what I wanted to do with my filing system to make it more navigable.  But I’m kind of inspired by FreeMind‘s 2D-ness.  It would’ve been indispensable when I was trying to map out a choose your own adventure story.  That was a clunky challenge.  I’ve got another one in the works, so…I will explore.  And, I’ll probably report back.