Personal Brain is one of those unique applications that purports to be able to help you organize your life, and in fact actually can. Even more surprisingly, this complex package’s download is merely 3 Megabytes in size. So what the heck is this thing?

Anyone familiar with mind mapping will intuitively understand the user interface of PersonalBrain, although it’s not technically a mind map, in the traditional sense. PersonalBrain’s map can be thought of more as a web of thoughts, interlinked in many different ways. They describe it this way:
“PersonalBrain helps you organize all your Web pages, contacts, documents, e-mails and files in one place so that you can always find them—just like you think of them. This saves you time and makes your life easier! With PersonalBrain you can even find related items—that you worked on—but forgot existed.”

The application is difficult to describe, but becomes very clear with use even over just a short amount of time. The initial setup wizard does a good job of helping you to build a structure with your PersonalBrain that makes sense, and acts as a jumping off point for further entries. The user interface is intuitive and very responsive, allowing you to jump in and out of it seamlessly with your other desktop software.

There is a trial version available, however beware of the overly invasive information-gathering questionnaire that must be filled out to register for access to it. My experience so far with the application is that if this category of software is intriguing to you, then it is worth jumping through the hoops to get your hands on a trial version. The product sells for $79.95.