I am an academic and I find BrainStorm really good for preliminary drafts of academic research papers.

Michael

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Kenneth S. Rhee - academic

I'm an academic who uses Brainstorm to keep track of my new ideas, and/or generate drafts of research papers from those ideas. I also write quite a bit of new PDA gadget reviews, and I also use Brainstorm to write my first draft of reviews or articles.

Kenneth

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Thierry Lalinne - analyst-programmer, webmaster and network administrator

I am an analyst-programmer, webmaster and network administrator in a small insurance company in Brussels, Belgium.

I find BrainStorm invaluable to - make various to-do lists - log the time spent in several projects - store, manage and rearrange ideas and notes - store information copied from web pages while surfing - help crystallize my thoughts while I am writing or studying - summarize and restructure long and complex documents - study new computer technologies.

Thierry Lalinne

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Dareen A. Bridge - archivist and historian

As archivist and historian to the Rough Collie, one of this country's oldest and most popular recognized breeds, Brain Storm is invaluable for storing research notes, as well as article planning, and outline writing. It is also the best means I have found of storing extended canine genealogy charts, and cataloguing archive material. One of its most useful features being the ability to turn BrainStorm models into HTML so enabling me to exchange research material quickly and easily with other breed archivists scattered around the world.

If you need the above elaborated further, just ask, but do not want to deluge you with a lot of unnecessary material. However it has to be said that BrainStorm, along with LocoPro are my bread and butter software packages, ones that I could never do without.

Dareen A. Bridge
'EMMSMOOR'

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Nigel Hall - Freelance writer

I am a freelance writer. I specialize in writing articles and white papers for companies selling computer software and hardware to Fortune 1000 customers.

I find BrainStorm to be an invaluable tool, and I use it constantly throughout the writing process. During the research phase of a project I cut-and-paste information from web pages, PDF documents, word processor files, and email into a BrainStorm database. This gives me a single source for all of the data I need when drafting an article. I then sift through this pool of data to draft an outline - the ability to have 2 views of the same BrainStorm document open at the same time makes this task a breeze.

When I begin to write I continually refer back to BrainStorm for quotes and clarification. It serves as my authoritative source of input for a paper or article. I recommend BrainStorm wholeheartedly to any creative professional needing help organizing their thoughts.

Nigel Hall
Freelance Writer

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Anonymous - Journalist

My work involves masses of research, very little of which ends up getting used. The Internet is a major source of information as well as my experience - I have worked in the computer industry for over 35 years.

Whenever I am about to write an article I rough out the main scope that I plan to cover in BrainStorm - five to ten entries is usually enough. Then I go off in search of material. Every time I find something relevant on the web, I either copy and paste it straight into BrainStorm or I get the print version of the document up and then do it.

Frankly, BrainStorm is pretty good at weeding out spurious characters. Copy and paste straight from the web page is pretty good. The Smart paste command is especially useful in this respect. [Magic paste is even better - Ed]

I don't read the stuff online, I just hoover likely looking stuff. It keeps me on track and I can always take a peek at my original structure if I start wallowing.

Sometimes I then use BrainStorm's 'throw' short cut (ctrl/t) to take my amassed information and attach it to its relevant entry in the original list.

All of this activity takes place in a single BrainStorm model. All the information is on tap all the time. And if I ever wonder where a certain reference is, I can always search for it.

The process of reading through the amassed material and highlighting relevant paragraphs is often enough to enable me to write the article. I generally find that I intersperse the material with remarks of my own - in double brackets so that I realize that I made the remarks if I ever re-use the material.

I often turn my back on BrainStorm having gone through this gathering, thinking and categorizing process and just start writing in my word processor. The process of using BrainStorm is enough to enable me to write a good, deep article with little recourse to the original material.

When it's written I then read through it and remember quotes, figures and other interesting information from the original material. A quick search within BrainStorm and the material is found and popped into the finished article.

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Kristin Levine - occupational therapist

I am an occupational therapist with a doctorate in clinical psychology, and I work with teens and young adults with learning disabilities, high functioning autistic spectrum disorders, and emotional disorders. Many of my clients find computers easier to relate to than people, and most are able to focus more easily when attending to a computer screen. So I use technology extensively in my work and play.

BrainStorm is very useful for helping my clients organize their thoughts, complete writing assignments, and store information in a visually appealing manner.

Kristin Levine, Psy.D., OT/L
Technologies for Learning & Creativity

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Anonymous - research psychologist

I am a research psychologist. I use BrainStorm for thinking about psychological problems, analysing them into their component parts and collecting data (examples, evidence) in an organized way.

Thank you for an interesting and useful programme which I am still only learning to exploit fully.

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Ira Bern Hansen - student

I am a student and I find BrainStorm really good for a lot of different purposes. Whatever task I`m doing on my computer.

BrainStorm is always close to my thoughts when they change direction. It might be a writing task, a sudden idea needing to be followed up later, an old track that needs a new input. This is not a program you buy and store away. This is a program for frequent use.

I. B. H. Norway

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Peter Ceresole - Television producer

I have used BrainStorm for something like seventeen years now through CP/M, DOS and, now, Windows. Although I own a Toshiba laptop, I use Macintosh machines by preference and I run BrainStorm under a Windows emulator.

For me it is the perfect freeform database. I keep information about all the films I have produced, the people and locations, phone numbers ... you name it, I throw it into BrainStorm. Apart from the sheer pleasure of roaming through my archives (I'm retired now) I can still lay my hands on pieces of information at a moment's notice.

The namesake links are an enormous help when I type in something that's already there - a name or a location for example - and all the information I collected first time around is still there, in context, exactly as I thought it at the time.

If you are running BrainStorm, you can download a model I created for a programme on the European television business by clicking here. I blanked out telephone numbers and some names for obvious reasons. If you are not running BrainStorm and don't mind waiting for a 272K page to arrive, you can view it here as a "3-D" HTML model.

Peter

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Anonymous - university lecturer

I use BrainStorm in very many different ways - here are a few:

(a) I plan lectures by using the headings and then place materials in subheadings etc. I find BrainStorm very flexible unlike Outliners etc. I find it useful to be able to concentrate on a detailed section of the work and then zoom back to the "Big Picture".

(b) I use multiple files to relate the parts of the lecture programme with my research. I keep outlines of my research on BrainStorm.

(c) I also use BrainStorm as a general index (at home). I simply have a large file with each main heading being A-Z and then equivalent subheadings(as in indexing) and then keep all the useful/useless information e.g. name and address of electricians, vets, where to buy concert tickets etc in this one file. It would be possible to do this, of course, on a well organized database, but the BrainStorm programme is excellent because my mind is not as tidy as a database. It is brilliant because if I ever think - I've lost that information - I haven't, its in BrainStorm.

I keep that file resident in the "background" whenever I am working on the computer at home.

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