BrainSharper

Although most people think of pen and paper when it comes to writing down thoughts and ideas, the truth is that effective note-taking relies on you identifying a system that works for you. While for some this means writing in a journal, for others taking notes or storing ideas can entail using all sorts of visuals to highlight ideas and connect them together.

BrainSharper is a small piece of software that enables you to create notes in the form of diagrams that you can use for personal projects as well as business environments.

The utility comes with a streamlined and intuitive interface that also includes a few basic hints on how you get started. The idea behind the application is to help you transmit ideas or concepts that are usually hard to explain or describe only with text, so the suggestion can come in handy for first-time users.

You can create nodes by simply tapping in any region of the interface and connect them with lines. It is necessary to mention that the app supports four elements for the time being – labels, groups, connectors and nodes – which can make communicating some abstract ideas with the help of visual aids slightly difficult.

The application enables you to resize the nodes so that the subject can be displayed properly. You can alter the colors of the background to underline or put an emphasis on a certain idea. You can group nodes and edit their colors together and add connectors to highlight the process that binds the subjects for instance.

A noteworthy option is that the color of the words automatically changes when you modify the background one, so you do not have to worry about the visibility of the text. Then again, you should you do not really have too many color options to play with.

As a side note, the program only allows you to save your project in a PNG format and it would be useful if it supported more file formats.

While it is true that it does not come with numerous functions and features, BrainSharper is intuitive and easy to use, so it could come in handy for your work presentations.