Possible additional UI based on Natrificial's "The Brain"?

[Steve Butts <sbutts purdue edu>]

   The recent Byte just did an article on a piece of Windows software by
Natrificial called The Brain.  I won't go into details here about it, but
basically it is a UI based on associations/thoughts instead of a file
hierarchy.  A much better explanation is on their web page,
www.natrificial.com.  If you have access to a Windows machine I recommend you
check it out.

   I've just been playing around with it last night and I think it's a really
cool interface to augment the desktop.  Technically the program isn't too
complex, so it shouldn't take any great leaps to make an equivalent.  The main
problems would be the graphical layout, animations, and maybe getting it to
work nicely with other programs.  For example, in The Brain there are a few
ways to make links to a web page, one way is to drag a link from The Brain
window to the web browser that is currently display the page to be linked.  So
somehow the web browser has to tell The Brain the URL for the current page.
   Unfortunately I'm not a programmer and I haven't the slightest idea about how
to implement such an interface.

... Steve Butts
... sbutts@purdue.edu