TheBrain

BrainStorm makes it easy for you to capture information from your head, your computer screen or any file. Grab what you need on the fly. organize and embellish it when it suits you. References to external files, programs, web and email addresses can be invoked with Magic Launch. BrainStorm doesn't get in your way. Its apparent simplicity hides enormous power. Use it to refine, enhance and organize your ideas and other information into a comprehensive and coherent structure. BrainStorm's Magic Paste automatically grabs text from the clipboard. This means that all you have to do is highlight and copy material you see on screen. You can use regular copy/paste if you prefer. In both cases, you can set BrainStorm up to take heed of or ignore things like indents, vertical spaces and line breaks. A web-publish button creates an HTML version of your work which is navigable in a similar way to BrainStorm itself.

Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base that works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files. The human brain is non-linear: we jump from idea to idea, all the time. Your second brain should work the same. In Obsidian, making and following "connections" is frictionless. Tend to your notes like a gardener; at the end of the day, sit back and marvel at your own knowledge graph. Note-taking is incredibly personal. Tried every app, but there's always something not quite right? You deserve better. Obsidian is built to be extensible. With 22 core plugins and 149 community plugins, set up your own toolkit and get running in minutes. You'll even be able to install third party plugins or build your own once Obsidian reaches v1.0. Sky's the limit. In our age when cloud services can shut down, get bought, or change privacy policy any day, the last thing you want is proprietary formats and data lock-in. With Obsidian, your data sits in a local folder.