iBrainstorm: simple, yet mindblowing

I heard about the Scrabble app which has a “master” board on an iPad and allows up to 4 “clients” to be running on iphones and ipod touches. The idea is that each client holds the letters for the scrabble for that person. They can edit the letters and when they have a word, they can “flick” it over to the board. Genius.

Inspired genius and a great new way of looking at software. It might or might not be the first to do this, but its certainly a completely new direction for software. They all share a local network to exchange data and they allow significant collaboration. Best of all, it makes use of the interface in a natural way that was not possible on a PC or a Mac.

Enter iBrainstorm. At first glance, its YAIAFS – (Yet Another iPad App For Sketching). It has a cork background and allows for drawing and adding notes. You can zoom in to create drawings in detail or connect the notes via arrows you draw. You can also export the page as a photo or via email. Big whoop, right? Well, the developer (Universal Mind) has created a client app called iBrainstorm companion. The companion app runs on iphones and ipod touches. Yeah, thats right.

In a similar vein to the scrabble app, you can fire up the iPad version of iBrainstorm and then connect up to 4 iphones/ipod touches. Each person with a client can write notes on post its, and then “flick” the post it onto the cork board on the iPad.The notes can be colour coded too.

When I first saw it, it was like magic. Sometimes simple things are magic. Especially when they just make sense. I can definitely see this being very useful in dynamic design sessions (brainstorming?), typically involving developers, or indeed any creative work. I look to trying this out in practice very soon.

The price for this awesomeness? Free. Oh, and they are working on an Android version. VGA out is coming too.

Awesome. For find out more about this app:

twitter: @iBrainstormApp

web: http://www.ibrainstormapp.com/