Feedburner tells me I have well over 3,000 subscribers to my feed. 

I was surprised when I saw that.  And humbled.  My posts are sporadic, and yet still people follow this blog.  Thank you folks!

Now, please come and follow me on Twitter, and you’ll be more up to date, with between-post happenings. 

You won’t find out what I had for breakfast, when I got out of bed, or if it’s been a bad day for Vic.  Just tweets about mind mapping software news and related topics.

If you’re not using Twitter yet, you may be staying away because you think it’s all about personal, trivial, and frankly uninteresting stuff.  For me, using TweetDeck (it’s free) got me past that stage, because I can have columns of searches on subjects I’m interested in.  No reports telling me Bill ‘had kippers and cornflakes for breakfast’!   There’s plenty of useful information to be found.

If you’re already twittering, just follow @VicGee, and I’ll see you there.   Come and say “Hi!”

If you’re not, you can go to http://twitter.com to sign up (it’s easy – they don’t require blood samples).  Then visit http://twitter.com/VicGee and click on the Follow button on the left.  I hope I’ll see you there as well, and that you get more out of Twitter than you expected.

Vic    (@VicGee in Twitter)
http://www.mind-mapping.org/
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

New on the scene and in mind-mapping.org is MindMapPaper, a free, Windows-only offering from Lex River.  It is desktop software and needs .Net to run.

MindMapPaper is an original approach to mind mapping with advantages and disadvantages.

In its favour are these benefits:

1. Simplicity.  It takes just a few minutes to learn all you need to use the software.
2. The appearance is clear and simple.
3. It gives you complete control over layout.  Drag any node anywhere and it stays there.  If you are tired of your mind mapping software organizing your maps’ layout for you, or resisting a layout change you would like to make, you might want to play with MindMapPaper for that reason alone.
4. A rigid tree-structure hierarchy is not enforced.  Really, MindMapPaper is a network drawer rather than a mind mapper, because any node can be connected to any other.  If only it supported relationship descriptions across the linking lines, it would be a true concept mapper.  [Update: Now it does] If you want a dominant central topic, you can organize the map and format the node that way as Lex has done in the sample above, but MindMapPaper is not built around this as a starting point.
5. Node to node connections have an arrow indicating in which direction they were drawn, so you can indicate hierarchy if you want to, but by dragging connections both ways, double arrows can be shown to indicate a relationship that is not parent to child.
6. Images, files and hyperlinks can be attached to nodes, and there is a simple comments box as well.
7. The mind map file is an XML file and is not proprietary, so can be exchanged (import and export) with other software, but the software would have to know the format, or you would need a suitable XSLT file.

I have not used the software for long, but the disadvantages I noticed are:

1. While the appearance is clear and simple, it is rather plain, and requires node-by-node work by the user to make it more interesting or eye-catching.  The fact that you can, one-by-one, select multiple nodes, and then apply a format change to all at once, makes this easier.  There are a copy-style and paste-style keyboard shortcuts to support style changes as well.
2. There are no themes or inherited-style capabilities.  [Update: This is improved, with [Ctrl]+[RightMouseDrag] – to create child node with the same style as parent node.]
3. If you like your mind maps to have curved and tapering connecting lines, you won’t like MindMapPaper’s straight, thin, unchangeable lines.  The appearance is much closer to a spider diagram than a mind map, even if you have made the formatting changes to show a strong central topic.  For business maps, this will be fine, IMO.
4. Attachments are separate files in the mind map file’s directory, not embedded in a compressed file with the XML file, the technique used by many other mind mapping software packages.  This could easily result in broken maps.
5. There is no real zoom, just two viewing sizes ‘Schematic view’ which is very small and ‘Normal view’.  So if the map grows beyond the screen, dragging around is the only possibility.
6. No node folding.  This must be software’s the greatest weakness as a mind mapper at present.  As you can draw networks with it, it’s not immediately obvious how you would fold nodes in all cases.  Fold if everything under the node is a tree, and decline to fold if not, I suppose.

[Update 15/10/2009]
Lex has released a new version with many improvements, including those mentioned above.  MindMapPaper can make true concept maps now.

You can download it from here: http://mindmappaper.com/

Vic
http://www.mind-mapping.org/
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

Mindmapinspiration has a new Gallery and, as usual with Paul Foreman’s inspiring work, it’s great.  A worthy addition to mind-mapping.org’s Mind Map Libraries.

Check it out.

Vic Gee
http://www.mind-mapping.org/
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

Here’s the latest on Mind-mapping.org updates:

MyThoughts
A Mac mind mapper with an elegant and flexible organic appearance.

Pathway
Makes a graphical “network” representation of your visited article pages on Wikipedia. A node represents an article, a connection between two nodes shows your ‘pathway’ from one to the other. You can save these networks.

Not to be confused with Wikimindmap which produces a mind map from a specified Wikipedia page.

Thinking Space
Android mind mapping app.  Minimal information, no screenshots. 

ThoughtMuse
Another left-to-right mapper, like Co-mapping and Meadmap.  As with those, I see this as more a graphical outliner than a mind mapper.

ThinkingMap
FreeMind-compatible iPhone mind mapping application.

Here’s another of those ’not to be confused with’ iems: ThinkingMap is not connected to ‘Thinking Maps‘, a high-end educational tool.

Grab the RSS feed (hope that works – pls tell me if it doesn’t).

Vic Gee
http://www.mind-mapping.org/
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

New at Mind-mapping.org this week:

Google Wonder wheel
Shows search-result topics as a simple information map, with the usual detailed search results alongside.  To use it, search on your chosen term. Just above the results (and probably ads), you’ll see a link + Show options…  Click on that and select Wonder wheel from the list on the left hand side.  Click on the text on the wheel’s spokes to expand the visual presentation in that direction.

iFreeMind
Neat iPhone software for working with FreeMind files. Can create them too.  Serious challenger to other iPhone mind mappers.  Already blogged about this so I won’t repeat the picture, but it only just found its way into the Master List.  Disappointingly, this app has not been updated for nearly six months.

Mind Map Memo   
A mind map editor for the Android phone.

MindMap Navigator
Not stand-alone mind mapping software, but an add-on for Mindjet’s MindManager, aimed at simplifying visibility and navigation when working with big maps.

MAPMyself

Finally, in other news, I just noticed that Mapul has changed its name.  Now it’s called MAPMyself.  Can’t think why, but at least they kept the mapul.com domain.

I’ve been catching up with my to do list, and hope to post a few more entries soon.  Watch this space.  Or grab the RSS feed (hope that works – pls tell me if it doesn’t).

Vic Gee
http://www.mind-mapping.org/
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

In my previous post about the mind mapping wiki, I promised to write about the phrase ”information maps”:  It’s used in that wiki as a term to cover the whole domain. 

The nature of mind-mapping.org is that I need some general term. I don’t limit the content to mind map software in a strict or even a loose sense.  I toyed with “visual maps” but quickly realised that’s a tautology  –  maps are visual by their very nature. 

“Mind maps” and “concept maps” are such widely used terms, they will roll on for a long time yet, I think, but their problem is that some use them to mean something very specific, while others apply them broadly.  You may have seen minor skirmishes in newsgroups, forums and Wikipedia discussion pages over this.

‘Cognitive map’ is another, but it sounds academic and I doubt it would appeal to those outside educational circles.  In some ways it’s a pity that ‘concept maps’ has taken on a specific meaning because it would otherwise be suitable as a general term.   Information, thoughts, ideas, arguments - all fit well under ‘concept’

I like WikIT’s suggestion - it’s useful.  It’s not perfect, though.  After all such maps are often used to generate ideas.  Is a half-formed idea ‘information’, would you say?  Not really.  But as I can find nothing better for now, I may well start using this. 

Vic
http://www.mind-mapping.org/
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

In a post some months ago, I promised to tell you more about WikIT, the mind mapping wiki but kept getting distracted.  Now I have found a few minutes to keep my word.

WikIT is a facinating resource.  It takes the line that different uses of ‘information maps’ (I’m planning a post about that phrase!) are best served by different map types and different rules.  And it goes right ahead and supports this line with examples and advice.

This wiki covers the many types of maps – mind maps, concept maps, argument maps and others.  It explains the variations and how you might choose one type if you’re learning something, another type if you’re planning a new project, and something else again if you’re doing some deep analysis.  The main map types are introduced in a summary article here that branches out to many other pages.

Although it looks a lot like Wikipedia, and has the same types of search facilities, WikIT often uses mind maps for navigation – that must be a boon – and takes advantage of MindManager 8’s ability to deliver Flash and PDF mind maps that work, as well as looking pretty.  You can click a link that will open a map from WikIT in your browser and start exploring.

The best place to start is the list of all the subjects covered by the wiki.  Visit that and, if you’re like me, it will set you off on clicking trail from subject to subject.  Not all articles are complete, but the planning has been pretty comprehensive (I detect planning by mind map!)

Information Tamers, who put this wiki together, have also remedied a hole in my site by adding a list of free mapping software on one of its pages.  Price is a selection criterion that I didn’t think to include when I was deciding on the controls in the ‘Refine software list’ tab, and when I was approached for permission to use all the information I was happy to see it drawn on and filtered in this way.  I always am, provided the source is acknowledged and linked to with a “follow” link.  “Free” is the price that people are most often seeking for software, as well!

Vic
http://www.mind-mapping.org/
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

Have you noticed the growth of sites featuring libraries of mind maps on the web?  I’ve just published a page collecting information about these.

I’ve has this on my ToDo list for far too long and yesterday I finally put it to bed here: The Mind-mapping.org Mind Map Libraries List.  When I say “finally” I mean until someone points me at another worthy addition to the collection, of course!

It is not limited to mind maps – you’ll find concept maps, spidergrams and all the other map types there.  Many of the mind map software publishers display galleries of sample work from their own products.  Rightly or wrongly, folks, I decided to exclude those.

Vic
http://www.mind-mapping.org/
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

I’m browsing “Designing Universal Knowledge” by Gerlinder Schuller at present, and came across a thought-provoking guide to simplicity (‘laws’ is OTT, but that’s how they are described).  I like this list a lot.

Reduce
The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.

Organize
Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.

Time
Savings in time feel like simplicity.

Learn
Knowledge makes everything simpler.

Differences
Simplicity and complexity need each other.

Context
What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.

Emotion
More emotions are better than fewer.

Trust
In simplicity we trust.

Failure
Some things can never be made simple.

The One
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

Vic
http://www.mind-mapping.org
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

A serious challenger to existing iPhone mind mapping apps swam into my view today: iFreeMind.

The site says “iFreeMind is a native software on iPhone for reading, showing and modifing the files created by FreeMind, and also for creating, writing the FreeMind compatible format files.”

This appears to hold an impressive hand of FreeMind capabilities and sets the bar for other iPhone apps to beat: Icons; detailed colour control; built in help (press a button an keep it pressed to see what it does); import from and export to PCs and Macs; and portrait and landscape modes.

The sample map suggests that nodes can contain followable links, but I think they imported a FreeMind mind map that makes the claim for FreeMind itself (it does have this capability) but as far as I can see, iFreeMind does not have it yet.

There’s a blog (probably the software developer’s) that gives a potted help file.

Update: There is a free, read-only iPhone app from the same author call FreeMindLite.  You will need to create your maps on a PC or Mac, and can then import them.

Vic
http://www.mind-mapping.org/
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software