Cayra

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Company / Author[edit]

Intalev Management Academy

Screenshots[edit]

Click for enlarged image.

What they say[edit]

“Cayra is a program that lets you represent tasks, ideas, concepts and other items in a graphic, well-structured way. Cayra is based on such mental techniques, as Mind Maps and Concept Maps and allows you to conveniently work with big maps.”

Observations[edit]

Cayra is a neat little concept and mind mapper and in my view is greatly undervalued, probably because Cayra.net is now an advertising site, and the software is no longer supported. But copies can be downloaded from http://download.cnet.com/Cayra/3000-2076_4-10777905.html and other download sites. For current Windows versions you need to follow steps given later in this article to get it working.

Be prepared to spend a few minutes understanding how it works, because it is not quite like other mappers, but it is well worth the time, because it has a flexibility that other mappers do not.

On the one hand it has attributes of mind mapping software: Organic lines and colour; but at the same time, the connections it can make allow it to be used to make concept maps with cross links and linking phrases. It even lets you have multiple maps on the same page, and has a good ergonomic design to handle this, providing for ‘parking’ separate maps at the foot of the screen.

Its most unexpected feature is that it uses the self-centering mechanism like Topicscape or Brain. Click a node and that moves to the centre and its branches expand.

It comes with a help map, but also has built-in help.

I haven’t tried this on Windows 10, but it works up to Windows 7 but does need some extra, quite trivial, steps because the installer can’t find a .Net component it needs, so fails. The .Net components are actually there on Windows 7 by default, it just doesn’t recognize them. You can get it to work on Windows 7 as follows:

  1. Download the zipped up Cayra folder from informationtamers.com/mind-mapping.
  2. Make a new folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Cayra
  3. Move Cayra.zip there and unzip it
  4. Right click on C:\Program Files\Cayra\Cayra.exe and select Create shortcut in the context menu.
  5. Drag the shortcut to the desktop (be careful to drag the shortcut, not the original .exe file – they have the same name). You may then want to remove the “.exe” from the shortcut filename. You might prefer to place the shortcut somewhere else, like C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs – then it’ll appear in your Start menu.
  6. It’s a good idea to delete or rename C:\Program Files (x86)\Cayra\Updater.exe, or you may get occasional error messages on start up when Cayra tries to check for a revised version and fails to get a response.

Their website[edit]

http://cayra.net/

Operating System(s)[edit]

Windows


Price: Free (as of vsn. 0.8.1)  |  Status: Historical  |  Date added: 2007-09-08

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