Mind map software, showing: Current only (historical excluded); in the categories: All; runs on: All operating systems; FOUND: 288 entries from a total of 353
Software for mindmapping and information organization

Software for mindmapping and
information organisation

Vic's compendium of software that supports knowledge management and information organisation in graphical form. Includes mind mappers, concept mappers, outliners, hierarchical organisers, KM support and knowledge browsers, 2D and 3D.More...










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From:  Dennis Lorson   Product:  Pathway    Added:  2009-08-31
73
Screenshot mind mapping software Pathway    
What they say:  " My idea for Pathway originated when browsing Wikipedia. I would always start off quite focused on a certain subject. Unfortunately, Wikipedia articles tend to be full of distracting links, just screaming to be clicked on...
Soon enough, I found myself totally lost in myriads of loosely related pages. I can't count the time I wasted on backtracing them, and if you have a bit of wiki-experience, you've probably encountered it too.
What I needed was an application that could easily archive the path I follow through Wikipedia pages.

The concept
Enter Pathway.
Pathway is an app designed to solve the aforementioned problems. Its aim is to help you discover Wikipedia without having to worry whether you'll have enough time to read everything you want, or if you'll get lost.

It accomplishes this by presenting you with a graphical "network" representation of your visited article pages. A node represents an article, a connection between two nodes means, of course, that you've gone from the first article to the second one. You can save the network you've created to disk and recover it.
This way, you're able to keep track of everything: what you've looked at, how you got there and just how it all fits together.

Pathway has a small but useful feature set, is easy to use and tries not to get in the way. Written in Cocoa, it offers the elegance you'd expect from a native Mac application."
Observations:  Not to be confused with Wikimindmap which produces a mind map from a specified Wikipedia page.
Where:  http://pathway.screenager.be/
OS: Mac
Price:  Free (donationware)
Categories: wiki-related
 
From:  Derring Technologies   Product:  ReadyNotes    Added:  2006-06-24
74
Screenshot mind mapping software ReadyNotes     Screenshot mind mapping software ReadyNotes     Screenshot mind mapping software ReadyNotes    
What they say:  " ReadyNotes is the addictive way to keep and manage your thoughts, notes and ideas.
ReadyNotes is useful for storing things, to do lists, names, numbers and related details, special projects, writings and general thoughts, websites and e-mail addresses (just Ctrl+click on any valid URL, e-mail or Windows directory), lists of books to read and videos to rent, a journal, snippets and stories from websites -- or any kind of information from anywhere!
And because you can create as many categories as you need, you can prevent ReadyNotes from becoming cluttered with too many pages of old or rarely needed information."
Observations:  Note taker software.
Where:  http://www.derring.com/readynotes/
OS: Windows
Price:  Free
Categories: note-taking
 
From:  Diagramic   Product:  Diagramic    Added:  2009-10-16
75
Screenshot mind mapping software Diagramic     Screenshot mind mapping software Diagramic     Screenshot mind mapping software Diagramic    
What they say:  " Data visualization is powerful. Seeing is believing. Spreadsheets were cool 20 years ago. Now we have access to more data and we need new tools to work with the data."
Observations:  Another text-to-diagram, browser based application, but quite different from Diagrammr, or Text2mindmap. Layouts can be chosen from three automatic options, and can be tweaked by dragging objects manually. Fun, but not deeply useful IMO. Neverthless, Forbes found a use for it as the first example shows - http://www.forbes20.com/ - by linking some browser controls and other processing that filters their data before submitting it to Diagramic.

Diagrams generated from plain text are all one colour. If the source is a Google spreadsheet, the diagram will have 2 colours and 2 shapes - the first column in the table is considered to contain the prime data.

This is categorized as a concept mapper because it can draw webs/nets but it would not be possible capable of making a full and useful concept map with linking phrases.
Where:  http://www.diagramic.com/
OS: browser based
Price:  Free
Categories: concept maps, networks
 
Articles
Project estimating – Mindmaps are a tool in the armory

The key to getting something useful out of this article is to read the author’s title carefully. Mind mapping simplifies the process of project estimating -- it doesn’t simplify the actual task-time estimation. Every project manger knows that the work of a project must be broken into separate and manageable units for estimating. To look at a project and think “That’s about a week’s effort” is a recipe for frustration and missed targets. Mindmaps, spider diagrams and bubble charts are excellent for the first phase of breaking a project into manageable parts. For me mindmaps, as strictly defined by Buzan’s rules, are less suitable than spider diagrams for this type of analysis, but we can assume that Dr. Mariaraj is not being too strict in his use of the term below. [Vic]

Tony Buzan has defined these "rules" for Mind Mapping:

I believe these rules are well worth following if you use mindmaps for learning. They are very hard to follow completely and rigidly - and its not worth trying I have found - if you use mindmaps in adult life, in your work or projects.

Who invented mind mapping

This comes up from time to time - usually in the form of "Buzan didn't invent mind mapping".

Underlying theory of Concept Maps

Here are links to important scholarly papers by Joseph D. Novak and Alberto J. Cañas on Concept Maps, their theory and construction.

Semantic networks

"Semantic network" is a broad enough term to cover many forms of information map. Here is a link to an article by John F. Sowa, originally written for the Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence.


The opinions are Vic's but material in quotes that follows "What they say" is quoted from the vendors' web sites. Product names used in this web site are for identification purposes only. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.  If you come across any software that isn't here but you think should be, please let me know: Vic at the above domain. If you have questions about mind mapping, concept mapping or outlining, you can let me know and I'll give it my best shot.