Month: October 2009

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Creately, CUECards, MindDecider, SpicyNodes and Inflow

I’ve done separate posts about two recent findings over the last couple of days: Diagramic and the filling in of a historical entry.  Time now for the remaining new items in Mind-mapping.org:

Creately

Creatley is a nice on-line diagram-drawing software with mind mapping as one of the type of diagrams supported.  It has a free version, and a Plus version with a rather special subscription scheme: Pay what you think it’s worth, provided you spare at least US$1/month!  Creately can make Flowcharts, Network Diagrams, Organizational Charts, UML Diagrams, Sitemaps, SWOT templates, Wireframes, UI Mockups as well as mind maps.

T370-3

CUECards

CUECards is a hierarchical information store based on a ‘card’ metaphor – something of an outliner.

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MindDecider

MindDecider incorporates a form of mind mapping and uses it as a framework for information gathering, analysis and calculation that leads to decision support.

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SpicyNodes

I’ve seen SpicyNodes described as mind mapping software.  It really is not, unless you’re prepared to build a web site for each mind map you make.  But it does use the hierarchical mind mapping style for connections between nodes. 

Spicy nodes is a new approach to web site navigation.  It would be interesting to see mind mapping software that could export the code needed to build a SpicyNodes web

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InFlow

Inflow is social and organisational network analysis software with many ways of displaying relationships.  It appears to be aimed at enterprises rather than individuals.

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Hope to see you on Twitter before my next post.  Visit http://twitter.com/VicGee and click on the Follow button on the left.

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

Google

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Welcome to the ancient mindmapping-software vaults

Did you know that unless you dig deep, you’re only seeing part of  mind-mapping.org?  If you click through to the link above, for now, you’ll see 284 entries.  Observant readers will see that the top line adds “from a total of 349”.  So what’s with the missing 65?

That’s where all the dead mind mapping and similar software packages go to their final rest.  If you want to see them, go to the “Refine software list” tab, uncheck “Current software” and check “Historical software.”  Then press “Show selected items.”  These historic items are retained in the list partly for completeness (the pack rat in me) but also for any researcher who wants to track the development of mapping software. 

Some are worth knowing about anyway, even now, because they may no longer be supported or sold, but be available for download somewhere.  Cayra is an example.  Others are totally dead because no information is available, the original site has gone, and no download sites have a copy (hello GNletting Mindmap!).

Down to the point of this:  Long ago I heard of software called EGLE Mind Mapper*. From then until last week I had no information about this software. In 2002 I wrote an email, it came back adressee unknown.

Then last week, Dr Dirk Hopper wrote out of the blue and sent me information and even an installer (the licence encourages copying and sharing). At last I was able to see the type of map it produces and include a screenshot. It can be installed on Vista and XP, and works, but I found it to be a little buggy.  That’s not surprising on Vista – it was probably written for Windows 3, or at best 95.

EGLE Mind Mapper

Now my inner nerd is satisfied!  One of the potholes in mind-mapping.org is filled in.

I often get unexpected tips like this and they nearly always make their way into the list eventually.  So do let me know if you know of anything interesting that should be there.

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

* This software is not related to ‘MindMapper’ from SimTech Systems.

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Diagramic – text to diagram

Up till now, I’ve known of three text-to-diagram applications: Mappio, Text2mindmap and Diagrammr.  Now I’ve come across another: Diagramic.  I just added it to mind-mapping.org.

It’s a little web-based application, and as it stands it is fun but only useful for very simple cases.   Here’s an image with data I took from a paper by Scavarda, Bouzdine-Chameeva and others, about causal maps:

CausalMaps

I made this with simple text like this:
“Cognitive maps” -> “Undirected graphs”
“Cognitive maps” -> “Directed graphs”
“Undirected graphs” -> “Knowledge maps”
“Undirected graphs” -> “Concept maps”
“Undirected graphs” -> “Mind maps”   …. …. and so on.

When Diagramic makes graphs from plain text like that above, it will use one color and one shape.  The automatic layout is fine with simple, regular graphs, but it needs manual adjustment for even the modest one above.   As you can drag nodes wherever you want them and adjust the zoom to make best use of the fixed-sized box, it is easy to achieve a presentable result.

The biggest weakness is that to preserve the result, you must use the PrintScreen key on your keyboard and Word or some graphic-editing software to preserve and perhaps crop the image.  There is no other obvious way to make a chart and embed it on your own site.

Diagramic can also accept data from spreadsheets, so as a component in a mash-up, it has more promise.  Forbes.com have made a web component that feeds data to it, selected from its own database, to allow users to generate relationship diagrams dynamically.  Here’s an example image taken from the Diagramic web site:

Forbes

The web gadget is at the Forbes site.  Tip: Start by selecting a network from the little combo box at the top centre.

Diagrams generated from Google spreadsheets will have 2 colours and 2 shapes – the first column in table is considered to contain the prime data.  There’s no detail on the site about how the many colours in the Forbes diagram were achieved.

See you on Twitter or back here soon.

Vic Gee  (@VicGee on Twitter)
http://www.informationtamers.com/mind-mapping/
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

Google

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Tweet, tweet, tweet

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. 

Twitterpage

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.informationtamers.com/mind-mapping/
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

Google

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MindMapPaper – free hybrid software [Now defunct]

[Updated thanks to Tony Linde (@tonylinde on Twitter) 17 April 2011 – Now defunct]

 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.

MindMapPaper600

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.informationtamers.com/mind-mapping/
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

Google