Changes at Mind-Mapping.Org

Hello … Vic here … and probably for the last time!

I started gathering information about mind mapping and information-organising software in 2000, at first to try to decide which is best, but then it became an obsession.  By 2006, I had a database of nearly two hundred items of current software, and software that was as dead as a parrot.  I kept the defunct ones as a historical record.  Putting it all on line seemed a good idea so I started Mind-Mapping.Org and I know from the emails and tweets of appreciation that the site is useful to many, as well as being unique on the Web.

logo

Now, the database — and the site — have over 400 entries, but if you look at the blog, you’ll see big gaps in recent posts.  There’s a post from August the 1st, but then a huge gap, back to more than a year ago, 28th July 2012.  This can’t go on.

So when I received “an offer I couldn’t refuse” from Roy Grubb of Wikit fame, the time seemed right to pass the baton.  The site will continue in capable hands and is sure to become much more active again – Roy tells me he has many new products to add, and I’ve passed my ‘to do’ list to him as well.

The handover has started, but the admin will probably take a few more days.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Vic

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I shall still be on Twitter but Roy is much more active there

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DropMind revisited

DropMind is by now well-established in the mainstream of mind mapping software but I haven’t looked at it for more than a couple of years, and there have been some changes, so I took another look.

I reviewed the PC version. DropMind also has versions for the Mac, for iOS, and an online web version.

DropMind is a capable mapping tool with the expected functionality such as a wide range of attachments to nodes (links, files, images, icons, spreadsheet and date), project management aides, like task data, at-risk and past-due warnings, resources and dependencies as well as Gantt charts.

DropMind ss 600

 Somewhat unusually, it has custom properties, so you can add to the standard items for task data if you have special requirements in project control.

attachments

Integration

It has import integration with MS Project, Outlook, Word and Excel, and can also export to those, as well as PowerPoint, PDF, RTF (as an outline document) and to images. The spreadsheet supports only a grid of cells containing text. It can also export to a single-page HTML file. You don’t have to use PowerPoint for presentation, as DropMind can present each main branch in a slideshow.

Appearance

Its default appearance is rather dry, but clean enough in design. The colours and shapes of most of the other built-in map styles probably mean you’ll want to stick with the default or design your own. The colour combinations are wild and some are hard to read.  Here’s the kind of style I would never use out of sympathy for my readers, one called ‘Picnic’:

picnic

In common with many mapping programs, DropMind decides where map branches will go. You can move main topics to change the order around the one in the centre, but other than that, you cannot adjust the position to make better use of the space, based on the shape and content of the branches. I find this rigidity frustrating in all mapping software that thinks it knows best, not just DropMind.

Interoperability

Usefully, DropMind can import Mindjet, Xmind and FreeMind files. It can also export to Mindjet and FreeMind, but not to an Xmind file. Although it has import and export menus, you have to use the Open and Save As menus to do this.  (I found a couple of bugs that DropMind Support were able to reproduce and are looking into: If you open an Xmind file and save it as Mindjet, it turns out that MindManager 2012 cannot open it. And some Xmind files cannot be opened at all.)

The carry over of layout between DropMind and these three mapping products is quite good, where equivalent functions exist.  The retention of appearance with interchange of a map between MindManager 2012 and DropMind is very good – both on import and export. With FreeMind, not everything is ported, for example, attributes in FreeMind are equivalent to custom properties in DropMind, but they are not carried over during conversion in either direction. Nor are embedded images. Xmind maps lose much of their original appearance when imported – colours are mostly lost, for example – but the main structure and attachments are carried over on import.

Search

Desktop DropMind has a powerful built in search function. With this you can search through: The topic text; notes; attachments name; by word and phrase; and find topics that do not include the search target. This handily beats the search capabilities of MindManager, FreeMind and Xmind.

The DropMind Gallery at their website has over 200 maps and templates for frequently-used tasks and is worth looking through.  Their site is here.

Vic

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News about Cayra

Mike Goodold (@GoodoldsOnTwitter) just commented at on my August 2010 post about Cayra that the developers hadn’t done a good job of specifying requirements.

Well, sadly Cayra became orphan software years ago, so no one from Intalev, the originator of this nice little free package, will reply – I’ve tried several times to contact them because Cayra was open source at one time, and we had a volunteer willing to maintain and enhance it. But Intelev never responded. As I mention here, I saw a comment on Twitter that it doesn’t work on Windows 7. When I wrote that, I didn’t have a Win 7 PC to test it. I was using it on Windows XP and Vista at the time.

Now I have a Win7 PC, and I tried to install it, but the way the Cayra installer tests for the .NET framework (it requires .NET 3.0) fails. As a result, it refuses to continue with the installation, even though .NET 3.0 is supported by default in Win 7.  If you try to install .Net 3.0 in Windows 7 you can get into a confusion of instructions from Cayra and Windows that won’t resolve.

Never mind – Mike’s question prompted me to look for a way round this and I found one.

I copied the \Cayra folder from a Windows XP PC to a Win7 PC, and found that the exe file can be launched directly, so no formal installation is needed. I haven’t done a thorough regression test, but it looks OK.  Cayra, being freeware, open source, abandonware and having no licence in the package, I think I can make this generally available without breaking any international treaties.

To get it running without an installer takes a little work, but not too much. Try this:

  1. Download the zipped up Cayra folder.
  2. Make a new folder C:\Program Files\Cayra or C:\Program Files (x86)\Cayra if your Windows is 64-bit.
  3. Unzip the contents of Cayra.zip there.
  4. Right click on 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 if it appears (that will depend on your Windows settings). 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\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.

[Minor correction made to the above by Roy Grubb, 30 Sept 2013]

And you’re done.

Links:

Vic

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The Mindmappers’ Forum

 

I had a work panic last month and regrettably didn’t visit the Mindmappers’ Forum for three weeks.  When I got back, I found it had been taken over by spammers. I’m not sure why, because I was using an anti-spam plugin that had worked well since the beginning.

Anyway, I cleared it up in three stages:

  • First, last month, I deleted all the spam entries,
  • and set moderation on for new member applications.
  • Finally, yesterday, I updated the forum software (it’s the excellent, free Vanilla forum), added more anti-spam stuff.

It’s now back to unmoderated membership and it seems OK now. There was one spam signup but that was automatically halted. Previously I was getting many per day and denying them manually.  Easy enough, but a nuisance.

I’m left with one minor problem.  Rather than manually delete each spam post – one by one – using the forum functions, I went into MySQL and bulk deleted in a couple of tables.  That worked OK, except there’s a list of continuation pages at the foot of the front page, but no content for those pages.  Somewhere (in the database I guess) there’s a note of how many posts there are, and it includes all those spam comments that I deleted.  I can’t find where though.

If you’re familiar with the Vanilla Forum software, and can explain, please add a comment!  Thanks.

Vic

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Visual planning of web sites – Slickplan

Slickplan helps you plan visual maps for websites, and makes images, PDFs and links to send to website owners for discussion during the design stages.  It’s easy to use.  There’s an example here, based on a small part of the the Mind-Mapping.Org website.

This is a free, online web app, based in your browser, so there’s nothing to download or install.

I see no way of making flowcharts with this, despite its claims to be a sitemap/flowchart generator.  There are no conditional diamonds, nor any shape other than rectangles.

Vic

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Visual note taking

From Japan, but working in English, iroha Note takes a textual approach to visualization – or a visual approach to text notes (take your pick).

Its free version feels rather like clustering with Post-it notes, but adds the capability to freely associate notes using visible but subtle linking lines.  In an optional box on the left, an outline appears to show the macro-level structure.

The paid-for version, iroha Note+, adds in the ability to paste images into the notes (called leaves), export images and print.

This is desktop software, running in Adobe Air, that can be used on Windows, Mac and Linux.

I found a few operational glitches when using it, but nothing I couldn’t work around.  It is under active development, so we can expect these to be fixed.

Vic

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ASCiiFLOW – a cool surprise

I’ve known about ASCiiFLOW for a while – it’s been on my To Do list to share with you, but I had it down as a curiosity, not much more, that I would add to Mind-mapping.org one day.  Then I started playing with it.

It’s a nerd’s delight!

If you’ve been using visualization to understand and help others understand processes for a few decades, I expect you’ll have constructed boxes and arrows with the limited graphics that used to be available before Visio and the like came along.  Things like this:

               +-----------------------------------------+
               |                   +-------------------+ |
               | +--------+        |    Warehouse A    | |
               | |Prepare |        |-------------------| |
               | |manifest+------->|                   | |
               | |document|        | Pack for dispatch | |
               | +--------+        |                   | |
               |                   +-------------------+ |
               +-----------------------------------------+

So when I saw browser-based web app ASCiiFLOW, I though ‘nostalgic fun’ but not much else.  Then I discovered that not only does it help you draw boxes and arrow lines very easily, allow you to select and move parts of the diagram around, and erase mistakes but it will produce a thoroughly tidied up, smart image when you’ve finished (click to see the whole image, full size).

It will also import and export text, and export the smartened-up image. To be more precise, it will pass the character-based drawing to another web app, Ditaa, that will render your finished diagram ready for you to save as an image.

This can even be used for collaboration.  If you fill in the title box and use the Save button, the ASCII text diagram will be saved on their website, and you’ll see a new URL in your browser’s address bar.     It will look something like this: http://www.asciiflow.com/#7652584811276699979/1208836819  You can give that address to anyone you want to collaborate with on the diagram, and they will be able to see and edit it.  If you want to give them read-only access, you would drop the digits after the last slash: http://www.asciiflow.com/#7652584811276699979/ Your collaborators would then see the diagram but not be able to change it.  But for read-only access, sending the better quality image produced by Ditaa would usually be more appropriate.

Ditaa is worth exploring as well.  In fact, I’ve cheated a little in the example above, because ASCiiFLOW itself doesn’t directly support coloured boxes and curved corners.  But a few minutes at ditaa.org will show you how easy it is to go beyond the immediate capabilities of ASCiiFLOW and call for these other Ditaa capabilities directly in the ASCII diagram.  I just added Ditaa to to Mind-mapping.org as well.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about ASCII.

Vic

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Skulduggery in the mind mapping apps

See the updates to this story at the end – it’s fascinating!

Have you seen MindMapr, or the web site http://free-mindmapping.com/tool/?

I was preparing an entry about these for mind-mapping.org and found an interesting tale.

MindMapr is a Google Chrome browser app that lets you make maps without being on line.  Free-mindmapping.com is a site that lets you do the same, but with any HTML5-capable browser. These two look so similar, that I wanted to find out how they were related, so I started digging.

The ‘about’ page for free-mindmapping.com told me that it was the work of David Richard and gave me his email address.   Assuming it was his site I emailed him to ask how these sites were connected.

The reply came back: “Well you caught me off-guard there. I didn’t know about MindMapr and, guess what, http://free-mindmapping.com/tool/ isn’t my domain either.  My original app is hosted here and only here: http://drichard.org/mindmaps/.

Here are the three sites:———————————-

 

 

Mighty similar wouldn’t you say?

The first is David’s and it is open source software under the AGPL.   The second looks like a legitimate copy – legitimate because its About page links back to David and the source code.  David says he’s OK with that.

The third, not strictly a site, but a Chrome extension, is a copy by Manish R Chiniwalar who has removed links to David and the original source. He writes in the description he gives against MindMapr in the Chrome Web Store: “Due to busy schedule, i’m not able to work on the bugs and features. I’ll resume work in 2 weeks.” So he not only removes acknowledgement of the source, but the only way I can interpret “resume work” is that he is trying to pass it off as his own development.

David replied to me “I made this app open source so people could build on it and improve it but Manish Chiniwalar’s extension is an insult to the OSS community as he blatantly violates the GPL in this case and advertises it as his own creation (although he even left my Google Analytics tracking snippet in the code). I will contact Google and see to it that appropriate action is taken.”  Manish’s attempt at converting David’s work isn’t even 100% successful – it can’t save to a local file, which David’s can.

So, to the app itself – the original at http://drichard.org/mindmaps/ of course, now in the database at Mind-mapping.org.

‘Mindmaps’ is a simple mind mapper written in HTML5, but effective within the limits of what it sets out to do.  Unlike many developers, David has focused on ease of use, and even offers step-by-step instructions when you open the site.  It uses a ‘drag the dot’ approach to making branches, and assigns branch colours automatically, but you can change the branch colour, as well as the font colour, size and style easily.  You can click the image for a full-size view.

It gives you plenty of control how and where you place the nodes, and subsequent moving around.  Keyboard shortcuts exist: Tab to make a child of the currently-selected branch, and Shift+Tab to make a sibling.

Although this runs in a browser from a web address, it does not store the map online.  You have a choice of saving the map to local HTML5 storage, or as a normal file on your PC.

I do think that this app needs a better name than ‘mindmaps’ which is way too generic and will never turn up near the top in a Google search – some branding is called for to make it stick – Manish got that part right.

Update 1, 8/11/2011: Manish’s extension was removed from the chrome web store and Manish wrote an email to David Richard apologising for what he did.

Update 2, 15/11/2011: Manish’s extension is back and has been cleaned up to state its true origin and remove wording implying that it was Manish’s own work.

Update 3, 16/12/2011: Now here’s a thing. (My thanks to Mohammed Irfan, who gave us the backstory in a comment.)  Mannish won a Samsung Galaxy Tab in the DIGIT Chrome apps competition using David’s code, altered to hide its origin.  Here’s the proof  (and in case that page disappears, it’s preserved in  Freezepage).

So what next Mannish?  Give the Galaxy back or pass it to David?

Vic

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A visual eye on education

EducationEye presents a highly original tool for exploring curated feeds.  Its focus is on innovation in education and it organizes items visually, using colour to classify, a clever ‘paging’ arc and a form of clustering.

 

It is read-only, though you can submit suggestions.  There’s a search box, of course, and it offers an interesting but sometime patchy browsing experience.

Give it a try!

Vic

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Diagram.ly

Diagram.ly is an on-line, browser-based diagram maker.

This may appear to be another on-line diagram maker like DrawAnywhere, LucidChart or LovelyCharts.  But it has an unusual approach: Although browser based, users diagrams can be saved offline.  The Save function makes an XML file that can be saved on the user’s PC.  Then, on the next visit it can be loaded up again.  Diagrams can also be saved as SVG, PBG or JPG files.

Diagram.ly can import Visio files for editing, and that can be useful – though for users already having Visio, it’s not obvious why they would switch to the more limited capabilities of Diagram.ly.

But it does work in a browser on an iPad, and that would be useful, even for those with Visio, if they are away from the office and traveling light.

This on-line app does not support simultaneous editing or even sharing.  To share you would need to save the XML file locally and email it to your collaborators.

It doesn’t have a wide selection of symbols either (see on the right), but it is free and does not restrict its free use by number of maps (1 map for free with Lovely Charts) or number of objects on a map (60 per map with LucidChart unless you pay).

Vic

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