This blog is about software for visual thinking and organising information. It will give you the low-down on developments in the world of visual networks and all types of business maps.
Not just mind mapping – various types of information mapping software.
I came across this for FreeMind:
“this little ruby script turns your boring mind-map into something colorful”
Personally, I like to use colour to help me find my way around a mind map, and that needs human decisions on which colour to use and where. If you just want randomly applied colour, this might be suitable.
Vic
There’s a new on-line concept mapping tool – Glinkr. It’s a little cumbersome to use at present, but these are early days and there’s no reason to think it won’t improve. But I have a 24″ screen because I do a lot of mind mapping, modelling and diagramming, and this product confined me to one small rectangle when editing the map. I hope they’ll open up the workspace soon.
With luck, you should be able to see a map I made of the many on-line mind-mapping, concept mapping and related diagramming sites here: http://www.glinkr.net/map/spot/177/
The links are hard to get at, but are in there.
This will go into mind-mapping.org in a day or so.
http://www.informationtamers.com/mind-mapping
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software
In case it doesn’t show if you visit their site, this is what I made:
After fussing over the new blog, I had time to catch up with some of the new entries I’ve been accumulating recently (more to come). The current trend is still mainly for on-line, browser based services.
Cumulate Draw -=- Free on-line diagrammer. Could be used for mindmaps but not designed for that. A poor-man’s MS Visio, perhaps?
SproutLiner -=- Free on-line outliner. No security for your outlines (no log in) if you use an easily-guessable name. I have not tested simultaneous multi-user access but it does not appear to be designed for real-time collaboration.
Flowchart.com -=- Free on-line diagramming tool.
WikiMindMap -=- You can’t build your own mind maps with this tool (unless you do it by building a MediaWiki), but you can choose from the millions of topics covered in many Wikis. I think this is an intriguing tool, but one of the great values of mind mapping is the process – the thinking you do as you build the mind map. I believe WikiMindMap should be seen as a quick way to grasp the structure of wiki articles rather than as a mind mapping tool.
ThinkFold -=- On-line collaborative outlining service.
MAK (MindMap and Knowledgemanager) -=- Knowledge Content Management System – seems dormant.
InfiView -=- Not a mind mapper or other form of tool for graphical information management, but a development environment for such products.
Projekt S60 -=- Outliner for Symbian-based mobile phones.
InfoRapid Cardfile System -=- A kind of outliner.
Vic
http://www.informationtamers.com/mind-mapping
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software
The mind-mapping.org site has been around for almost eighteen months now, and after many requests to provide an RSS feed for new stuff at the site (I don’t know how to do that), I’ve added a blog. I’ll announce new additions here in this blog, and if you’re interested, you can subscribe to its feed and get to know about the updates that way.
Not only new items – I’ll also include notes about new versions of mind mapping and information management software as it’s released (and as I find out about it).
This site started as a personal collection of information on this type of software. I’ve been mind mapping in one form or another for longer than I care to admit and was always on the lookout for software that helped.
I started with Mind Manager and still use it, though I find the upgrade prices a bit steep. Now I play with FreeMind sometimes. That’s a mixture of rather basic in some ways, and very sophisticated in others – the attribute capability is useful to me.
Once mind mapping was available on computers, I started using it for information management as well. That wasn’t so successful because of space on the screen, but then Topicscape came along and solved that problem, and wikis with mind mapping capabilities too, so I started adding information management software to the database. I’ve never taken a rigid view of mind mapping, whatever Tony Buzan says, so I gathered concept mapping products and other diagramming tools.
Outliners came into the information I collected because the idea isn’t so different from mind mapping, it’s just less flexible. But when you have a mind map and want to turn it into a report, you’re likely to get there via an outline anyway – or at least an indented text format.
I do apply the criterion of requiring a visual element to the presentation of the information shown in the software collected here.
As I collected information from all over, across the years, I stuck it in an Access database. Once I had enough it started to become a useful source, so I decided to share it so now it gets banged into MySQL on-line and the end result was the mind-mapping.org site.
The original site. 137 items, all on one page!
I’ve been collecting the information for more than ten years, so there’s plenty about products and free services that came and went. I decided to keep those as history, but flagged them so they can be filtered out for most readers. If you’re looking for information about what once existed, you can see the historical items by ticking the “Historical software” box in the “Refine software” tab.
Many people have written to suggest new items – my thanks to them. Some have told me what they don’t like, and I thank them as well – their comments have made me improve the searchability, filtering and information shown.
Mind-mapping.org today – fully instrumented . . .
Keep on mapping, and keep the feedback coming!
Vic
