This weekend we updated our site and released our latest update.

This update comes with true PDF export, which means that the mind map is exported graphically into a PDF document. The previous implementation just exported the contents of the mindomo map.

Exporting to PDF gives you a huge advantage if you want to share your mindmaps with others who are offline and who don't know anything about mindmapping software or mindomo.

It also allows you to create high quality printouts.

However the current implementation has a couple of limitations:

- Asian characters are not supported yet

- Gradients, dashed lines are not supported yet

Except the above described limitations everything should work well.

Please note, that Mindomo Desktop was also updated and the new version will let you export to PDF even when you are not connected to our server.

For the detailed list of new features please consult our changelog

We hope you enjoy these exciting new features.

 Greetings, the Mindomo Team!

A key part of any presentation is the preparation, and this video gives you some important tips about preparing your presentation using NovaMind.

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="640" height="480" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="flashvars" value="height=480&amp;width=640&amp;file=http://novamind.s3.amazonaws.com/videos/presentation-preparation.flv&amp;image=/images/video/presentation-preparation.png&amp;bufferlength=5&amp;searchbar=false"/><param name="src" value="/flash/mediaplayer.swf"/><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="640" height="480" src="/flash/mediaplayer.swf" flashvars="height=480&amp;width=640&amp;file=http://novamind.s3.amazonaws.com/videos/presentation-preparation.flv&amp;image=/images/video/presentation-preparation.png&amp;bufferlength=5&amp;searchbar=false"></embed></object>

In NovaMind Pro and Platinum, there are two Mind Map templates which you can use for creating your presentations, and these are introduced in the video, but the majority of the video shows you how to put together your presentation without using a template, based on the research work of David Kolb and Bernice McCarthy.

These studies on learning styles and how people react to the information they are presented with give a solid basis for building presentations that hook the interest of your entire audience.

You have probably heard about the concept that different people learn in different ways, and David Kolb did some interesting research which concluded that there are four main ways that people learn new things: By experiencing something for themselves, by observing something and reflecting on what they have learned, by thinking about what they have heard, or by doing things for themselves.

It is difficult to appeal to all these different learning types in a single speech, but Bernice McCarthy put together what is called the 4-mat system, which is designed to hook the interest and attention of all the different learning types.

The 4-mat system of presentation is divided into four sections, which are: Why, What, How, and What If.

For the “Why?” people, if you don’t hook them right up front with a good reason for them to listen to you, you will not be able to get them to listen to the rest of the talk. You really want to hook these people because they are the ones who will take your message on board as part of themselves and spread it to other people.

If the “What?” people don’t get the information about what is going to be covered in the presentation near the start of the presentation, they will thing that there is no substance to what you are talking about. You want these people to take it all in because these are the people who will be able to explain in logical detail exactly what the idea is, and can then take it forward and implement it, sticking to the true concepts no matter what human or other obstacles are in the way.

The “How?” people will take away the information you gave them and try it for themselves. Some of them will be able to visualize themselves doing the things you were talking about, but in many cases, they need to actually do it themselves. When these people know that it works by experiencing it for themselves, they will build strategies and designs to implement the ideas widely, and will inspire others to follow them.

And lastly, the “What If?” people will be thinking up questions right from the moment you start your talk, and you have to know how to cater for their needs in your presentation. This is discussed in the video These people love doing things with what they have learned, and will get in there and learn by trial and error, and when they have “got it”, they will share their vision of the possibilities this opens up, and will encourage and cajole other people to become involved.

The video shows you how to use Mind Maps to implement these strategies for both a short talk and a longer presentation. Mind Mapping gives you a lot of advantages over more traditional presentation methods, both in the structuring and preparation of the presentation, and by using Mind Maps during presentation delivery.

There will be a follow up video about presentation delivery shortly.

So watch the video now to get the full information, and if you don’t already have NovaMind, you can download it by clicking on the download button on the top of any page of the main NovaMind web site.

When uploading to NovaMind Connect, the images of the Mind Maps are generated on our server, which means that the system will only be able to render accurately the fonts that it has installed. Although all the common fonts and many others are supported (over 600 in total), previously we have not had a list of those fonts available. We now have, and you can download a PDF listing all the fonts from:

http://novamind.s3.amazonaws.com/pdf/ConnectFonts.pdf

If you have a specific need for other fonts, and there are no legal issues with us hosting that font on our server, please contact the NovaMind support team, and we should be able to assist.

Thank you for your continued support of NovaMind and NovaMind Connect.

Mind Mapping your to-do list is the most common use of Mind Mapping, so we have created a video to teach you exactly how to use NovaMind to create and manage your to-do list:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="640" height="480" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="flashvars" value="height=480&amp;width=640&amp;file=http://s3.amazonaws.com/novamind/videos/tdl-final.flv&amp;image=/images/video/todolist.png&amp;bufferlength=5&amp;searchbar=false"/><param name="src" value="/flash/mediaplayer.swf"/><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="640" height="480" src="/flash/mediaplayer.swf" flashvars="height=480&amp;width=640&amp;file=http://s3.amazonaws.com/novamind/videos/tdl-final.flv&amp;image=/images/video/todolist.png&amp;bufferlength=5&amp;searchbar=false"></embed></object>

NovaMind makes it easy to organize the things you need to do, and you can categorize by whatever makes sense for that particular list.

Sometimes you will want to create a to-do list that is time based, like this one which is used to organize your week. Other times, you will want to organize according to your objectives or goals.

You can use the adornments to visually categorize the tasks on your Mind Map, and you can use the colors and shapes of the branches to form visual associations too.

If there are logical associations between the tasks, you may like to indicate them using link lines.

And of course if you are using NovaMind Pro or Platinum, you are likely to want to put checkboxes on the branches. The checkboxes are three state checkboxes where the is an on, or checked state, an intermediate state which indicates that the task is partly done, and an unchecked state which indicates the task hasn’t been started.

There are two ways that the checkboxes can operate. They can be set to operate independently, or so that the state of the checkbox on a parent branch is determined by the state of the checkboxes on it’s children. This is set up using the “Automatic checkboxes” option in NovaMind. If you turn it off you can check or uncheck or partially check any branch independently of all the other branches.

With the “automatic checkboxes” option on, when the children are all unchecked, the parent is unchecked. As soon as one of the children is partially or completely checked, the parent is partially checked, because the task has been started. And when all the children are checked, the parent is checked too. If you have completed all the tasks under a parent task, you can actually click on the checkbox for the parent task and it will check all the children branches too. This is really useful if it’s been a while since you updated, and you have completed all the children tasks.

These inheritance settings also work down multiple levels of children and grandchildren branches.

One of the uses of this automatic checkbox states is that if you hide the children branches, you can still see the overall status of that task, and if you need to look at the detail, you can just expand it.

If you have more extensive task management needs like seeing the percentage complete, setting priorities, assigning resources, start and finish dates etc, then you can do that in NovaMind Platinum.

All these features mak Mind Mapping in NovaMind a very powerful way of creating and managing your to-do lists.

NovaMind has just released a video detailing the value of Mind Mapping where the financial benefits of Mind Mapping are quantified, as well as going in to detail about some of the many other benefits that you can get out of Mind Mapping. This information has also been written up in a PDF report on the value of Mind Mapping in case you need to justify the expenditure of buying NovaMind to your boss.

Here is the video:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="640" height="480" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="flashvars" value="height=480&amp;width=640&amp;file=http://novamind.s3.amazonaws.com/videos/valueofnm2.flv&amp;image=/images/video/valueofnm.png&amp;bufferlength=5&amp;searchbar=false"/><param name="src" value="/flash/mediaplayer.swf"/><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="640" height="480" src="/flash/mediaplayer.swf" flashvars="height=480&amp;width=640&amp;file=http://novamind.s3.amazonaws.com/videos/valueofnm2.flv&amp;image=/images/video/valueofnm.png&amp;bufferlength=5&amp;searchbar=false"></embed></object>

You might remember that about 6 weeks ago we did a user survey, asking you MindMeisters about use cases of mind mapping, brainstorming, and planning with MindMeister. We wanted to know what you’re doing with it, what new features you’d like us to add etc. We received tons of response which is greatly appreciated - just over 1,800 filled out the four page questionnaire and helped us understand their needs and get a better idea of the road ahead.

We’ve now managed to put together some of the results here. Please check out the chart widget below and feel free to interpret the results, letting us know what you think.

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" id="playerLoader" width="400" height="321" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/swflash.cab"><param name="movie" value="http://farm.sproutbuilder.com/load/KQBvwYogDiK-RnWl.swf"/><param name="quality" value="best"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="wmode" value="transparent"/><embed src="http://farm.sproutbuilder.com/load/KQBvwYogDiK-RnWl.swf" width="400" height="321" name="playerLoader" align="middle" wmode="transparent" play="true" loop="false" quality="best" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed></object>

The face of Mind Mapping with NovaMind has just changed dramatically once again. Now you get to choose from a wide range of connection styles which allow you vast amounts of creative freedom with the way your Mind Maps are drawn.

To give you an idea of the flexibility of the new Mind Map drawing, here is an example of what you can create:

NovaMind Mind Map Connection Lines

There have been user interface changes to allow you access to the new features, so we have put together a video showing you the how to use the new functions in both the Windows and Mac versions of NovaMind:
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="640" height="480" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="flashvars" value="height=480&amp;width=640&amp;file=http://novamind.s3.amazonaws.com/videos/connectionlines.flv&amp;image=http://www.novamind.com/images/video/connectionlines.png&amp;bufferlength=5&amp;searchbar=false"/><param name="src" value="http://www.novamind.com/flash/mediaplayer.swf"/><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="640" height="480" src="http://www.novamind.com/flash/mediaplayer.swf" flashvars="height=480&amp;width=640&amp;file=http://novamind.s3.amazonaws.com/videos/connectionlines.flv&amp;image=http://www.novamind.com/images/video/connectionlines.png&amp;bufferlength=5&amp;searchbar=false"></embed></object>

The latest update on mind.mapping.org brings a new entry, Hortus, and a significant change to XMind.

Hortus

After my previous post about a nascent mind mapper for Second Life, there’s another Second Life story.  It is Hortus, part of the ICTS immersive training suite.  It is a graphical story planner.

XMind

A few days ago, XMind went to an open source model.  So XMind can be used on your own desktop, free.  They also have a web-based server and you can upload your mind maps for all to see.  If you would like to control who sees your mind maps, you can subscribe to a ‘Pro’ version at US$6/month that allows this.

There’s an on-line example here:

Regards

Vic

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

I’ve been writing about the future of mindmapping recently, and decided I’d better mention updates to the Master List of mind mapping software.  Three new packages have appeared recently, all of them free, and their records are now in the mind-mapping.org database. 

CoFFEE

CoFFEE has concept mapping as a minor capability in its function as a groupware application for digital discussions in live classrooms.

Hypergraph

Hypergraph specialises in making hyperbolic maps and is already a capable and interesting piece of open source software.

js-mindmap

js-mindmap is in the very early stages of development.  It aimes to take a sitemap or similar in HTML and produce a mind map from it using Javascript.  Could be useful in jazzing up dull lists of links.

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

Update Nov 20th 2008:  This was published in error on Nov 9th as a page instead of as a post.

Jeff Lowe of the ThinkBalm Innovation community posted recently about on-line brainstorming session using a 3D mind mapper that he had developed.  Naturally, I wrote off to find out about it and he quickly gave me a couple of links.

These are early times - I can’t even point to the site for the software itself, so it doesn’t earn a place in the mind-mapping.org database yet, but it’s newsworthy and something to watch out for.  There are not many 3D mind mappers out there, just Conspicio, MindScene, Morsego, Nelements and Topicscape (the last of which I use daily).

This so-far-unamed software operates in Second Life.   Here’s what it looks like:

Being in Second Life, it looks as if this could shape up to be the first collaborative 3D mind mapper. 

Regards

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

As promised here is the more verbose version of the most recent update of MindMeister. Release 3 contains lots of enhancements to the ease of use and overall consistency of MindMeister, plus some bigger feature blocks. Two important things we just didn’t get done in time though - inline images and connections between ideas. They’re in the making though, expect them before Christmas!

Find some key new features below, or see a comprehensive list in the What’s New in MindMeister 3.0 mind map.

Well, we hope you benefit from all the work that is put into MindMeister. We strive to make the best online mind mapping experience available and welcome all your feedback on the new stuff.

Our development team worked hard these last few days to iron our the last glitches in our new release. The dust has settled now, although there’s still some fine tuning to be done before we feel confident enough to send out the release newsletter.

However, to give you a brief overview on what’s new already now we’ve created a mind map (surprise, surprise) with some advance info on the new stuff: What’s New in MindMeister 3.0.

A more verbose portrayal will follow here soon.

I thought a review of comments and communications would be good at this half-way point of the competition, after I followed the suggestion to extend it.

The response is encouraging and some good ideas are coming out.  This is how the suggestions have built up so far, most recent first:

Chance Brown has posted a comment about his map setting out the advantages and nature of mind mapping called “How Mindmapping Can Help You.”  If potential mind map users don’t see what’s in it for them, they won’t try mind mapping, so this map is important.  Can you add to it, dear reader?

Paul Foreman emailed me another entry called “EG” for “Exponential Growth“.  This aims directly at ideas for expanding the numbers of people who know about mindmapping - a key need.  Please look at this in detail and see if it sparks further ideas.

Matthew Lang wrote that mind mappers with their own sites and blogs should work together to get the word out, contribute their favourite mind map to an e-book, with a description and their thoughts about benefits.  This would be highlighted on each contributor’s web site and be promoted in all our emails and other forms of communication like Twitter, Pownce and other social networking sites. A very simple website should be setup where people can read about mind mapping and download the e-book.  I believe this is a good idea because it is very do-able.  Would it work for you?  Comments please!

@mdalves saw a picture of Dr. Gregory House writing linear notes on a flip-chart and thought “this is the answer to Vic’s question!”  Send a direct message to the general public, he says.  “What about Dr. Gregory House mind-mapping their brainstorms instead of writing boring lines of text? People would talk, ask about it, discuss in the forum, imitate him and start mind mapping on their own.”  Whilst this would not be easy to put into practice, if we could achieve it, it would have the greatest leverage and effect I believe.  Any ideas on how we might get the message over to a TV producer, and how we could motivate them?

John Taylor emailed this mind map with the modest comment “My small attempt.”  John proposes tighter integration between mind mapping and other types of software; mind mappers openly using the technique and describing its benefits as a matter of routine; thought leaders in the field making a collective effort; and an analysis of barriers to expansion with a response.

Oprah has written about mindmapping, and apparently Al Gore does it.  Any leverage there folks??

Vic

I’ve had off-line suggestions that the objective of the “expand mind mapping” competition is so great that a month is not much time to pull it all together.  We’ve had some good ideas already, which may set us on the right track, but I haven’t seen what I feel is that “killer idea” yet.

I’m more interested in getting a result than closing off the competition, so I hope those who have already submitted ideas won’t mind, but I am now extending the deadline to 3rd December.

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

Please note that we will conduct a major upgrade on Friday October 31 between 20:00 (UTC) and 22:00 (UTC) and on Sunday November 2 between 20:00 (UTC) and 2008-11-3 02:00 (UTC). To figure out when we are offline in your time zone please consult timeanddate.com.

Please avoid taking your maps offline with Google Gears this time as we also upgrade MindMeister’s offline capabilities.

While the downtime is currently scheduled for the time slots above, it might take longer as we also move to new hardware but we will do our best to bring MindMeister back asap. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused and hope you’ll like the new features in the upcoming version of MindMeister.

Update: As you will have seen we’re online again with the new version. We’re still fighting with some setup issues that might result in hanging requests here or there. We hope to have these sorted out soon and will then let you know abou the new features!

Update 2: We still have some load balancing issues with the new server environment (which in theory should be much faster than the old one!) so the site is very slow at times. We’ll upgrade some software and will probably have some short downtimes today (Tuesday Nov 4). Please bear with us.

Please note that we will conduct a major upgrade on Friday October 31 between 20:00 (UTC) and 22:00 (UTC) and on Sunday November 2 between 20:00 (UTC) and 2008-11-3 02:00 (UTC). To figure out when we are offline in your time zone please consult timeanddate.com.

Please avoid taking your maps offline with Google Gears this time as we also upgrade MindMeister’s offline capabilities.

While the downtime is currently scheduled for the time slots above, it might take longer as we also move to new hardware but we will do our best to bring MindMeister back asap. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused and hope you’ll like the new features in the upcoming version of MindMeister.

Update: As you will have seen we’re online again with the new version. We’re still fighting with some setup issues that might result in hanging requests here or there. We hope to have these sorted out soon and will then let you know abou the new features!

Update 2: We still have some load balancing issues with the new server environment (which in theory should be much faster than the old one!) so the site is very slow at times. We’ll upgrade some software and will probably have some short downtimes today (Tuesday Nov 4). Please bear with us.

It’s just a matter of a few days now before we will release the all new MindMeister. We know it’s been a long time in the making and that’s why we’d like to give you a sneak peek at one of the new things now: the new History View.

More than with standard documents, the evolution of a mind map - especially a collaborative one - tells an interesting story, which deserves a proper visualization. We weren’t content with how the revision history of a mind map was displayed in MindMeister up to now, so we came up with something new, and, we hope you’ll agree, much better.

Try the short screencast below to see how this works now. And please let us know what you think.

MindMeister's History View

A few days ago, I blogged about my competition for suggestions to expand the population of mind mappers exponentially.  It’s time to give my thoughts, though I’m not an entrant in the competition.

We have to ‘normalize’ mind mapping; make it seem like something that people do as a matter of course.

When Tom Cruise controlled a computer screen by waving his hands in front of a computer-generated image in Minority Report it made a strong impact.  Many people remember that.  There was no such technology at the time, but with the iPhone, iPod Touch and MS Surface, the capability is coming closer.  I’ve seen news very recently of a working gesture-in-the-air interface though the display is not the floating-in-air style to match.  That movie scene changed how people thought about interacting with a computer.  But I mention that, not because I think we need spectacular technology, but because it stuck in the mind and has really changed things.

mdalves, in a comment on my original post wrote “What about Dr. Gregory House mind-mapping their brainstorms instead of writing boring lines of text?”.  This is an example of the approach that may give a way forward, in my view.  The TV program makers have to see something in it for them though - something to attract viewers’ attention, make them remember their show and watch again next week.  But first we would have to get the message out to them.  Ideas for that welcome!

The leverage will come from mind mapping being seen as a part of popular culture.  Oprah (well, the O magazine) had something about this, I saw here. 

Mindmap analyses of the Presidential Candidate debates may have some effect.  I wish I knew how many people watch at those.  Not mind mappers, people who have never seen mind mapping before.  What did they make of it?  Did you watch any of these?

Having mindmapping and concept mapping in an educational setting seems good at first sight.  It can’t do any harm, because we would expect students to appreciate it (if it fits their thinking style) and go on to use it in the adult world.  But that that’s where mind mapping (and concept mapping) were first introduced more than 30 years ago and it hasn’t proved to be enough.  Some students don’t like it, but are forced to hand in concept maps or mind maps as homework.  Others think it’s OK but see it as something to be left behind when they leave school or college.  Some take it on into adult life and never stop.

Let’s have your ideas - comment here, or on the original post, both count towards the competition for that free iMindMap Ultimate license. 

Regards
Vic Gee
http://www.mind-mapping.org/
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

Chuck Frey, over at his blog, asks what future mind mapping software should look look like.  He predicts that:
- Connectivity with Web 2.0 applications will play a growing role
- Connectivity with corporate data sources will be essential
- A more unified approach to searching and displaying rich content within a mind map is inevitable
- Mind mapping software will increasingly enable users to manage their attention more productively, acting as a “digital assistant” to help them zero in on the most important information faster

What do you think?  Visit his blog and speak up.

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

After several months of planning and work, today we have released our long-awaited offline version of Mindomo, called Mindomo Desktop.

Mindomo Desktop is designed for users who need to work both offline and online on their mind maps and to share them on the internet. The tool works as a traditional desktop application but with a subscription based business model.

The pricing is the same as for Mindomo Premium. Once a Mindomo user became a premium member he/she can take full advantage of both the Premium features of our online version and also to get access to a high-quality desktop mind-mapping application.

Mindomo Premium users will need to install Mindomo Desktop and login at least once with their premium account in order to activate the premium features. Maps can be opened both from an online account or locally from a computer and save as a local map or as an online map.

Currently exporting and importing from various file formats requires a connection to our server, the explanation is that this functionality was implemented on our server and up to this time we only finished porting the export TXT functionality to Mindomo Desktop.

Mindomo Desktop can be used by free users, but with limited functionality.

Free users can install and login from Mindomo Desktop to their online account, open a map and "Save as" locally for backup purposes, and they are allowed to open the maps from their desktop while they are offline to view it, however they won't be able to save the maps locally if the map was not opened from an online account.

We hope that you will enjoy using Mindomo Desktop !

Let us know your opinion and suggestion in this blog or in our forum !

Thank you,

The Midomo Team!

We just closed our survey yesterday. Thanks a lot for participating. We had an overwhelming response both in terms of numbers and quantitative and qualitative input. We received 1,813 responses and lots of ideas on how to improve MindMeister and position it  successfully as a premier mind mapping application.
It’ll take some time to analyze all the results but we’ll keep you posted on our findings, and publish whatever we think may be interesting to the greater public.

In the meantime we also selected the lucky five winners of the Threadless vouchers and sent out the gift certificates - congratulations!

NovaMind is pleased to announce the immediate availability of new presentation templates as part of the latest release of NovaMind 4 Pro and Platinum.

NovaMind is frequently used for presentations and to make it easier for you to create compelling presentations, two templates have been added.

The first is based on the excellent book “Beyond Bullet Points” by Cliff Atkinson

Beyond Bullet Points Mind Map Template

The template prompts you for the main points of your presentation so that you have a well structured presentation which takes into account the setting of the presentation, your role, the explanation of the current challenge and the desired outcome, and how to achieve that outcome. The details of how to structure your presentation in this way is explained in Cliff’s book.

The second template is based on Paul J. Kelly’s excellent book “The 7-Slide Solution”

The 7-Slide Solution Mind Map Template

The template is set up so you can easily fill in the different portions of the presentations: Firstly engaging the audience, telling your “back story”, building the story and bringing it to the boil, then offering choices of solutions, providing resolution and setting up for a sequel. Full details are provided in Paul’s book.

Both presentation templates are from well respected authors and provide a good starting point for any presentation.

I have a free license for Buzan’s iMindmap to give away for the best answer to a competition.  This is it:

Many, many people have never heard of mind mapping.  Others have heard of it but have no idea what it is or how it might help them.

Write a comment to this post (and/or send a mind map!) suggesting how to achieve exponential growth in the numbers of people doing mind mapping.  This needs an idea that will motivate committed visual information mappers and at the same time can leverage the whole mind mapping community to get the word out, explain, demonstrate, tell stories, show all different styles of maps, all uses. 

I shall judge the winning suggestion (my decision will be final!) and pass (only) the winner’s name and email address to Buzan Online so that they can deliver the license.  Judgement will be based on originality, practicality and opportunities to obtain best leverage of existing mappers’ contacts.  If you decide to send a mind map to illustrate your ideas or thinking, please send a png or jpg image to vic [at] mind-mapping [dot] org.  I will arrange for it to be embedded in comments (max width 590 pixels).

This competition will run from 4th October to 3rd November inclusive.

Regards
Vic Gee
http://www.mind-mapping.org/
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

PS  You probably know that some people know about mind mapping or other visual information mapping techniques and do not like them, and will not use them because they have their own thinking style.  They find that visual representation gets in the way and they don’t need introducing to it.  I’m sure we all respect that and got over it long ago. 

These are not the people this competition aims to find ways to reach out to.   VG

Since yesterday late evening till this morning we had a service outage.

The last 2 days we were experiencing problems from our service provider.

We are still waiting for clarification from their side.

In the meantime we apologize for any inconvenience caused.

The Mindomo Team

In the big-screen world of computers there is a seemingly endless supply of developers keen to give us mind mapping software.  Are we going to see a repeat on the iPhone and iPod Touch?

A few days ago there was MindMaker (US$5) - the first contender.  It has some way to go, but does show promise and they have a roadmap.  Its most obvious limitation is that it does not provide a landscape view when the device (mine’s an iPod Touch) is rotated. 

Now there’s iBlueSky (US$8) - to my eye a more stylish entrant, and one that already offers portrait mode. 

Not quite mind mapping software, but capable of making hand-drawn maps is Zeptopad (US$10).  They even choose a hand made mind map as their screenshot illustration (but I don’t think it would come very high in the hand made mind maps survey that the Mindmaps Directory people have going on):

And there I was thinking I’d have a quiet week…. 

Regards
Vic Gee
http://www.mind-mapping.org/
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software