The concept of mind mapping has been in use for centuries for visual thinking and problem solving by engineers, psychologists and people in general. It is a diagrammatic representation of words or ideas that are interlinked and arranged in a radial, non-linear and graphical fashion centered on a key word or idea to solve a given problem or aid in decision making. It encourages a brain storming approach to establish a fundamentally proper conceptual outline to begin with. The given elements are structured instinctively depending on the significance and relevance of the concepts into groups, branches and areas. This graphic formulation also helps in recalling existing memories.
Application of mind maps can result in general clarification of thoughts in;
- Business
- brainstorming and
- Note-taking sessions
Illustration of mind maps can be a hand drawing or by using the sophisticated softwares that are available on line. These online mind mapping tools create diagrams to illustrate the relationship between ideas and other available pieces of information. This technique is said to improve the learning efficiency in comparison to conventional note-taking. Tony Buzan is said to be the father of mind mapping tools.
There is a host of desktop Mind Map tools available. Some of them are:
- The completely free Java based FreeMind
- The popular and high end, MindManager from Mindjet. It is compatible with both Windows and Mac.
- The ConceptDraw’s MindMap
The popular online brain stormers include:
bubbl.us
They claim to be ‘the simplest way to brainstorm online’, but it does not support full blown mind mapping. Its Flash based offer contains an overuse of gradients and animated effects. The keyboard access is not totally intuitive and since the diagram moves when the nodes are drawn, the flow of thoughts gets disrupted.
Mindomo
Mindomo is Beta based and aims at the full mind mapping. It supports the curved connections which Buzan favored, though they are inorganic and of free form. Its features include – hyperlinks, rich text notes, customizable colors and display with an import from MindManager. It is characterized with overwrite and insert mode in applications that are similar to word processors. But in spite of being a web based mind mapping tool, it does not offer collaborative map building yet.
MindMeister
MindMiester is Ajax-based, that is, it is implemented with HTML and JavaScript and so can run independently within a browser. The fancy graphical effects of Flash are unavailable and the default display is more concerned about the information which is captured and less about the shapes, gradients and animations. The user can share with write or view only access. The keyboard access is intuitive. It has an import from FreeMind and Mindjet’s MindManager, as well as export to an RTF outline or a GIF image. With the use of integrated Skype calls, they can throw around new ideas and put them down on simultaneously.
I’ve pulled together in one place the details of all of the web-based ones mind mappers, over at http://www.mind-mapping.org/web-based-mindmappers/
This shows what’s free (and how much the subscriptions are for the others), what can import and export MindManager and FreeMind maps and, of course, where to find them.
Bubbl.us, Mindomo and MindMeister are there of course, but so are many more.
Vic
http://www.mind-mapping.org
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software
You mention MindManager in your posts but forgot to list their online mapping tools Mindjet Connect and MindManager Web!
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