The Mind Mapping Software Weblog

Visual Bubble ribbon adds 9 pieces of functionality to MindManager

Visual Bubble is a website that has been offering macros and add-ins for MindManager for the last year or so. Recently, they made available a new Visual Bubble Ribbon toolbar for MindManager 7, which adds 9 new pieces of functionality to the mind mapping program:

• Sum selected topics - This tool adds up the numeric values of multiple topics and then displays their sum in a floating topic.
• Left aligned map - Creates a new blank map with the topic alignment set to left.
• Convert linked documents - This tool takes any topic that links to a document and converts that link to an attachment.
• Filter topic text - This tool allows you to select and then filter topics based on a search string which is contained in the topics only.
• Dated topic generator - This tool allows you to create a range of topics within a set date range.
• Transparent relationships - Allows you to turn relationship lines and their call-outs transparent.
• Vertical topic text - This tool takes the selected topic and makes its text vertical.
• Category map marker - This tool automatically sorts flagged topics into an organizational chart layout, using the map marker names for the category topics. Anything not flagged with a Green, Red, Black, Blue or Yellow flag is marked No Category. This tool is great for Six Hats thinking exercises.
• Visual date marker - This tool allows you to flag and filter topics according to user definable task completion and due dates based on duration.

You can purchase a login to access this add-in for £ 10.00 (approximately US$20). One more item of interest: Apparently the Visual Bubble site won't be around much longer, according to an announcement on the site - which states that it will be closing on or around June 30, 2008. 

New ConceptDraw MINDMAP version 5.3 creates visual eBooks

CS Odessa has announced a new version 5.3 of its ConceptDraw MINDMAP software. It adds the capability of generating visual eBooks from mind maps, a unique capability. What, exactly, is a visual eBook? CS Odessa explains it like this in its official announcement:

"(A) Visual eBook is an electronic book where all the information is presented as a mind map rather than text paragraphs. Each page of a Visual eBook is a mind map that is grouped by chapters and paragraphs like in a text book. (A) Visual eBook is a great solution for preparing learning materials within academic and business environments."

In short, ConceptDraw MINDMAP can now generate multi-page PDF documents from mind maps, with all of the hyperlinks preserved - a capability that the developer views as essential for coaches and educators. Click here for more information about this capability.

Other new features in ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5.3 for both Windows and Macintosh include these:

• The ability to send a map via email from inside the program,
• The option to turn off the background image during printing, and
• Redesigned map style presets, which are now more professional in appearance.

The update to ConceptDraw MIDNMAP 5.3 is free for all registered users of ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5.x. A full licensed version of ConceptDraw MINDMAP 5 is available at the price of US$199 for the Professional edition and US$119 for the Personal edition.

5 top add-in programs for MindManager

MindManager is the leading developer of mind mapping software worldwide. Not surprisingly, an ecosystem of developers has formed around it, building add-ins that extend and enhance the program's functionality. Here are five of my favorite MindManager add-ins:

GyroQ

Often when I’m working, an idea will come to me. What can I do with it, so it won’t disturb the “flow” of the project I’m working on? One possibility is to store it in GyroQ, a desktop applet from Gyronix that makes it easy to capture ideas, fleeting thoughts and “to do” items quickly and easily, without having to open MindManager. GyroQ sits in your Windows system tray until it’s invoked with the Ctrl-Q command. A small horizontal window pops up containing an “action item” form field, plus 3 buttons. Simply type in your thought and click the Enter key or the “add” button on the GyroQ workspace. Your idea gets added to the program’s queue, and GyroQ returns to the system tray, awaiting your next idea. When you’re ready to deal with your accumulated ideas, you simply click the “send” button in GyroQ, and the program dumps everything into the MindManager map that you have designated in its preferences for further processing and refinement. Very cool!

TheRealizer

theRealizer is an add-in from Swedish developer Realize AB that transforms MindManager (and VisualMind) into a powerful brainstorming and problem-solving tool. theRealizer installs a side panel into MindManager, which walks you through a step-by-step process for defining your challenge, generating ideas and prioritizing them. During the challenge definition stage, theRealizer creates a new visual map with three subtopics: challenge, idea and prioritize. You can then select from a list of existing challenges, or create one of your own. During the brainstorming step, the side panel not only displays a dialog box for adding ideas to your map, but you can also click on an icon to display "idea impulse" cards that contain statements or questions that will get your mind thinking in fresh, new directions. During the "prioritize" stage, theRealizer creates a pop-up window that enables you to plot your ideas on a four-quadrant grid, with the X-axis representing realism (how practical is this idea?) and the Y-axis representing the degree of the idea's creativity. You can also automatically add branches to your map to help you sort your ideas. If you need a little help generating fresh ideas, you’ll find theRealizer to be a great catalyst!

Word 2007 Map Editor

This free application enables you to use Word 2007 to open and edit information captured in MindManager maps. You can then send the edited Word document back to MindManager users, who will see these changes reflected in the original map. How does it do this? Utilizing the powerful XML capabilities of both programs. Essentially, a Word document containing a MindManager map also contains XML code that tells Word 2007 how to manage the embedded object. If you’re working for an organization that only has a handful of copies of MindManager and want to share your maps with a non-user, then the Word 2007 Map Editor is a great, free solution!

Ontaris Outlook Linker

German developer Ontaris offers a MindManager Pro add-in called OutlookLinker that replaces the mind mapping program’s built-in Outlook linking capabilities with its own high-powered set of tools. When you install OutlookLinker, it places a new tab in MindManager 7’s ribbon toolbar, which enables you to access all of your e-mail messages, contacts, tasks, notes and appointments - without leaving MindManager.  It displays data from Outlook in a vertical pane on the right side of the workspace.  This window contains a series of tabs across the top, corresponding to each area of Outlook. The panel itself is divided into two sections; the upper pane displays a summary view while the lower pane displays the detail. You can easily drag an item from the OutlookLinker panel into your map; a checkbox at the bottom of the panel lets you decide if you want the link to be a live one or not. If you utilize both Outlook and MindManager, I think you owe it to yourself to see what this powerful applet has to offer. It's like taking MindManager's built-in Outlook linking capabilities and putting them on steroids!

ResultsManager

ResultsManager from Gyronix transforms MindManager into an awesome tool for visually planning and managing your projects and tracking next actions. MindManager has always been a great tool project management. But it was almost impossible to extract the action items from a complex project map and manage them in a meaningful way. ResultsManager scans your mind maps, looking for incomplete action items, and automatically creates dynamic "dashboards" to help you stay organized.  ResultsManager also supports David Allen's "Getting Things Done" (GTD) methodology. When you tell ResultManager 2.0 to create a dashboard, it searches all mind maps connected to your “map central" map (a mind map that contains links to all of your other maps), looking for action items for which you're responsible. It then summarizes these action items in a separate dashboard map. ResultsManager offers two different dashboard modes to users of the program: An express mode, which offers only two simple dashboards that are used for GTD-based planning, and a power user mode, which gives you expanded access to many additional types of dashboards, plus the freedom to customize the existing dashboards or create your own from scratch.

There are many more add-ins that enhance and extend MindManager’s functionality. To learn more about these applications, visit the Mindjet Partner Solutions web site.

Marici: Confusing new web-based social mind mapping app

Marici.com is a new web-based social mind mapping application that says it allows users to share their ideas, thoughts and more in the form of mind maps (click here to read the news release). At first glance, however, it looks to me like it has a ways to go in order to reach that ideal. It's actually a very text-centric tool for sharing topics and knowledge with others, which also has a mind mapping view.

Marici.com enables users to create topics that can be used to store knowledge. Information that can be stored along with each topic includes text notes, web links, tags, time blocks (beginning and end times) and images. Topics can be connected within a map, or across many people's maps. A keyword search tool makes it easy to locate and add specific topics from the Marici.com community to your maps.

When you first come to the site, there is little to show you what you can do. A lot of the keyword text is in Japanese. Signing up for a new account on the site was fairly easy, but I found the process of creating a map to be confusing. It took me a few minutes and a trip to the help page to figure out which icon I should click on to create a new map. Then it displayed a text form. So I created a topic entitled "my first topic," which the application added to a tabular list of topics. What's significant here is that the primary interface is textual, not visual.

In order to see your topics as a visual map, you have two options - to view them as a "mapgraph" or a "topicgraph." What's the difference between the two? I'm not sure. When you're in a map view, you can view each topic's meta data (notes, tags, etc.), but you cannot move topics around - that seems odd to me! 

My conclusion: This is a knowledge sharing tool that's trying to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up. It claims to be a mind mapping application, but it doesn't really provide much in the way of mind mapping functionality. At this early stage, Marici appears to be a text-centric workspace that has added a mind map view as an afterthought. But because this service was just launched earlier this week, I'm willing to give the developers of Marici a break - perhaps they have plans to add some more map-centric functionality to their application. But so far, I'm not impressed.

New problem solving add-in for MindManager Pro 7

Thinking Dimensions, a consulting firm that promotes the KEPNERandFOURIE methodology of problem solving and decision making, offers a MindManager Pro 7 add-in called the ThinkingWorks Wizard that helps users to make better busines decisions using this proprietary process. Utilizing a pop-up dialog box, the wizard walks users through a four-step process that consists of:

1. Stating the purpose
2. Clarifying the solution requirements
3. Evaluating alternatives and
4. Making a choice or confirming a particular solution

At each step, the user inputs their answers to the wizard's questions. At the end of this process, this data is entered into a MindManager map, providing you with a visible record of your problem solving process.

You can download a 21-day trial version of the ThinkingWorks Wizard add-in from the developer's website; at the end of that time, it will cost you (Canadian) $29.99 to continue using it.

New idea input tools launched by MindMeister

MindMeister recently announced the availability of several new "Geistesblitz" widgets that enable users to quickly insert ideas into a MindMeister map. Initially, the developer of the popular web-based mind mapping tool offered widgets for the Mac OS Dashboard and Windows Vista, but recently added them for the following platforms:

• Yahoo Widgets
• iGoogle
• iPhone

MindMeister also hints in its latest e-newsletter that a major update to its web-based mapping tool is coming soon.

How a 'dashboard' map supercharged the productivity of a team of project leaders

Jamie Nast, writing in her Idea Mapping Blog, recently shared a case history of a group of 35 IT project leaders, who would meet weekly to review the major IT projects happening within their organization. Each week, a team of 4 people spent 2 days compiling an 85-page status document. By the time the IT project leaders met, the "live" data was already 2 days out of date.

The solution, developed by Denny Sikkila at Mindjet, was a dynamic "dashboard" map, which links directly to all of the sources of data and eliminates over 20 hours of staff work per week. "Today the focus of the meeting is on analyzing the data instead of making excuses and debating out-of-date information. With the click of the mouse, tons of data can be accessed quickly and easily. Instead of reviewing a hard copy picture, files are accessed in real time. This allows for the ability to drill down to the specific tasks, hours, predecessors, etc. They can now make informed decisions right on the spot, because they have access to all the correct data," she reports.

What is a "dashboard?" Here is how the Enterprise Dashboard website defines it: "An enterprise dashboard allows at-a-glance visualization of company health and monitoring of key performance indicators. Simple to understand and high in ROI, these executive dashboards are becoming 'must-haves' for all enterprises."

Because most mind mapping programs enable you to link to files, web pages and data sources, they are a terrific tool for building and utilizing dynamic dashboards. Several of the leading programs, including Mindjet's MindManager, actually allow you to pull live data (cell ranges) from Excel spreadsheets and display them in your map. Very cool!

To see a copy of the dashboard that Jamie describes in this blog post, please click here (please note: This is a MindManager map, so you'll need the program to open it).

How to manage the gray areas with mind mapping software

According to the surveys I've done of mind mapping software users, its biggest benefit is helping them to achieve clarity in expressing their ideas and information. The latest issue of Mindjet's monthly e-newsletter contains an interview with Jerry Manas, author of the book, Managing the Gray Areas, that reinforces this idea. Here are some key thoughts from it:

• As leaders, we must examine issues from broader perspectives, using systems thinking or what Manas calls "holistic ethics" (an integrated model based on virtues, potential consequences, and principles). Mind mapping software can help you to view issues and challenges from a variety of perspectives, and to explore and understand varying points of view.
• Systems thinking is all about relationships. Mind maps can help to visually express these relationships
• Mind maps can employ a variety of decision-making tools and processes, which can help executives to make better decisions.

I highly recommend that you read this article!

Exploratree offers visual thinking guides

Exploratree is a new website that offers an impressive selection of free visual thinking guides. While not mind maps, they are marvelous tools for visual thinking and mapping of information and ideas. Think of thinking guides as blank templates that you can fill in with your ideas and information. You can download them for free, or use the site to create your own.

Exploratree's library of visual ideation tools includes some well recognized idea-generation techniques, such as SCAMPER and Lotus Blossom, as well as tools for evaluating ideas like PMI (Plus, Minus, Interesting) and Thinking Boxes (considering things from different perspectives).

To create a new thinking guide, you utilize Exploratree's slick visual diagramming toolset (a browser-based, simplified version of the tools you would find in a business diagramming program like Visio or SmartDraw).

It will be interesting to see how this fascinating web service develops. I really like the idea that anyone can contribute thinking guides to the shared library, which should result in a rich collection of visual thinking techniques and tools.

Branding your mind maps for greater impact

Marketing guru Roger C. Parker recently published a great series of tips in his Design to Sell Blog on how entrepreneurs and marketing people can utilize more of the design capabilities of MindManager 7.0 to create visual maps that uniquely reflect their firm's image.

While Roger's tips are specific to MindManager, you can add your own personality or corporate brand to your visual maps with nearly any mind mapping program. Here's a run-down of these useful "how-to" resources:

• Customizing the border of your map
• Branding your maps with a header and footer
• Visually brand your maps with a background image
• Add a logo to the center of your map

Great stuff - thanks for sharing these tips, Roger!