I have been a huge fan of PigPog’s post about his nowMap templates and method for months. It’s sort of a loose-form concept mapping to help you get it together as you go about your day. I have used them when away from computers and running around, and also while sitting at computers. However, I also like to keep something similar in MindManager. It’s a little different, because MindManager doesn’t do concept mapping. I haven’t found this to be any trouble at all, since I will print these out, with the background, and write all over them while I’m running around or away from computers. Since the information is split between the computer and my written notes, it saves me some data entry time.
Here is what they tend to look like (click for a larger version). The data is falsified, but it should be obvious to anyone reading this that I need a vacation.
I have a template that I use to pop these maps out as quickly as I need them, and a style that I can use to convert any map to this look. I use styles a lot to organize my maps so that I can see at a glance when I switch to MindManager and tab through my documents what sort of thing I’m working on.
I’ve made the template, the style, and a converted image of PigPog’s template that you can try out as a background (though this isn’t a very flexible option … it’s easy to run out of space) available as a download:
NowMap.zip
You can also try printing the original template first, and then printing your map on top of it, turning off the printing of the background image. I got this idea from a similar topic at the Mindjet forum.
This has been one of my favorite websites for years and years …
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Cognitive Daily: The difference between familiar and unfamiliar worlds; or, evidence that Steve Higgins is a real graduate student
“When you look at a scene: a building, a park, a mountain, your visual system processes the information differently from when you look at a single object: a face, a pen, or a coffee mug.”
The paper is available here.
The 2007 World Memory Championships are coming up this weekend in the Kingdom of Bahrain. This event was founded in 1991 by the inventor of mind mapping, Tony Buzan and international chess grandmaster Raymond Keene, one of whose mind maps is featured in The Mind Map Book. The press around the event coming from Great Britain has been fun reading:
This is nice to have at a higher level of geekery. Now you can have all of your to do items from all of your mind maps exported instantly into a format that is understood by org-mode, a fantastic organizer that runs in Emacs. See the Tools page to download the latest version of the MindManager To Do Extractor.
Here is a screencast demonstrating the relational nature of PersonalBrain. What I thought was really interesting was that this appears to be a brain file that is used to manage information between two different computers on two different operating systems. Though I may be wrong, it could be showing entries about software for different platforms and only being used on one of them. I have a similarly organized brain file that has links to files on three different computers on two different operating systems. The ability to implement this kind of relationship is one of the really nice things about PersonalBrain.
Assistive Technology: PersonalBrain 4-Linking Ideas
It is easy to cross reference material that is stored in your PersonalBrain so that it can come into focus when you click on a thought. You will see in the video that I can link thoughts that have been already entered into the PersonalBrain so that the information is categorized the way I want it.
Nice. I’ve been enjoying the relatively new Map Linker as well.
The Mind Mapping SoftwareWeblog: New Mindjet add-ins for MindManager 7
The development team at Mindjet Labs has been busy during the summer months, writing new add-ins to extend the functionality of the latest version of MindManager. Since August 1, six new applications have been posted to the Mindjet Labs MindManager 7 download page.
The latest version of this handy utility, available in our Tools section, formats the output a bit more nicely & lets you specify a list of files to ignore.
Here is a nice, short overview of what PersonalBrain does and where it fits into the mind map software spectrum. If you haven’t yet, I urge you to check out PersonalBrain. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux and the files can move between the three os’es effortlessly. This is a great feature for people like me who use multiple operating systems.
On any operating system, PersonalBrain is one of the most sophisticated personal knowledge management tools you’ll find. It’s great for organizing bookmarks or files into an ontology of your own devising. It is probably on the same level as other mind mapping software as far as complexity and capability, but is stronger than mind mapping tools in metadata and organization of topics and not as strong in presentation.
Even the free version of PersonalBrain would be a great addition to any knowledge worker’s toolbox.
Technology News: Software: Mind Mapping Goes 3-D With Personal Brain
Called “Personal Brain,” recently released in its fourth edition, TheBrain Technologies’ latest mind mapping software is amazingly easy to use, especially considering the complexity of the tasks that it’s handling. When you create a map, you’re immediately prompted for your central thought. After you name it, it appears on your display framed in “bullets.” The bullets are called “gates.”
Great news. The existing version of NovaMind for Windows is the best hand-drawn / artistic mind map analog I’ve seen yet. Not only do they design great software, but all of the dealings I’ve had with NovaMind sales and support so far have been a pleasure.
NovaMind News » Blog Archive » NovaMind 4 Pro for Windows enters beta testing
“NovaMind 4 Pro for Windows represents a major rewrite of much of the Windows version of NovaMind, with a much improved user interface, better usability and many new features. We look forward to completing the beta testing and releasing the production version in the next few weeks.”
