Mind Mapping Love
We’re big mind map people, and MindMeister has our minds a fluttering. It’s a web-based collaborative mind mapping app that makes it easy to import FreeMind and MindJet MindManager maps, collaborate with others, track history, publish and embed maps, and even get Twitter update alerts—all while smoothing out that “publishing hump” much like Skitch and Jing.
We’re big mind map people…there’s just something about the visual tree effect that makes it easier for us to organize stuff. And we have loved FreeMind for a few years now. But the limitation has been that, well, it’s not very flexible in terms of social collaboration and stuff.
Enter MindMeister which has our minds a fluttering. It’s a web-based collaborative mind mapping app that so far, after about an hour’s worth of playing, is really letting us do great stuff. You can check out the intro video on the site, but here are the key features we’ve found so far that we’re liking a lot:
- Easy importing of our FreeMind Maps. You can do it with MindJet MindManager too. Nice.
- Drag and drop and easy keyboard tools. We love Ajax. (This is Ajax, right?)
- Sharing/collaboration. Just invite people in to play.
- In the best wiki tradition, it has a history so you can track changes. (Awesome.)
- You can publish your Maps to the Web, even embed them into a blog post.
- And while they don’t have an RSS feed to track changes, they do let you configure update alerts to your…wait for it… Twitter account.
- They even have this cool little extension for MAC users that puts a little app on your desktop that you can post ideas or links to your default map in a flash. Mercy.
This has been a great couple of weeks for tools… Skitch, Jing, and now this. And the thing we love about all of them is that they are solving that little publishing hump in a very easy way by making the upload piece a seamless part of the process.
Prediction: Google buys MindMeister within six months…
Easy importing of our FreeMind Maps. You can do it with MindJet MindManager too. Nice.
Drag and drop and easy keyboard tools. We love Ajax. (This is Ajax, right?)
Sharing/collaboration. Just invite people in to play.
In the best wiki tradition, it has a history so you can track changes. (Awesome.)
You can publish your Maps to the Web, even embed them into a blog post.
And while they don’t have an RSS feed to track changes, they do let you configure update alerts to your…wait for it… Twitter account.
They even have this cool little extension for MAC users that puts a little app on your desktop that you can post ideas or links to your default map in a flash. Mercy.
This has been a great couple of weeks for tools… Skitch, Jing, and now this. And the thing we love about all of them is that they are solving that little publishing hump in a very easy way by making the upload piece a seamless part of the process.
Prediction: Google buys MindMeister within six months…
About the author
Weblogg-ed Team — The Weblogg-ed Team is the collective byline behind our editorial coverage. We write about teaching, learning, and the institutions around them as technology and students keep moving faster than the systems built to serve them. Our work covers classroom practice, edtech and AI tools, online learning, homeschooling, digital literacy, and higher education, written for teachers, school leaders, parents, and lifelong learners who want clearer thinking than the press releases provide.
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