Are You Thinking About a Mindmapping Conference?

It has been a number of years since I had initiated putting together a mind mapping conference here in New Jersey, and today I was talking to my good friend and visual mapper Wallace Tait about the possibility of setting up a mind mapping conference so that we convene and share ideas. With the economy in its current state we need to bring innovation and ideas to the work that we do whether it is in the public or private sectors. What better way to  kick-start this year then by planning to convene interested participants who want to explore how we can put mind mapping to use in the work that we do.

I have spoken to Wallace about the idea for an Unconference -whereby we pick a time and place and build the agenda the day of the conference based on your needs. This model has worked really well in the educational marketplace and is one that could work well for us. At the Unconference we could learn about new and innovative ways that people are using mind mapping in the work that they do, whether it is academic, personal, or business related. In this spirit, it would be great to have some corporate sponsorship that could take care of some of the expenses and be a host for the day. I for one think that a mind mapping conference is long overdue and hope that some of the leading companies in this arena will find value in this idea and step up to the plate to make this a reality. I know that Wallace and I are willing to put the time in to see that it happens. If you are interested in making this a reality please feel free to contact me.  All the best and Happy Mind Mapping!

Visual Summary Goes Live on WikiSummarizer

Context Discovery  Inc. the developers of WikiSummarizer today released the Visual Summary View for their leading on-line summarization tool, WikiSummarizer. Now right within the browser you can get a visual overview of key information on any topic within Wikipedia without the need to own a mind mapping software application.  The Visual Summary View will appeal to those users who like the graphic representation of the summary data. The Visual Summary View is interactive and allows the users to open and close nodes as they review the information. The Visual Summary View breaks new ground for summarization on the web with its ease of use and speed. For those users that prefer the outline view that can be accomplished by clicking on the Tree View in your browser. You will be happy to learn that WikiSummarizer- Visual Summary View also works on the iPad  and can be exported to your favorite mind mapping app on the iPad. I have tested WikiSummarizer with iThoughtsHD and the Mindjet app without any issues. So take a look at WikiSummarizer and see what it has to offer.

Printing my iThoughtsHD Mind Maps with the HP ePrint Technology

Just this past week I updated my version of iThoughtsHD to Version 2 on my iPad and had a chance to create some great maps for some projects I am working on. One of the really great features of iThoughtsHD is the fact that it can open and export to a wide range of mind mapping formats. So regardless of which mind mapping application you are using on your desktop you can be sure that you will be able to open it with the leading mind mapping desktop applications. After I created a mind map with iThoughtsHD I realized that I wanted to be able to print it out on my new Hp D110 ePrint Printer. Since iThoughtsHD does not support printing at this time, I simply emailed the map to my HP D110 printer and within seconds my map was printed. Every Hp printer with ePrint technology has a unique email address which makes it  easy to mail all kinds of documents to. When you are ready to print from your computer or mobile device simply enter the the Hp email address for the printer and your are good to go. Talk about an easy way to print your iThoughtsHD mind maps.

Rethinking Your WorkFlow with the iPad

I have been using the iPad for the past 6 weeks or so and learning the ins and outs of this innovative and portable tool. I have noticed over the past couple of weeks that I am beginning to think differently about how I access, create and store my information. While not exactly a "digital native" I still prefer to read paper based books and magazines but I see myself beginning to shift as I load more and more of my PDF's into iBook and read them at my leisure. I keep my iPad in my bureau next to the bed and have access to it whenever I need it. I have recently begun to read the PDF's that I have loaded and love the fact that many of them have embedded URL's which link to the internet for more information. Being able to zoom in on the text has been really fantastic and makes it a lot easier for me to read the text. The iPad screen is nice and bright and makes reading a really enjoyable experience. Just this past week I received a notice to renew my subscription to PC Magazine and I was offered a two year digital subscription for about 63 cents an issue. Having an iPad made this an easy decision to make and as I subscribe to other magazines I can see the trend to move all my subscriptions to the digital format. Prior to having the iPad I would not have thought twice about purchasing a digital subscription to a magazine. I have found over the years that reading on a Mac or PC is cumbersome and I would often print out longer documents. However, with the iPad this is a real game changer for me, as I look to move more of my magazine subscriptions to a digital format.

The software companies that understand the essence of the iPad know that users want the total experience of being able to access their documents and synchronize information in the cloud.
Over the past couple of weeks I come to learn the value of being able to store information and synchronize my data. I have been using iThoughtHD a mind mapping app on my iPad to do more of my work and really enjoy the ability to be able to export my mind maps to Box.net in many common mind mapping formats that I can access from my desktop mind mapping applications. The integration is seamless and really delivers the user extra value. The same can be said for ToDo for iPad, a task management app that seamlessly integrates with Toodledo on the web withthe touch of an synchronize icon. Moving forward I can see developers are beginning to think about the integration from the desktop computer to the web that can then be accessed with an iPad.

Just this past week MindMeister released MindMeister for the iPad which synchronizes with their cloud based mind mapping application. It is exciting to how companies are beginning to build iPad applications that either act as a go between or as a way to synchronize the information that lives in different applications. As an example FileMaker, this week released FileMaker Go, a iPad and iPhone app that allows users on the go to query and modify their databases that were created on the desktop with FileMaker Pro. I can remember back to the days when FileMaker released a version of FileMaker for the Palm platform that gave you similar functionality. It is certainly exciting to see all of these developments and makes you rethink your work-flow and how you will harness the information you need- wherever and whenever. I would be interested in learning how tools like the iPad are making you rethink your work-flow. Please post your comments below- it would be great to get your thoughts on this topic.

Context Summarizer on the iPad

I have been working with Context Discovery's web based summarization tool (Summarizer) for the past couple of months and today I had a chance to test it out on my iPad. Context Discovery has transformed their summarization tool and now it works in the cloud summarizing websites by simply entering in a URL. Once the URL is processed- Summarizer will go out to the website and identify the most important key words and pull out the most important content that is ready for you to view. On the left you can get a glimpse of what it looks like on the iPad. I was very excited to see that Context Summarizer worked flawlessly on the iPad and processed the request very quickly. Once the contents was processed I proceeded to click on the MindManger Export and within seconds iThoughtsHD, my resident mind mapping application on my iPad opened the contents and displayed the mind map. It is nice to know that I can now use Context Summarizer and iThoughtsHD on my iPad to summarize the contents of web sites.

Reflections on Traveling with the iPad WiFi

I have had my iPad WiFi for about a month now and have enjoyed using the Ipad WiFi for getting my email, surfing the web and of course playing Scrabble. In preparation for attending the ISTE 2010 Conference I decided to see what it would be like to travel with the iPad instead of my netbook which is what I usually do. While the virtual on-screen keyboard is alright for entering web sites and the such, I decided to take my Apple Bluetooth keyboard just in case. For one thing the iPad weighs almost nothing and there is not the need to take a lot of the other accessories that I would normally have taken with me. It is a rather small package and is really great for travel. It is so light you sometime forget that you are actually carrying a computer.

Once I checked into my hotel room in Denver, I quickly fired up the iPad and registered to use the hotel Internet which dare I say was $10 dollars a night for in room use. In any case I was able to quickly get up and running and could easily access my email and check out my favorite websites. While I was traveling I need to access Moodle to enter my students grades and to monitor the discussion board. The Moodle site worked well with the iPad and I was able to do everything I need to do enter my students grades. Since our college uses another web based application to enter the students final grades I needed to log into their system to enter the students final grades. I had bookmarked the secure site prior to my travels and was able to quickly log in and enter all of my students grades without a hitch. My college does use a fair amount of Flash on their website for navigation which makes it a little more of a challenge to use with the iPad.

During my stay I used a number of iPad apps with the Bluetooth keyboard which worked very well. I did some mind mapping using iThoughtsHD which right now is my favorite mind mapping application on the iPad. I suspect that all of the mainstream developers of mind mapping software will shortly have their own mind mapping app running on the iPad. I was able to use Pages to do some word processing and used Skype on the iPad to talk to my friends and family.

On my way home I sat in the Denver Airport and logged into their free WiFi hotspot and checked my mail before taking off. All told, I had a very positive experience using the iPad WiFi during my trip and realize just how powerful the iPad can be as an all around tablet computer. The iPad does make you think a little differently about your workflow and using cloud services like Box.net, Evernote and Dropbox really helps you to maximize the quality of your experience when using the iPad. So just in case you have second thoughts of whether to take your iPad on the road - go ahead and give it a try, you will be glad you did!

iThoughtsHD- Mind Mapping for the iPad

Two weeks ago I went out and purchased an Apple iPad to see what all the excitement was about. I have to say it is a very seductive device and one that is hard to put down. I am enamored by its potential as a tool for some of the students that I work with who have writing, reading and organizational difficulties. The iPad is very fast at doing almost anything you want it to do (except play Flash media) and the battery life is really incredible.

Over the last couple of weeks I have investigated and bought many productivity apps to get an idea of how the iPad could be used as complimentary device to all of the other computers in my household. As someone who loves to mind map I quickly came across iThoughtsHD which I had heard so much about. iThoughtsHD is a full featured mind mapping application that runs on the iPad. It did take me a little getting used to the fact that I didn't have a mouse and had to touch the screen to create new nodes but once I got the hang of it-it was easy to use. I quickly created my first mind map in iThoughtsHD and was able to move my ideas around the map and relink them. Adding icons and formatting the nodes was quite intuitive and fast. There are some nice features to allow you to align your ideas to keep the formatting looking clean and your nodes equidistant. I have also used iThoughtsHD with my Bluetooth keyboard which made it even faster for me to create a mind map. While the interface is rather spartan there is a lot of functionality under the hood and you will find getting around iThoughtsHD to be quick and efficient. Within your mind map you can easily attach links as well as insert task completion icons to keep track of tasks as they are completed.

One of my favorite features is being able to send my iThoughtsHD mind maps to the cloud or transfer them to my computer using the WiFi Transfer option. Using the Box.net service it is rather straight forward to save your mind maps to the cloud that you can then access from any computer connected to the internet. iThoughtsHD supports a wide range of exporting features which makes it ideal if you intend to open your mind map with another mind mapping desktop application. iThoughtsHD supports exporting to : MindManager, MindView, NovaMind, iMindmap, xMind, and Freemind. iThoughtsHD also supports the use Task Completion icon and Start and Due dates for tasks on your mind map.

All in all, iThoughtsHD is a formidable mind mapping application for the iPad and works well with your desktop mind mapping applications. If you purchased an iPad and are looking for a top of the line mind mapping app look no further and download iThoughtsHD.