Create mindmaps and share them online
Mind maps are said to be the most effective way to plan things because they follow your thinking better than any other method can. I have serious doubts about the global truth of that sentence, but true enough, at times it can prove pretty useful.
The great thing about a mind map is that it shows you the relationships between separate entities in your thought process really well. It is in a form which you can overview and comprehend easily, even if you're looking at someone else's map. We have seen out share of offline mind maps, but bubbl.us has brought the technology to the web, injecting it with sharing goodness in the process.
In a very clean environment you can add balloons under or next to each other, create/delete links between them and change the layout and color in a jiffy. You can create a beautiful mind map in a few minutes, with lots of detail and value. The best part though is the ability to share them.
You are able to share and participate in other mind maps, bringing an extra round of creativity to the table. Effectiveness and productivity increases, since you can not only share your thoughts, but the trail of though, linking, back linking and so on between balloons. If you have a small project to manage, or a whole life I recommend you try this out, but as I said, I don't think this works for everyone.
What I particularly like about Bubbl.us is the fact that you do not have to create an account to create a mindmap on the site. While you need one for saving the mindmap, sometimes it is not something that you really need to do. This happened to me several times where I used the service to create a new mindmap that I took a screenshot of in the end.
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For create mindmaps I use Nodemind. If you are interested, here’s a site: http://www.nodemind.com
(description: http://forum.1ps.ru/viewtopic.php?t=13971 )
I just started using mind maps (again) the other week, also using FreeMind.
I agree that they’re no panacea, but they proved very useful for one particular project – so I will (try to) remember to evaluate that option for possible future projects.
As for bubbl.us, I’ll definitely give that one a try.
MindMeister is an alternative service, recommended on the FreeMind wiki because it can import FreeMind’s .mm files.
Yes, that’s the one I used as well :) Desktop software has its merits as well though, so Freemind is a good solution if you just use it by yourself.
I’ve always liked FreeMind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page/) but then it doesn’t have that whole access-anywhere-from-the-web feature.