Live Blog - Mindmanager 7

Be careful what you blog:  I mentioned Mindmanager, the mind mapping tool from MindJet on this site only a few days ago, and they promptly invited me to their product launch Webinar.  Actually I’m quite flattered because only around a thousand people visit this site – it’s no Trump University (currently the biggest business blog site) – yet.  I hope you find our content is a little more pithy though.

To try to boost our subscriber base a little, I thought I’d give live-blogging a go – to see if I could be the first blog to review the new version of MindManager.  My apologies in advance for any typos, grammatical flubs and non-sequiturs that this may cause.

I know that MindJet is a responsive company.  A friend of mine – Christian Lauritzen, who now runs the innovative logistics software company Proxio – used an early version of their tool to brainstorm a mind map of improvements  – to  MindManager.  MindJet responded by returning his map with comments about what they were doing about each item, and many of these suggestions were built into later versions.  But as I write this section in advance of the webinar, I can’t think of many more things I want from MindManager – it already works pretty well.  I guess there’s the Microsoft Vista issue to deal with – though I plan to hang on to XP for as long as I can stand it, as I don’t want to spend 3 days getting all of my software moved.

In version 6, map navigation could be improved, and the re-grouping of branches back into trunks can be improved too.  Also it could handle really big maps quicker (my maps tend to live for a while and become quite rich and dense).  Another thing I’d love to be able to do is to terminate a branch with a mini spreadsheet or a table.  And in my dream world, I’d like to be able to use it as a wiki.

MindManager 7 – the release date is May 30th.  The major change is the look and feel – a much cleaner look, using the Microsoft Fluent user interface – like the Office 2007 user interface, that people also know as the “ribbon”.

It’s available for both PC and Mac.  MindManager Pro is $ 349, Mac is $ 129, and the brand new Lite is $ 99, for individual and home users – there’s also upgrade pricing.  The MindManager range includes a viewer application, and the Lite version has a free 5 day trial, after which it converts to being a viewer. 

The new version features some improved integration with Microsoft office products (linking directy to topics in the map), the ability to save map filters and views (very useful), a “show branch alone” view to simplify presentations, a presentation timer, some enhanced style management techniques and an extension of the image and map libraries.

Here’s some important news for us:  The launch promotion includes a “Jet Pack” specifically for Project Management.  (Apparently it has $ 79 value, though I don’t know how that was determined.)  We should take it and extend it to include Project Leadership too!  I guess that’s one more project for me.

I did get some of the things I wanted:  It runs on XP and Vista.  And you can terminate branches with tables – although it turns out this was available in version 6, but I hadn’t discovered it. Perhaps if version 6 had the new user interface I would have found the feature before.

One thing I’ll have to wait for: There were some non-commital comments about integrating it with Microsoft Sharepoint to allow wiki-like collabroation. I’ll dream-on for a while.

One thing I didn’t get:  This information was embargoed until today.  So I waited up ‘til midnight, and I’ve run the spelling checker.

I’m at Internet World in London today; I hope to see you there.

Philip Greenwood

Tags: MindManager, Software, Creativity, Mindmap, Mindmapping, Wiki, Sharepoint, Proxio, Trump