Mindmeister – Essential Apps

Category: Productivity

Mindmeister – www.mindmeister.com

Among the many similar applications on iTunes, Mindmeister distinguishes itself because it delivers a consistent experience on both the mobile and desktop platform. Allowing you to easily create Mind maps on the phone and then sync them up for online editing, or vice versa.

While many may not be familiar with mind mapping, the “brain storming/flow chart” technique has seen a rise in popularity with the tech savvy productivity and creative types who have found a home on sites like Lifehacker.com.

Created by educational consultant Anthony Buzan, mind mapping attempts to mimic the natural process used by the mind to make connections and access concepts. From a central idea, a web of branches expands from one concept to another.

A traditional mind map relies on using different colours, explicit pictures and large expressive branches to express the author’s thought process. However, newer examples of mind mapping relies less on aesthetics, and use a simpler format.

While I prefer the simpler format, there is “official” mind mapping software available in mobile and desktop versions that stay honest to the original model.

Apart from creating the framework for this article, mind maps have almost unlimited uses.

Why Mindmeister?

Mindmeister has worked hard to bridge the gap between the desktop, web applications, and mobile platform.

The emerging trend in software is to encapsulate applications within the browser while still affording offline accessibility. Mindmeister has an offline mode that can later sync updated and new maps to the web when online connectivity is available.

Similarly, a user can create maps on the mobile app and sync them to the Mindmeister site. The syncing works well, but the lack of folders does make finding specific mind maps tedious at times.

Besides syncing the maps, Mindmeister mobile allows you to export maps into different formats including PDF, PNG and RTF. The first too formats are static copies of the online versions while the RTF file will use bullet points to represent the branches. Also a freemind file extension can be exported, allowing the file to be imported to many other mind mapping applications.

I imagine for reasons of speed and accessibility, formatting of text is limited to italics, bold and four font sizes. The colour of the text can be changed, and simple graphics can be included in the concept bubbles, but the shade colour of the bubbles, branches and background customization are sadly unavailable. Maps can always be edited and polished on Mindmeister online or with another mind mapping application. Nevertheless it would be nice to have that option when I am mobile.

Another great feature of the app is the ability to do some rapid fire brainstorming or idea generation on the Geistesblitz function (which is also a separate free app). Just fill in the words and Mindmeister creates a mind map with all of the ideas listed for you.

Mindmeister online and the iPhone app are free to try. I would recommend that you take the online app for a spin and get accustomed to mind mapping before moving to the mobile app.

No matter your job, you might just find mind mapping and in particular Mindmeister an essential productivity and creativity tool when you are on the move.