Personally I’m a big fan of mind mapping. I’ve read books by Tony Buzan and I find this to be a great way to capture thoughts and keep my mind clear and focused.
There’s lots of software out there to help with mind mapping – especially on the PC or Mac and a few apps have sneaked onto the AppStore. As a mindmapper I’ve tested them all (I think!) and the one I have chosen to go with is iThoughts. Their description just about sums up the software “iThoughts is a mind mapping tool for the iPod Touch or iPhone. It enables you to create, view, edit, upload and download mind maps in Freemind, MindManager, NovaMind, Xmind, iMindMap and OPML compatible file formats. It can be purchased from iTunes for £4.99”
You can create new maps on the iPhone or download them from your desktop machine. Once you’ve created or downloaded a file into iThoughts, its easy to add sibling or child branches using the buttons at the top of the screen.
Double Tapping an item allows you to add notes, colours, icons, due dates etc. Back in overview mode, the notes will appear when you select an item in the map but disappear when you move away which makes them ideal for reference material (see pictures).
The chain icon allows you to link items together (red line) but not as parent/child but as a “relationship”. This enables you to create links between objects in the map so you can easily find items on different branches that are still related. I don’t use this feature much as I find it a little messy visually.
Due to the small screen you’ll soon find you’ve run out of room. A quick pinch with your fingers and you can zoom in or out at will. You can also collapse braches down to just see your current area of focus. Add scrolling too and its pretty easy to navigate around. It works quickly too. Very large maps can slow down a little but are still workable.
As good as iThoughts is, this type of program will always be let down by the lack of screen real estate on a mobile phone (I truly look forward to seeing and using iThoughts on an iPad). For this reason the syncronisation with a desktop machine is critcal. iThoughts doesn’t sync but rather can copy from the desktop or copy to the desktop. I can’t see how they can ever get around this limitation but my fingers are tightly crossed. In the meantime, the copying takes place via wifi and has been flawless in my experience. Simply tap the button on the iPhone and it gives you a url to type into your desktop machine. You can then easily copy files from one machine to another and this works very quickly even with big files. As mentioned in their description all common types of mindmap file formats are supported. However, if you choose not to “sync” to a desktop there is a file export utility built into the program that allows you to email the mindmap as well as a text outline of the mindmap to anyone (including yourself of course).
There a couple of features I’d like to see added.
I’d like to see a search function so that I could easily jump to a relevant branch.
I’d also like to see more made of the due date feature. It’d be great if the program alerted you to due tasks via an application badge or even pop up alerts.
There have been many updates since I bought iThoughts many months ago and so this is an actively develooed program. My hopes for enhancements have some life yet.
I heartily recommend iThoughts for the iPhone.
Sid
I used to do a lot of mind mapping, but even on my laptop I often felt I didn’t have enough room. I remember tying it on my Psion, but it was just too small!
I used to use it a lot in the classroom when I was teaching (Primary). Instead of using the board, I’d have my laptop hooked up to a projector, and we’d slowly think out and idea of some sort, and later I could print it out for the class to refer back to, or display it on the screen rather than loose all the work we’d done when I needed the board for something else. It worked really well, and the kids learned the idea behind mind mapping and a different way of taking notes.