Short Takes: iThoughtsHD

Short Takes are brief reviews of iPhone and iPad Apps that have caught my fancy. I’ll give a brief description and tell you why I like them. I’m not going to give ratings. I would rate all of the Apps I’m reviewing a 4 or 5 out of 5. They are stable and well made, at least in my opinion, provide good value, again, in my opinion, and get good developer support.

iThoughtsHD

iThoughtsHD is a mind mapping tool. If you want the details of mind mapping, check out Wikipedia. And follow some of the links because there are lots of approaches. The basic idea is to record your thoughts on something, for example, a project you need to do. And not just the thoughts, but their inter-relationships. Mind maps usually look like a bunch of interconnected ovals with text in them. They are grouped around a central theme. The ovals relate to each other usually in a hierarchical fashion.

Let’s say that you have a project that you have to map out. You know you have lots of things to do but you’re not quite sure how they relate to each other or in what order you need to do them. And there are all sorts of little things that really aren’t attached to anything yet. You could write it all down on paper, many, many times. Or you could use an outliner and move items up and down and in and out. Or you could use a mind mapping tool and get a more visual view of what you need to do. If it were on an iPad, you could move things from place to place by touch and drag.

I admit that I liked the idea of mind mapping from the first time I saw it. However, there was no way I’d plan something using a mind map on paper. And the computer programs at the time were clumsy and impersonal. So I filed the idea away and forgot about it.

Then one day, I saw an article about mind mapping on one of the iPad Web sites I peruse. Maybe this could finally be useful for my way of working. There were a few “lite” versions I tried and while the basics were okay, something was lacking. Maybe it was ease of use, maybe it was power, or maybe the interface didn’t suit me.

In my delving into mind mapping tools on the iPad, one App was always at the top – iThoughtsHD. However, there was no free version to try out, and the price at the time was $7.99Cdn (now $9.99Cdn). So I read as much as I could about it. I read the Web site and the developer’s blog, from which I learned that there’s been a constant flow of new versions and upgrades. There’s also an iPhone version. In fact that’s where iThoughts started. There are also a few mind mapping sites where iThoughtsHD also came out on top.

Everything I read was positive, so I took a leap of faith and purchased it. If I say so myself, it was a very smart move.

iThoughtsHD makes it easy. It’s quite intuitive. Touch the + to create a new map. Set the basic parameters using the options gear. Global options are in the Settings App. Double tap to attach a new topic to the current selected topic. Or use the buttons to create a child or a sibling. Touch a topic to select it. Double touch an existing topic to edit the text. The i(nfo) button lets you customize a topic’s appearance and add an icon or a note.

There are options to align topics or to keep everything aligned automatically. Touch and drag to move topics around. Or touch, hold, and drag to move topics from one parent topic to another.

There are lots of other tools to make the maps meaningful. You can add callouts and group a set of topics. You can also show relationships between different topics outside of the usual hierarchy, so that the map can take on a networked structure rather than just a hierarchy.

You can export as a PDF or export and import in many other mind map application formats so that you can use the maps on your Mac or PC. I’ve tried this using Freemind on my Mac and it worked flawlessly.

I mentioned up front that any of the Apps I review will have good developer support. Craig Scott, the creator of iThoughtsHD, is one of the best. He is very responsive and very open to ideas.

I’ve used iThoughtsHD on 3 projects so far, 2 at work. It saved me considerable time. In fact there was one project where I needed to map out a sequence of events. Using iThoughtsHD, I was able to see that the same groupings of events occurred from different points in the sequence. I doubt it would have been as obvious using an outliner or paper.

If you need this sort of tool, get the best. In my humble opinion that’s iThoughtsHD.

Bob