Just in time for Christmas we managed to finish our latest release, MindMeister 3.1. Phew. The major new feature in it are graphical connections between ideas – many of you asked for them, and after we could not put this feature off any longer we locked one of our JavaScript gurus in a room with just a notebook and the Encyclopedia of Bezier and B-spline Techniques, and only let him out yesterday.
He said there were many technical difficulties to overcome, so please bear with us if not everything works quite as expected yet – we’re working on it!
We also added a few other new features in this release, please see details below or check out the list in the obligatory What’s New in MindMeister 3 mind map.
Graphical cross-connections
You can now add graphical cross-connection between your ideas in your mind maps, which will be displayed as green arrows. This feature is still beta, so please be kind. We’ll add more functionality here in future, such as control points and formatting.
Mark & nudge inactive users
Collaborators who haven’t visited a mind map yet since it was shared with them are now marked with a coffee cup icon in the Share dialog. Clicking the icon allows you to send another email to those users, reminding them to contribute (”Nudge” feature).
Alphabetize subnodes
We’ve cleaned up the node context menu a bit and added a function to sort the children of a node alphabetically, at the click of a button. Small but hopefully useful function.
Select maps to take offline
No longer do you have to wait for endlessly for all your maps to synch when you go to offline mode – a new dialog allows you to choose which maps you want to take offline. Very useful if you have a lot of them!
Other enhancements
Ability to skip share emails, withdraw from shared maps using the “Delete” function, improved invitation system, and of course the odd bugfix. See all changes since MindMeister 3.0 in the What’s New mind map.
At the same time as launching the Box.net partnership, we’ve also completed another API integration: MindMeister is now also available on net-files, a German online storage and file management provider. Click for more details on how MindMeister is integrated in net-files(in German)
For our customers, the ability to create and edit documents online – without the need for locally installed software packages – gets more and more important. MindMeister and net-files complement each other in that we both focus on an intuitive user interface. The combination of MindMeister and net-files offers the best solution regarding functionality and ease of use” explained Thomas Krempl, Founder and CEO of net-files GmbH.
Similar to the Box.net integration, net-files also allows editing of other mind mapping document formats like MindManagerTM and Freemind.
This one comes just in time for Christmas. As you know, the MindMeister API exposes pretty much all our functions for programmatic usage from within other apps. We’ve done first integration projects with other service providers already a while ago, e.g. with atoolo.
Click for larger screenshot
We’re particularly happy to announce the integration of MindMeister in Box.net, in our opinion the most appealing online file management service, and one of the coolest software-as-a-service pioneers. They were the first to offer editing services for their customers’ files right in the browser. But let’s let them talk:
MindMeister makes an excellent addition to Box.net’s OpenBox platform,” says Karen Appleton, VP of Business Development at Box.net. “Box.net’s collaboration and content solution provides the best experience for storing, managing and sharing your files. MindMeister gives our 2 million users the additional benefit of creating and sharing mind maps from any folder or file in their Box account, maximizing time and increasing productivity.
The integration used the much improved Embed API in MindMeister 3.0 which allows other services to piggyback on MindMeister without any cumbersome REST programming. All data is saved on the Box.net servers in the MindMeister (.mind) format, but also MindManagerTM and Freemind files can be edited.
Last night the temperatures hit freezing point again here in Vienna. What better excuse to have a few glasses of hot punch or mulled wine and discuss the latest mind mapping techniques with your fellow MindMeisters? So we’d like to invite all MindMeister users and fans in and around Vienna for a meisterPunsch on Wednesday, December 2008 in the MQ. We’ll meet at the Aloha punch booth, first round’s on us.
Please click through the slides below for more details. Hope many of you can make it, and the weather plays along (i.e. cold, clear and crisp).
Sorry out-of-towners – as a small consolation here’s a link to a very nice recipe for Glühpunsch for your DIY meisterPunsch…
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This is the weblog of www.mindmeister.com, the online mind mapping tool. In the true spirit of Web 2.0 we've decided to abandon our anti-social news page for a nice commentable blog. There are lots of greatmind mappingblogs out there so we'll restrict ourselves to discussing MindMeister related stuff only (that's a promise!). Find out more
