Archive for the ‘News’ Category
5Nov
We’re sure you’d agree that web-based applications are great - you can access your data online from wherever you are, instantly share documents with others, and even work on them simultaneously. But what happens when you have no internet connection, maybe on a plane or in a Fijian beach hut?
Well that’s where MindMeister Offline comes in - you just take all your mind maps offline using the handy slider at the bottom of the maps list, and hey presto! you can work on your mind maps anytime, from anywhere. Next time you get connected just slide the slider back and all your changes (and new maps) will be synched back to your online account automatically!
MindMeister Offline uses Google Gears offline technology, which is still in beta stage, so please bear with us should you experience any glitches with the offline mode. Drop us an email if you encounter any issues and we’ll do our best to iron them out!
The offline mode is available to all users for a 30 day trial period (even if you’re already subscribed and your initial trial period has expired), after that only Premium users will be able to use it.
For more information check out the following resources:
Or get started right away by enabling the offline mode on the My Account page!
2Sep
Autumn looks like it will be a busy time for events for us here at MindMeister as our calendars are quickly filling up with speaking engagements at conferences and barcamps and such. Here’s a little summary - if you’re in the area and not yet signed up for one of the events below why not drop in and say hello?
- Office 2.0 Conference, September 5-7, 2007, San Francisco
- RailsConf Europe, September 17-19, 2007, Berlin
- StartupWeekend, September 22-23, 20007, Hamburg
- Barcamp Munich, October 6-7, 2007, Munich
At Office 2.0, Michael will present MindMeister twice during the demo tracks as well as discuss on the mind mapping panel hosted by Catherine Shinners together with other mind mapping experts from Mindjet, Itensil and SnapXT.
Both Michael and Till will present at RailsConf Europe (as I’m sure you’ve read before) and the StartupWeekend in Hamburg will be using MindMeister (driven by Till) as one of their tools to achieve their task - which is setting up an entire company in one weekend.
15Aug
With the latest release we’ve also launched the new MindMeister API. The interface allows developers of web and desktop applications to access and modify mind maps on MindMeister, both public and private ones (provided you have the necessary privileges of course). When designing our API we’ve stuck closely to the already pretty established structure and features of common web REST APIs such as the ones of Flickr and Remember the Milk, so whoever has used those before should have no problem with the meisterAPI.
Mashups are easily done with it too. We have created two demo mashups with Yahoo Pipes so you don’t have to take our word for it:
- YouTube Mashup
Display YouTube videos for ideas from the MindMeister public hot list
- NY Times Mashup
Display public maps for topics from the New York Times
(alright, so these might not be particularly relevant or useful, but they’re just demos ok?)
Actually, currently quite a few people are creating applications with the meisterAPI, and we are very curious to see them. If you’re interested in developing something too have a look at the API documentation or drop us a line at dev@mindmeister.com.
8Aug
As our newsletter subscribers already know I will be giving a talk about MindMeister at this year’s Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. Last year every attendee of the conference received a iPod, and this year they’re doing it with guess what - yup a brand new iPhone! Yesterday I sent Ismael - who is doing a great job organising the event - an email with lots of questions, one of which was a casual query whether speakers were included in that offer. He immediately got the essence of my mail and just replied “yes you’ll get an iPhone” :-). So expect to see full iPhone support of MindMeister some time in September after we’ve had a bit of time for testing! (some people mentioned that most of the interface actually works already in a way, but there are issues e.g. drag and drop in the map editor)
31Jul
So here are the promised details about our latest update, for those of you who don’t receive our newsletter (want to subscribe? Just scroll down a little and fill out the box in the sidebar). Logged-in users will find even more details in the changelog. Hopefully you’ll find these useful, and do stay tuned - more to come!
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- Links on ideas
Support for internal (between maps, or also to individual nodes) and external (websites, email addresses) links on ideas
- Automatic layouter
No more overlapping ideas and branches with the new auto layouter - can also be triggered manually on “messed up” maps by pressing F8
- Note and link previews
Notes and links on ideas can now be previewed by hovering over the respective icon, including site previews
- Reworked, more organic lines
We’ve changed the line drawing mechanism so that mind maps now hopefully look more organic. The poll in the last newsletter went in favour of the slightly rounded lines (with about 40%)
- Automatic canvas resizing
The map canvas will automatically resize to the size of the map, e.g. on import of large maps or when adding lots of ideas
- Changes view date slider
In changes mode the footer will display a date slider that you can use to constrain the time period for which changes are shown. Clicking on links in notification mails will only highlight changes since your last visit.
- Start new map from idea
You can quickly create new maps from ideas through the right-click menu, and the new map can automatically be linked to the current one
- Export as PDF
The map canvas will automatically resize to the size of the map, e.g. on import or when adding many ideas
- Enhanced printing
Choose whether you want to print in full size or fit to page, and with open or closed branches
- Browse public maps
You can now browse, search and view all public maps on MindMeister - let us know which ones you like through the good old star rating system!
- and many more…
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28Jul
As keen observers will have noticed, we’ve just deployed a rather large update to MindMeister. More details about the new features will follow soon in a newsletter, as well as some posts to this blog. Which is also brand new - and rather nice, don’t you think?
2Jul
We’re rather proud to annouce that MindMeister just won it’s first award - the Best User Centered Design Company of the Year 2007 award by Hasso Plattner Ventures. For those of you who don’t know him, Hasso is one of the founders of SAP. He was also there when we received the prize last week in Berlin at the annual Forum on Entrepreneurship (which incidentally carried the theme “Design IT” this year).
The jury seemed to think that MindMeister had an “outstandingly intuitive and accessible user interface combined with a well thought-out feature set” (we agree completely ;-)), which is why they selected MindMeister from a shortlist of 15 or so nominated tools. . Not bad, eh?
Here’s some more info by HPV themselves (and more praise for MindMeister, hehe).
21Jun
GEISTESBLITZ, (noun, m.) ['gæstes blîts]:
literally translated as mind flash, is a sudden insight or idea, often brilliant and unexpected. Consisting of the German words Geist (as in Zeitgeist) and Blitz (as in Blitzen, that lightning-fast reindeer of Santa Claus), it is probably best translated into English as brain wave or flash of genius.
The Geistesblitz Tools allow you to quickly submit your ideas (or Geistesblitzes) to your default map in MindMeister (remember, you can set your default map in the Properties dialog). The ideas will be inserted in a special branch top left of the root and remain there for you to copy to other maps, or move around in the default map.
Geistesblitz tools currently come in two flavours:
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Dashboard Widget / Sidebar Gadget
Set up the widget once with your MindMeister username and password, and fire off new ideas at will! Using the widget is fast and intuitive and besides, we think it looks rather dashing… |
System Requirements: Mac OS X (10.4+) or Windows Vista
Download Now! |
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Quicksearch Extensions
Submit your ideas to your MindMeister default map directly from the search field in the top right-hand corner of your web browser. If you use the “Remember me” function on the MindMeister login form, you won’t even have to sign in! |
System Requirements: Firefox 2.x or Internet Explorer 7
Install Now! |
21Jun
It’s been a quiet few weeks on MindMeister. But although we’re quite proud of them, we haven’t spent all our time on the Geistesblitz tools - they are nice add-ons, but the productivity of our mind mapping users happens elsewhere.
So, over the course of the next two to three weeks we’ll be rolling out a number of new features that should benefit most of you - here’s a short list:
- Links between maps / ideas
- Automatic Layouter
- URL and Mail Links
- Changes view date slider
- Reworked, more organic lines
There are two more surprises that we’re currently working on which deserve a more thorough introduction than a mere mentioning in a feature list - stay tuned!
21Jun
Both Till and I will be talking at RailsConf Europe 2007, which takes place from 17-19 September in Berlin.
Till will be speaking on Browser-based Testing with Selenium, whereas I will present the story of MindMeister in a Development Case Study. Both talks are scheduled for the last day, and we hope some MindMeister users will turn up too!
