Annoucing Scheduled Downtime!

10Apr

• downtime
• 6 Comments

Due to a rather large server update we’ll be having a scheduled downtime on MindMeister from Friday, April 11, 7pm GMT for about two hours. Please try and export any maps you might need during this time in advance and try and enjoy a mind mapping free Friday afternoon / night ;-). Thanks for your understanding!

Update: We are back with the new release. Enjoy! We will introduce the new features soon…

Many more Geistesblitzes!

28Jan

• geistesblitz
• iphone
• 3 Comments

Not too long ago we launched the Geistesblitz Tools - widgets for Mac OS Dashboard and Windows Vista for quickly inserting ideas into a MindMeister mind map - and received lots of great feedback. However, we also received some not so good feedback from users of older Windows versions who found themselves not being able to use these gadgets…

So, we’ve taken that feedback very seriously and now are proud to give you not one, not two - but three new versions of Geistesblitz, for Yahoo! Widgets, iGoogle and the iPhone. We hope this will make everybody happy! (if you’ve never heard of the Geistesblitz tools before you can check them out here first)

	Geistesblitz Yahoo! Widget Yahoo! Widgets (formerly Konfabulator) is the most common widget engine out there and works on all recent Windows versions, as well as Mac OS. So we thought it only fair to support this as well! System Requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista or Mac OS X Download Now!
	Geistesblitz iGoogle Gadget For those of you who already live and breathe through the web browser, the Geistesblitz gadget for iGoogle is the weapon of choice - one click to add the gadget to your iGoogle page and fire off ideas to MindMeister straight from your web portal! Browser Requirements: MSIE 6+, Firefox, Safari, Opera Install Now!
	Geistesblitz iPhone Gadget With 4 million phones sold within half a year, developing for the iPhone recently became more than a fashion statement. While you’ll have to wait a little longer for the full iPhone interface, here’s a cheeky gadget for your iPhone browser as a little taster! System Requirements: Apple iPhone or iPod Touch Install Now!

New features from last update

14Nov

• features roadmap
• 6 Comments

We’ve so far only talked about the new Offline feature with Google Gears that we launched with the latest release. And while most of the energy went into that, we also added some other new features and enhancements. Here’s a short list:

Passwords for public maps You can now set passwords for public maps for secure linking and embedding and to hide them from the public maps list Blog embedding for everybody Now you don’t need to be Premium user anymore to embed maps into websites or blogs Embed API A new embed API allows you to seamlessly integrate our map editor in virtually any other web application Improved performance Vastly reduced the number of requests when loading a map by combining icons and other tuning measures Reseller Scheme If you’re interested in reselling MindMeister to other users just sign up for an account here and get 20% on every license sold! Other enhancements Easy enable notifications when first sharing a map - tag auto completion - reworked publish dialog with easy copy buttons - view invoices and export as PDF - and many more…

Right now we’re working on a few fixes to some editing problems that some people have been having, as well as on a number of new features. They are things that have been requested frequently and that we think we need to complete our mind mapping offering, such as attachments and images, connections between nodes, possibly some project management things (e.g. task info) as well as Geistesblitz enhancements.

Introducing: MindMeister Offline

5Nov

• offline
• 11 Comments

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:

• MindMeister Offline page in the Tools section
• Detailed instructions in the online help

Or get started right away by enabling the offline mode on the My Account page!

Scheduled downtime

4Nov

• No Tags
• 2 Comments

Just wanted to let you know that there will be scheduled downtime today at 8pm GMT for about 1 hour, as we will be doing a server update. Hopefully this doesn’t cause too many invconveniences! (it’s Sunday anyway … ;-))

UPDATE (Nov 4, 2007 8.58pm): We are online again! More info about this last update soon to come…

“I can eat glass”

27Aug

• i18n
• 4 Comments

We’ve just deployed a minor update to fix some small bugs e.g. with the import of mind maps.

Much more importantly for our international users though, we can now correctly display texts in right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew in the image and PDF export, as well as when printing mind maps.

You can see that it works in the “I can eat glass” export above (for more translations of that indispensable traveller’s phrase see here). Of course, if you don’t speak Hebrew or Arabic you will just have to take our word for it…

Calling all developers: meisterAPI

15Aug

• api
• demo
• News
• 2 Comments

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.

New features on MindMeister

31Jul

• No Tags
• 4 Comments

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!

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…

Introducing: Geistesblitz Tools

21Jun

• geistesblitz
• 9 Comments

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:

	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!
	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!