We’ve decided to make ten more slots available for the beta test and we want to offer them to the first ten people to comment on this post. So if you’ve got an iPhone or iPod Touch (whatever generation) please drop us a line here. You’ll then receive an email asking you for the UDID of your device which we need to compile an ad-hoc build of the app for you.

Update: Thanks for the enthusiasm, we’ve closed comments now and are trying to fit everybody into the beta test.

We welcome applications from students and ex-pats (native English speakers) - part time work is not a problem - and we’re looking forward to lots of weird and wonderful application mind maps!

Sorry for any inconveniences, hopefully you’re fast asleep (or out partying) at that time anyway!

Update: It has taken the full three hours but we’re back now!

As a company headquartered in Germany and providing their product in English only you almost get used to people questioning your patriotism. Our usual response to questions regarding the availability of a German version included citing some demographic statistics of our user base (which is about 40% native English speaking). Truth is, it’s somewhat embarrassing it took us so long to launch a German version, but at least it’s here now!

At the same time our partner act2 created a Japanese version of MindMeister which also went live last weekend. Japan is great country for mind mapping as the technique is almost universally taught in schools and children get used to visually mapping out their thoughts at a very early age. Thanks to everyone at act2 for their untiring effort in getting the translation out the door in time!

More translations are on the way - next up are French, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese - and if you’re interested in helping us with any additional languages please let us know. Also many thanks to those who have already offered their services, we’ll surely be coming back to you!

Finally we’d like to ask you a favor: if you’re a native speaker of German or Japanese and you find any missing or erratic translations please send us a quick feedback message using the “Found a mistake” link in the menu bar. Sometimes you need to see a word or phrase in context to make sure the translation fits the intended meaning.

Please avoid taking your maps offline with Google Gears before the downtime as we’re also upgrading MindMeister’s offline capabilities.

Update: As of Saturday 8am (UTC) our latest database migration is still running, and we hope it will be finished soon. Please bear with us a little longer and sorry for any inconveniences caused!

Update: Saturday 9:05am (UTC) we’re back! Please check out our new features, we’ll be presenting them in a special newsletter soon. There might still be some glitches but rest assured that they’ll be ironed out soon.

This is what your looking for - a large, shiny Easter Egg hidden somewhere on MindMeister: login to your account, find the egg and crack it open to find a discount code or a free account !

Start Searching Now - Every Egg Wins!

Once you’ve found your egg just sign up for any MindMeister PRO account and enter the Promotion Code you found with the egg in the respective field on the last page of signup and we’ll automatically take the Easter discount off your license fee! See details of how this works.

The offer applies to both our Premium Edition and Business Edition and is valid until Tuesday, April 14 2009.

This should all be fixed now and our growing numbers of IE8 users (which are already up to 2.3% of all Internet Explorer users, who in turn make up a third of our total visitors) can hopefully enjoy mostly bug-free mind mapping. If you do encounter any remaining issues please let us know, and even more importantly, if you’re still using Internet Explorer 6 please, please upgrade to version 8 asap. Or better still, use Firefox if you can…

The offer applies to both our Premium Edition and Business Edition. So, if you’ve been waiting for the right moment to bring your entire team on board, this would be it, to be sure!

To avail of this offer, simply enter the code

leprechaun09

in the Promotion Code field on the signup pages and we’ll automatically take the 40% off your license fee. Sláinte!

Kate Russell mentions MindMeister as the first site in her latest selection of the best sites on the World Wide Web in the Webscape section of Click. She refers to it as a “beautifully simple mind-mapping tool“, and “totally intuitive, as it has no mess or clutter from fancy frills“. See the entire piece online plus full transcript, or click below to play the video here.

I tried to catch the last airing of Webscape yesterday on BBC World but unfortunately (for us, not for American stem cell researchers) the show was interrupted before the MindMeister piece due to a breaking news announcement of President Obama. Ah well.

As you might have read we recently acquired the iPhone application MindMaker. We’ve spent a few weeks completing its integration into MindMeister and are now putting the last finishing touches onto a complete UI overhaul, hoping to be ready for a preview release by mid March with the public version to follow a week or so after that. To be honest we did underestimate the effort a bit, talking full-mouthed about an impending release date already weeks back - again, sorry about that!

In terms of the core product, the next release (no I won’t mention a date this time) will again contain lots of small improvements, plus one major new mapping feature: inline images, finally. You’ll be able to visually spice up your maps with resizable images that are displayed directly in the map. Upload images from your local hard disk, select them from the MindMeister image library or use our web wizard to search and embed images from such prominent places as Flickr or Google Images. Of course we’ll also have a WunderBild function (my personal favourite of the new release).

MindMeister users come from all corners of the world, and not all of them have English as their main language. Localization of the user interface was one the most requested additions so we’re quite proud to announce that internationalized versions of MindMeister will be available soon. We’ll start with Japanese and German, hopefully soon to be followed by other languages. Localization is done through partners in the respective countries who manage and own the translated versions, and we offer quite generous (and often exclusive) distribution deals. If you’re interested in becoming a regional partner please contact us.

Finally we’d like to give you a glimpse of a soon to be available new deployment option of MindMeister. Many companies - due to internal policies - simply cannot embrace all aspects of Software-as-a-Service, meaning that they need to host all their software inhouse. For those customers we’ll be offering a virtual MindMeister appliance - a self-contained and full-featured installation of the our server that can be deployed behind a company’s firewall. The first edition will be as a VMware appliance, with other editions to follow on demand. For more details on the MindMeister Virtual Enterprise Appliance please contact us.