12Oct
Hi folks! No new announcements regarding the MindMeister service and/or our iPhone app. Rather, I’d like to take this space to introduce myself. My name is Dan Taylor, I’m an American living in Vienna, Austria, and I’ve recently started working with the team at MindMeister.
I must admit, prior to sitting down with Michael and talking through what MindMeister is, and what you can accomplish with it, I hadn’t really used a service like this before. Fast forward just a few days, and I’ve started mapping out a few projects that I’m working on, adding timelines, due dates, priority, connections, links…in other words, I’ve tasted the MindMeister kool-aid, and I’m hooked.
A little bit about me. I’ve been involved with the online space for over 10 years now, starting out during the first dot com boom selling online ad space for an entertainment portal (remember banner ads? Yeah…I sold them). Post bubble burst, I had an outstanding opportunity to move to the United Kingdom and work with a fundraising agency that worked with some amazing charities around the world. Just over a year later, it was time to pack the bags again, as I was asked to move back to the states, and together with a partner, founded and built the American branch of said organization. Here, I filled the shoes of National Recruitment Manager. A few years, and a whole lotta advertising and brand marketing later, I took the position of Director of Marketing at a prominent online video sharing site. With one thing leading to the other, I moved to Austria with my wife just over two years ago. Since this time, I started working as a marketing consultant, and have been involved in a number of campaigns and projects, everything from SEO to Social Media engagement, original content creation, video and graphics works, and the list goes on.
What interests me most about MindMeister is the untapped potential of every single one of our users. Sure, MindMeister is a great way to map out thoughts and ideas, but what gets me going are some of the truly incredible ways some individuals and companies are using our product. Toss the GeistesBlitz arm of MindMeister’s services in there, and you’ve got some truly staggering power at your fingertips.
So thanks again to Michael and the entire MindMeister team for their more than welcoming gestures. And thank you to all of you who’ve made MindMeister a success thus far.
As I’m now privy to see what’s going on behind the scenes at the MindMeister camp, I’m not willing to tell you what we’ve got in store over the next few months, but I will say this….watch this space, as some new and exciting things will start appearing soon!
9Jul
Jolicloud, the new netbook OS by Netvibes founder Tariq Krim, has just released an improved alpha version for testing to a selected group of preview testers, and we’re very proud to be part of it: MindMeister comes preinstalled on the Jolicloud operating system – installed meaning that there’s a MindMeister icon in the Jolicloud application directory that brings you directly to the MindMeister site (soon also to a custom-built start page for Jolicloud users).
With the announcement of the Google Chrome OS there’s currently a lot of buzz around this topic and we believe that Tariq and his team have done an amazing job rethinking the overall layout of a desktop operating system for the Internet age (we’re not the only ones who think so, as proven by the recent $4.2m investment in Jolicloud by some major VCs).
Apart from MindMeister, many of the usual suspects are available on the Jolicloud desktop – Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Skype, Dropbox, MobileMe and many more. Take a look yourself at the Jolicloud tour or read their own announcement of the MindMeister integration.
10Mar
MindMeister was featured on BBC’s technology show Click which aired several times last weekend. We noticed a huge surge in signups on usually rather quiet Saturday and Sunday and were rather chuffed when we found out the reason.
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.
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.
