16Dec
In our continued commitment to bringing you the ultimate collaborative mind mapping experience we’re happy to announce a host of new features!
Si, nous parlons Dansk
MindMeister is now supported in six languages. In addition to our existing English, German and Japanese support, we’re happy to offer Spanish, French, and Danish versions. All versions have been proofread, but if you’re a native speaker of any of these languages and find an error – please let us know by sending us an email.
In-Map Chat
While we’ve supported Skype integration for quite some time, not everyone has, or has the ability to use Skype at all times while working on a mind map. To this end, we’ve introduced a chat feature directly within the browser window. To get started chatting with fellow collaborators, simply click on their name at the bottom of your mind map to open a chat window.
Embedded Maps now with Live Update
Initially debuted during the TEDxAmsterdam live mind mapping sessions, embedded maps now include the option to continuously poll MindMeister for updates. This option opens up an entirely new avenue in mind mapping, as live sessions can now be streamed to not only collaborators, but the entire world.
New publish features, embed wizard
You can now put your public maps in categories in the revamped Publish dialog and customize embedding options in the new Embed Wizard. Premium users can choose to hide the “Share” button and MindMeister logo in their embedded map.
Improved Public Map Features
Our public map listings have undergone a major change in the way that they are discoverable and shareable. Now searchable by both language and category, these changes should serve to improve the usefulness of the public maps directory, as well as make it far more easy to use as a reference and resource tool.
Monthly Payment Option for Team Users
Users of our Business and Academic Editions now have the option to pay on a monthly basis, as opposed to yearly. This now means that users will only pay for the time that they need to use our service – short projects, annual reviews, etc. At the same time, should Team Users opt for a yearly subscription, we’re now offering 2 months for free.
Additional new features
Faster and more relevant map search – searching through your mind maps has now been streamlined. By default, search parameters will search through your map titles. If no matching terms are found, the MindMeister system will then search through the text of all your maps until matches are found.
Better Email Notifications – we’ve improved a number of features within the email notifications that should allow users to more easily identify what changes have been made to what maps, and by whom.
Alphabetize now with numbers – the Alphabetize function now sorts numbers correctly.
During this festive time of year, we’d also like to take this space to wish each and every one of you a very Happy Holiday Season, and we look forward to seeing you in the New Year!
The MindMeister Team
2Nov
We’ll be launching some new features and also conduct a major upgrade to our servers this weekend, starting Saturday November 7 at 10pm (UTC) until Sunday morning at about 6am (UTC). MindMeister.com will be unavailable during this period. To figure out when we are offline in your time zone please consult timeanddate.com.
Please avoid taking your maps offline with Google Gears before the downtime as we’re also upgrading MindMeister’s offline capabilities.
29Sep
As many of you may have already noticed, there were a few hiccups with the release of our iPhone application update last week. Thankfully, we managed to locate the source of the problem and promptly shut off the application in the app store.
While we ran a number of tests here on our end, it seems as though no one in the office thought to check the most basic of features: empty your local account and start with a new map. D’oh! To that we say – our bad.
Those of you already using our iPhone application have spoken volumes about what you like, what you don’t like, and everything in between. One of the most common requested features was the ability to open and close branches within mind maps. In the new update, users now have the ability to toggle branches, thereby making it much easier to read large maps on a smaller screen. Likewise, many MindMeister iPhone app users requested the ability to add notes via a double click feature. A tap-tap gesture anywhere on the canvas now brings up the notes feature, allowing you to clarify, illustrate, or emphasize any points within your mind map. More features – above all editing of colors, nodes and styles on the device – are coming soon.
As a special thank you to those of you that were chomping at the bit to get your hands on our shiny new update, only to have it abruptly taken away, for a limited time only, we’re offering a special price reduction. Originally priced at €5.49 / $6.99, the MindMeister application for iPhone is now available in the app store for €3.99 / $4.99 until October 10th.
As a post script, we’d also like to send out a hearty thanks to the Apple iPhone application review team, for their understanding and speedy turn around in getting our update out to the world.
1May
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.
25Mar
Just a quick update to let you know that we’ve deployed a new version that fixes certain UI issues in Internet Explorer 8, the latest update to the infamous Microsoft browser that was released a few days ago. Before, the map branches and connections weren’t displayed at all in IE8, icons did not work correctly and some dialogs looked downright awful.
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…
23Dec
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.
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- 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.
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10Nov
As promised here is the more verbose version of the most recent update of MindMeister. Release 3 contains lots of enhancements to the ease of use and overall consistency of MindMeister, plus some bigger feature blocks. Two important things we just didn’t get done in time though – inline images and connections between ideas. They’re in the making though, expect them before Christmas!
Find some key new features below, or see a comprehensive list in the What’s New in MindMeister 3.0 mind map.
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- Task Management
Many more features for easier task management in MindMeister, including start date and duration, email notifications, iCalendar feeds, WunderTasks and a task overview from all maps.
- Search and filter, better tags
The new map search – you’ll find it in your map list view – makes managing many maps a lot easier. You can search for titles and contents, and even use Find in maps (CTRL-F). Also, managing tags was enhanced with a new overflow dropdown.
- Resize ideas and wrap
Overlong idea labels always created problems. In the new release you can now resize them via drag and drop, and your maps will also keep the wrappings when exported e.g. to PDF or as image.
- History View
We completely revamped the version history to make viewing and replaying the collaborative changes of a mind map a useful and fun experience. Clicking on the coloured bullets starts “replay” mode. See also our tutorial video.
- WikiMaps
You can now turn any public map into a WikiMap. This will make it editable for everybody (well, everybody who has a MindMeister account, to avoid spamming). Quite useful to gather input from many people at once!
- Import text files
In addition to Freemind and MindManagerTM formats, you can now also import plain text files into MindMeister.
- Emailing attachments
Geisesblitz Email now supports attachments which will be inserted as attachments to your ideas into MindMeister.
- Many more key shortcuts
Our users say they love them, so we’ve added quite a few more for common operations. See a complete list.
- Other enhancements
New user interface, revamped “My Account” section, Offline mode for Safari, recommendations in map view, new export dialog and options, better printing (via PDF), clone public maps, larger note previews and much more.
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Well, we hope you benefit from all the work that is put into MindMeister. We strive to make the best online mind mapping experience available and welcome all your feedback on the new stuff.
5Nov
Our development team worked hard these last few days to iron our the last glitches in our new release. The dust has settled now, although there’s still some fine tuning to be done before we feel confident enough to send out the release newsletter.
However, to give you a brief overview on what’s new already now we’ve created a mind map (surprise, surprise) with some advance info on the new stuff: What’s New in MindMeister 3.0.
A more verbose portrayal will follow here soon.
