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#1
11-11-2012, 10:11 AM
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This post above got 600 reads in 15 months and no reaction whatsoever.
Two things: 1) I had VisualMind in mind because I thought MindManager had other priorities, whilst VM could be interested in some pushing of its rather remote market position - also, VM, as UR does, offers a network version of its "mind-mapping" sw, and as regular readers of my posts here will have understood, I consider "networkability" a very strong point in otherwise "individual" sw fields. Also, I thought - and think - that VM "mind-maps" are visually rather clean, when Tony Buzan's (= the "inventor" and holder of the legal rights to the falsely generic term) own sw (or the sw he just "enobles" with his name - there might be Chanel watches, you know...) has an outright crazy graphical style imo (NovaMind is very ugly, too, as I see it). But foremost, VM's way of creating children (by Enter) and siblings (just type) is the most intuitive way I've ever found. On the other hand, it was really buggy 15 months ago, and perhaps it's a little less buggy today - I had told them about all these numerous bugs at the time, but only got a "we can't reproduce this, neither that, and so on" - of course, I had thought that with a little bit of pushing their remote business, I'd create motivation on their behalf to attack these bugs; since they never replied, no need to look back, all the less so since some months later, I had been able to get a free version of MM 8.2. So personally I'm served for a long time, and my only problem here is that I cannot recommend any "mind-map" sw at this time since I tried them all and wasn't so pleased with any of them, except for my free MM (but not when considering the regular asking price), and which in the meantime has changed from desktop to cloud philosophy, which I consider catastrophical; perhaps, the also very expensive MindView is best now. 2) Why 1), to begin with? Because I seriously think, after having tried to avoid "mind-map" sw for years, i.e. using it only intermittently, then abandoning it again, in vue of lack of interoperability between outlining sw (on which I depend, as we all do here) and such applics, i.e. I tried to avoid "mind-mapping" since I couldn't integrate it into my "workflow" as they say, and even after getting and installing MM 8.2 free, I hesitated for another 6 or 8 months or so to really do real work within it. Now, I seriously presume that perhaps for all of us, or for the very big majority of us, finding ideas, creating concepts, with a "mind-map" applic, is indispensable, since it produces much better results in this field of "targeted creative thinking" than any try to do the same with any outliner (or other means), be it our traditional 2-pane kind or something ostensible "1-pane" like Bonsai. In fact, the results "mind-mapping" produces are so much superior that they easily justify your additional fiddling and efforts and organizational problems this rupture in your workflow necessitates - they partly appear because in your "mind-map", except for the "source item" and the very first indented level, with items further down, you should NOT limit yourself to short descriptions = doing "headings", but you should develop these ideas / elements there by complete sentences or even by paragraphs of about 50, 100, up to 200 chars; of course, if such elements then get to contain more than a single idea, you'll cut up further, and ditto with your maps: As soon as they contain more than one idea on the very first level (below the source item that is), AND you cannot read them on your screen anymore, without collapsing branches (= same problem with printing), you should cut up into separate maps - in the end, you'd do similarly as you work in your outliner. Perhaps of interest here: Yes, crossway interrelations ARE interesting, but let this aspect NOT make you fall into the trap of trying to put too much stuff into a single map - this would considerably harm the quality of your output there. (In fact this is the big advantage of clean "mind-maps" over concept maps, TheBrain and such - it's no coincidence that applics like MM are to be found in almost any big corporation, AND that they are in regular use there - and not only for graphic output purposes (which might indeed be their main use in some corporations) -, whilst concept maps and such remain of rather exotic, remote importance. In the outliner forum, some months ago, I mused about the possible reasons for this superiority of "mind-maps" over outlining in conceptual work, and I mentioned especially the presumably thought-triggering white space and such, but in the end, I think that the spatial distribution of the different elements such sw provides (and that you can, and should, re-arrange in the process: MM e.g. offers many keyboard shortcuts for all sorts of moves that allow for very quick editing of such a map), produces a spatial REPRESENTATION of elements which, I suppose, does the "new-ideas" triggering work. This means, the graphical straightening out of separate elements (which cannot be realized within an outliner where there's always blocks of text, any way these blocks may be constituted) seems to "CLIP", do "DOCK" these elements to neighbouring areas of your brain cell nets, whilst blocks of text dock them into the same area of brain cell nets, i.e. I seriously suppose the "white space" within your "mind-maps" is in some way physically (and not only conceptually) REPLICATED within your brain when you muse about your map (instead of staring at lists / blocks of text (be they espaced by blank lines, leading dashes or whatever). So it all seems to be about "AIRING" (French: aérer, German: entzerren), DE-COMPACTING what normally is held too compact in your brain as well, in the very physical organization of your physiology there (I'm not an expert but you get what I mean). Whatever! Integrate "mind-mapping" into your thinking and conceptualization process if you haven't done that yet, even if the integration of the "results" into your outlining-based main system isn't evident. And the quotation marks around "results" are there because I don't think that for important, long-lasting issues, there is a definite "result" point, "everything important is iterative" if I dare say. Which means that in my workflow, for the last months, I've begun to fully profit from my "mind-mapping" since I've STOPPED to import "results" from there into my outlines - which is simply too much fuss and impossible to realize both-ways anyway (see my post above). I've began to work "double-screen", and on my secondary screen, I display the respective external files folder for the outline (part) I'm working (see my development of just days ago within this forum), any such external file (pdf, Excel table), or any MM map that's supposed to inspire me in my work... and often enough tthe sheer presence of such a map inspires me to add new elements to that particular map, even when in my main screen I'm working on different things. Btw, strictly one-directional graphic representations (like you can opt for in MM when needed, etc., perhaps for programming / Warnier-Orr set-ups), do NOT have this "aeration effect" on your thinking, they are only very slightly better in effect than text blocks / sub-trees in your outliners has. Thus, a program like B-liner cannot replace a real "mind-map" applic; that as well makes me think that the secret lies in graphically "aering" the hierarchical tree (remember, a "mind-map" going seemingly into every direction very well STAYS nothing but an outline tree!) into an all-directional "carpet" so that your physical "carpet" working in your brain can "overtake", which seems not to be possible as well - and far from that - for most people. It goes without saying that your "physics" in your brain ain't a "carpet", but a 3-dimensional web of cells working together, but the 2-dimensional graphic representation, as a "carpet", seems to be sufficient to trigger the 3-dimensional "networking" (= interactive collaboration) of your real physics, whilst lists and even graphic representations in the form of rugs instead of carpets do NOT have this trigger effect. Btw, it's interesting that a wiki like ConnectedText has found so much appraisal within the outliner forum lately, even though it does NOT have any serious outlining function (cf. two blogs by regular posters there that tout CT but clearly show the absence of practical outlining of that applic) - what CT has got indeed, is an in-built graphical representation function, and I'm musing if that's the real reason behind those people's folly for CT when in fact they write so much about CT, but rarely mention its graphic capabilities. Anyway! Consider "mind-mapping" on top of your outlining, in spite of the missing technical integration of both concepts for the time being. 
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#2
11-11-2012, 12:24 PM
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i won't start mind-mapping until "Data explorer" in UR has an alternative "attribute customisable skyrail" view
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2d312_dXEs
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#3
11-11-2012, 02:12 PM
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quant, I perfectly understand your stance which had been mine for years - but in my case at least, it had been a more or less theoretical one, whilst on the other hand, I even pested (well, that was 2 or 3 years ago, not lately) in the outlinerforum against "flat" "mind-maps" - I thought, from a theoretical pov, that such graphic representations should, as much as possible, be faithful mimicries of what might be going on in your head, hence my being electrified by concept maps, the more complicated the better, and I tried, for a long time, to put a thing like TheBrain ("PersonalBrain" at the time) into effect for me.
In my case, this thinking was a dead-end, perhaps because I hadn't been able to MAINTAIN SCOPE of all that, but then, the majority of people can't get to this working for them - you own a doctorate in mathematics if I'm not mistaken, so I assume your natural capacity to maintain that scope even when its elements get rather numerous, is way beyond average, but for us "average people" (in this respect at least), a flattened-out thing like "mind-maps" seems to be of much better use, and that's not only my own experience, but that of any people whom I spoke to, and which had used "mind-maps": their character of "not too complicated", i.e. "not integrating it all" is seen as an advantage, whilst, as said, years before, I had been sure of the contrary, without delving into these advantages with real-life "mind-maps" of real interest to me though: just "playing around" with such maps isn't sufficient to become aware of their real value, it seems. Hence my explanations in my post above: This "minor" graphical representation, which also forces you to cut off many aspects into adjacent maps, whilst your intuition - mine at least, at the time -, says, "more integration would be preferable", hence the attraction of 3D-representations, in realiter it seems to be the other way round, those "simplifying" 2D-representations, cut up, on top of that, into numerous separate parts, instead of trying to contain a max of elements, seem to do much better thinking-triggering work than the more complicated solutions, but which seem to over-complicate the task for the ordinary mind as well, and my post is about this phenomenon, this paradox; as said, brains that are interconnected in a superior way (and there is no irony here whatsoever) might function otherwise, with higher quality, not only with higher speed. Btw, for years, I had used flowcharters (from Micrografx (from buggy version 3 that cost me a fortune at the time), and the unavoidable Visio (from 5 up to 2002), in order to avoid that "mind-map" "disadvantage" of being "nothing more but a graphical tree", when in fact, accepting this limitation of "mind-maps" full-heartedly, you quickly become aware that it's more idea-generating than flowcharts are: It seems there's also a "convergence effect" playing here, i.e. "multiple satellite thinking" around the "source" item AND around multiple "further down items" (when technically speaking, these ain't but children and grand-children of various degrees) - whilst in many flowcharts, there might work a "disparational / divergence effect" against you, as does in 3D's. I know I'm presenting paradoxical stuff here, but that's what makes such musings fascinating. As said, my experience with "high-brow" solutions is rather negative, my experience with "low-brow" solutions like "mind-maps" is very positive, and so I'm correcting my former stance on these matters and I'm trying to explain these phenomena to myself and to others, to get new ideas by this, from fellow posters as from myself. And again, it might be that people with an IQ of 130 or higher might be much more apt to process, and hence to profit from, 3D-representations than our brains working at about 120 speed; we all know that one of the more important elements of the IQ is the capacity to process more elements simultaneously; brains that are capable of processing e.g. 7 elements might not only function more quickly, but also in another quality range than minds that only process, let's say, 4 elements at the same time - so it's important to find the best ways to make even "standard" brains working better than they would without getting any such external help. As for the missing integration with UR or other outliners, we have to live with it for the time being, and thus, don't try to synch manually, don't try to replicate content (which especially means, not even downwards), have your (e.g.) MM and your (e.g.) UR systems as COMPLIMENTARY systems: You'd get lost by trying to establish a sort of coherence. But since UR allows for deep links, i.e. single items as external link targets, it could be interesting to do such deep links, within your (e.g.) MM maps, not only to pdf's or Excel tables or such, but also to details within such UR items. Beware, though: The more you do within your maps, the less you do within "texts", the better your output will probably be, and this means, when in doubt, don't put a deep link to a UR item into your map, but add some other child items (or a child map) to your branch within the map itself. (Edit for typos and such.) Last edited by schferk; 11-11-2012 at 02:24 PM.
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#4
11-11-2012, 05:24 PM
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Quote:
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#5
11-15-2012, 11:03 AM
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I
Yes, quant, there's a real, and double problem here. I am aware that it must appear really lame (all the more so coming from me) when I say (above), make it complementary, so allow for my trying to distinguish problems. a) It seems to me that organizational use of a "mind-map" does interfere with its "idea-triggering" use, i.e. you use it as a file / item launcher, and in your mind, this function shadows your wanting the map to trigger new ideas. But I also think problem b) is at least partly responsible for this, and I think, even with problem b) not being resolved, just SOME external linking maps ("external" viewed from those maps, i.e. not including links to detailed "children" / "siblings" maps within your maps collection) in the map might be acceptable, let's say 30 or 40 items in your map, with 3 or 4 items as links. That being said, I suppose that even with problem b) solved, big attention must be paid to not multiply links then. b) As stated in my first post here, some synching would be more than welcome, AND it would be need to be both-ways: 1. (partial = a particular sub-tree) tree export from UR (or another outliner) to MM (or another "mind-mapping applic) - but with UR and MM, this is possible, so let's stay with these for the moment -, in order to freely think about those things. This is possible, and then you re-arrange, and add, perhaps partially delete, perhaps do some move into siblings maps (!)... All these changes must then be synched manually, which is strictly impossible. It's a hellova hell of work, and it'll produce lotsa mistakes, be it yourself or being a your possible secretary who's supposed to to this. The only way to do it with not TOO many error-producing is to not work work within MM but to work on MM print-outs, then your sec doing the sync work not between MM and UR but within UR, from the MM print-outs. The problem is, synching back from MM to UR will overwrite the original UR items with another tree, since there is no functionality whatsoever to identify the unique identifiers of the UR items (which are there!), to dock them onto the according MM items, and then, by re-import, to identify these, and new ones, in order to re-arrange and complement the UR tree, all this together with the respective contents, for one... 2. But we must be aware that the problem arises even if we leave contents out! Which means, in order to simplify things a little bit, the developers of both coupled programs could decide to not have exported, then re-imported the notes for the nodes (in any case or better, by option), but simply to process the tree. This will shuffle around much less text and other content, but the programming difficulty will be exactly as it will be in alternative 1. 3. You begin your work within MM, then export "down" to UR. This is perfectly possible, but rather useless, since, as said for 1. and 2., any reasonable way to go back to the "musing stage" will be impossible, so at which point would be the point in your workflow where you deliberately interdict yourself further "musing within the map" but make the decision, "from further on, I'll limit myself to only think about it within UR". Or, of course, you say to yourself, "from this point on, I'll try to synch back manually then (to UR, after exporting the tree "up" to MM), since now, changes / additions / etc. will be rather sparse". Technically, that's possible and even maybe viable, but then, think a sec: Your attention that not much new will come your way, and your knowing what a fuss it will be to re-arrange the UR tree then, after any such deletion, rename, move and add-on, all by hand, will seriously hamper any further idea-finding within the MM map, so at at this time, have it complementary, as lame as this advice my appear. And, if I dare say this, since quant convenes with my experience, be sure my advice here is good advice. II Which implies, there SHOULD be a technical solution, from UR or such and MM or such, where two developer together create a USP for BOTH of them! (Or, as with CT, an in-built graphical representation of your data within your IMS, but I don't think that would be really the best solution: Too much work for UR or any other, and yet not enough functionality within the "mind-map" part of the program. On the other hand, there's cost. At this time, the price of UR is about 100 bucks, the price of MM, VM and such is 250 or 300 bucks or more, so the cost of the "add-on" (= some hundreds of items within your maps, tens of thousand of items within your IMS) and your main system is far from being within equilibrium; UR in its current state isn't worth 300 bucks or more, etc., etc., etc. Which all means UR should go corporate, have commercial functionality in order replace 1-5 seat commercial sw, and should go to be optimized within this range of use, THEN (only) apply a price of some 250, 300 bucks per seat, and of course do a student version for 100 bucks (remember, all this is NOT identical to my once speaking of 1,000 bucks sw). I'm NOT aggressing current UR users here, by asking for tripling the price of the current sw, but within UR's and its competitors' current price range (cf. TheBrain for a start...), NOBODY will EVER get you that splendid sw we're finally asking for, AND that finally we'd be willing to pay for, as soon as our demands are met. Hence this "slow death" of UR we're all complaining about, and which must not necessarily happen. As for askSam, yes, the price was 300 bucks, AND it was a tremendous good thing for tasks like qualitative anaylisis, etc., BUT: Serious "little businesses" was impossible with AS, since it was buggy like hell, incl. data loss, which is not the case with UR, so most little businesses were afraid to use it for this simple reason yet, AND AS hadn't any functionality in order to be used for tax-compliant main use of your things going out (not speaking of things coming in), so its only possible use was as additional sw besides your main doc processing sw - unfortunately, this is the same with current UR, and in SPITE of UR's much better mail handling than AS' mail handling - and then, UR's outgoing mail handling isn't that sophisticated if I dare say. So, I'm speaking of elaborate functionality, but also of another business model. I think that in the threads I've been writing in lately here, I succeede in explaining a little why NOT ONE of these applics succeed in finding a viable business model by offering just IM only - they are simply not of much enough use for any little business, all the less so since all of these must look elsewhere for their main needs - for their "just IM", then, they use all sorts of offerings, incl., for some of them, some of those dozens of outliners that altogether share that tiny market - and, let's put it bluntly, for most of them, UR might not be their most natural choice since the "first ten minutes accessibility" of the UR approach is rather sub-par. There's some interest in the observation of TheBrain since their main business - above the overpriced offering for indiduals - is said to be corporate use (with sophisticated sw that is not identical at all to the crippled sw for individuals), while NOT offering document processing if I'm well informed. So it seems there might be an IM market for rather big corporations, that is not identical with their "everyday-for-everybody" sw needs, but where perhaps, in a corporate of 1,000, some 30 people within the strategy department get a 50,000 bucks sw with 30 seats, in order to do what we do with UR, be it TB or something else. But it's clear as day that current outliners today will remain exotic - or even die, for lack of cloud functionality -, or become really useful for some-seats-businesses. And NONE of them IS, at this time. But then, kinook is one of the strongest offerings, and one of the strongest developers, so they could do much better than they do now, as soon as they got the motivation to do so. Or anybody else might step in and do it from scratch... Or from what they are doing now - again, I mention CRM and case management / lawyers' sw here. Up to now, they are all just addressing their respective traditional markets, they did not yet see that broad tiny-biz market yet. But if ever something comes that we can be pleased with, it'll be such tiny-biz sw, from UR or from anywhere else. The lack of developmentt in traditional outliners and such is heartbreaking, all the more so since, from my own, rather complete, programming experience back how MUCH kinook COULD have done these last year to make their sw outstanding in every respect, when in fact there is almost "nothing" - implementing new features into existing sw does NOT asks for "man years", or the other way round, with just ONE "man year" of kinook quality, ALL COULD HAVE BEEN ALREADY THERE. I refrain from saying, "shame on you, kinook", but I dare to say that it's an incredible pity as it is today.
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#6
11-17-2012, 08:22 AM
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I
Here, where it belongs, a bit from another thread: "Which reminds me of a problem mentioned in the other, the "mind-map", thread: Using two instances or multiple maps, for deep-linking / launching OR for "thinking", i.e. separating those functions from each other, even using the same graphic program, should be perfectly possible, without the mental interference problems described there." Then, the English term that would apply best to what a "mind-map" does, would perhaps be "DE-COMPACTING", in the sense that in an outline, these different items are too "near" together, and too "rectiligned" together - AND in another sense, also: Of course, within a "mind-map", as within an outline, you work top-down and bottom-up, simultaneously: You add new maps for (sub-) subjects where you expect some details to be added, and you add details in the (partial) map or into the branch where they belong. Now what's highly interesting here, and what's NOT available in an outline, is the limitation of screen and of paper. Yes, you COULD print-out a monster-map into 12, 16 or dozens of sheets of paper, but you'll be very well advised to NOT try to do such a thing. On the contrary, whenever your screen map (with perhaps 40 or so details, all minor details included) gets too complicated, = whenever the "adjust map to screen" command will get you too tiny font sizes, and / or the white space isn't really there anymore, you'll know that you'll need to BREAK UP your map into two or more maps, and perhaps again, and again, for some subjects. This is, one, a very natural way of working, and two, it seems to be one of the BIG advantages of "mind-maps" for planning, strategy, etc.: These "not too complicated" PARTIAL maps, for partial, sub-problems, and every one of these strictly observing the "not too complicated, just some dozens of items, not more, and whenever it becomes convoluted, separate it", seem indeed be PERFECT for thinking about. So it's not only the "how many items can your mind process simultaneously", but also, "introduce a certain limitation character to what you think about" which will enable your mind to better think about what you're staring at. So this is in CONTRADICTION to what "idea-maps", TheBrain, 3D-representations, etc. try to accomplish, since they try to INCLUDE "anything else", but in the end, it's not the theoretical conception of what might trigger better thinking, it's the actual results that should lead your choice of such sw, and that sw of choice seems indeed and for most people to be the (technically "primitive", in comparison, and "flat") "mind-map", if used in a smart way. II "Mind Manager 11" is the successor of "Mind Manager 2012" (!), and I just saw an ad, "from 349 dollar p.a." - this is outrageous. It should be possible to buy a COMBINATION of IMS like (an optimized) UR and a professional "mind-map" sw that integrates with the former, for a total of 500 dollar, one-time payment, and then regular combined updates should perhaps be 200 dollar every 18 months or so. By "professional" I mean, - good, NEAT graphics (important for presentation means, AND for your own eyes staring hours and hours at the screen) - bug-free (no problem whatsoever with UR or with MM, whilst with VM, I can make crash the prog anytime by just re-arranging some little branches within the same map) - lotsa shortkeys for re-arranging branches, etc. (as im MM, whilst in VM, there are only a few; if freely assignable or not (in MM they are not, but the point is that there ARE shortkeys, and then you re-assign them by AHK or such)) - this also means, the respective commands must be there, in order to re-arrange lotsa things, so that these commands can be addressed by shortcuts then (MM is really good in this respect) - ribbon or (preferably) not, but if a ribbon there is, no need to display it in order to trigger commands (have a shortkey for every command, and hide the ribbon) - etc., etc. We're almost 2013, which makes 30 years of pc, and nobody offers such a system yet. It would be time to do it. (And no, it's NOT possible to replace your IMS by outliner, by an IMS by "mind-map": No such program does seem robust enough in order to manager real big stuff - people who tried tell it'll get too slow, too cumbersome. And then, "mind-map" is not a GUI for managing 100 k of items of more to begin with. Hence the interest of a combi. EDIT : Oh yes, I forgot: Integration could be done in 3 different quality levels: - to begin with, acceptable, but not satisfying long-term: export-import both ways - as before, but with a command, available in both applications, to synch instantly; that would also mean (see below), if that "part" is not currently open in the other program, that applic would (open, in case, and then) open and display that part, too - as before, but an option, too, that would synch both-ways anytime you do any change within one of the programs, provided that both programs are open and the part of the tree / the file ( in the "mind-map" program, or if, in UR, you got several files, not just one big file) you're working on, is currently open within the other program Last edited by schferk; 11-17-2012 at 08:33 AM.
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#7
11-17-2012, 11:12 AM
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I suppose all that's needed is to incorporate some chart/map representation as an alternative to Data explorer pane in UR, should not be that difficult, there must be many companies offering ready made visual representation of charts/maps/ etc, for example
http://www.thebrain.com/products/brainsdk/
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Hybrid Mode
