One of the real strengths of mind mapping is that it leverages your brain’s awesome associative powers. But in order for you to realize that potential, you need to be sure to select keywords for your first-level topics that help you to make additional connections and generate valuable ideas. Here are some questions and tips that will help you to create more powerful and persuasive mind maps.

Mind Technologies recently announced the availability of a beta version of Visual Mind 11, which offers a number of incremental improvements over Visual Mind 10. Here is a list of what’s new, along with my observations on each of the new features.

Thanks to everyone who responded to my request for comments on “mind mapping in the recession” contest. The number of stories that you shared (over 60) and the ideas I gleaned from reading them were amazing! Here is a summary of the major themes.

Icons and symbols are small visual elements that you can attach to topics in your mind maps, which add meaning and context to them. Here’s an overview of how you can utilize them, and how to customize your mind mapping program with additional icons and symbols to meet your specific needs.

The developers of MindMeister recently hinted to me that by mid-February they planned to release a version of MindMeister for the iPhone and iPod Touch. They made good on that promise by announcing yesterday the acquisition of MindMaker, an iPhone-based mind mapping application.

If you want to become a more effective mind mapper, then it’s essential that you become familiar with your program’s topic notes feature. Notes should be an integral part of all but the simplest mind maps. Here are some tips on how to get the most out of them.

Since Apple opened up the iPhone and iPod Touch operating system to outside developers and gave them a place to sell their wares – the AppStore – a new breed of mind mapping tools has quickly emerged that enable you to capture your ideas any time, anywhere. These programs vary widely in their capabilities, but all offer some intriguing capabilities that promise a bright future for visual diagramming on this amazingly popular pair of mobile devices. Here is a brief summary of 8 mind mapping tools for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Sometimes, when you’re in the middle of developing a mind map, you may come face to face with a mental block that prevents you from thinking through the problem, challenge or situation any further. When this happens, there are a number of techniques that you can use to smash through these mental barriers and re-energize your thinking and fresh, creative directions.

If you are sharing a mind map with other people, and want to draw their attention to a specific section of it, a boundary is a good way to do that. Here’s a primer on what boundaries are, and some creative ways in which you can use them.

The mind mapping community has adopted the social networking tool Twitter big-time, with at least 18 bloggers, developers and mind mapping enthusiasts active on this social networking tool. It has quickly evolved into a wonderful tool for (briefly) sharing ideas and resources, and for networking with other like-minded people. Here’s a list of the people who are “tweeting” about mind mapping, and links to help you to explore what they’re talking about.