New mind mapping app for iPad enables real-time collaboration
May 6th, 2010 | By Chuck Frey | Category: Mobile Mapping Tools
Developer Barking Dog announced the launch earlier this week of CrowdMap, a new mind mapping application for the iPad that enables you to to real-time map sharing and co-editing. In other words, as your coworkers add content to a shared map, it appears instantly on your iPad.
The CrowdMap website says that this new app supports colored branches, drag and drop for rearranging maps topics, panning/zooming, multi-touch gestures and landscape and portrait views. What it doesn’t say is whether or not it supports other important (and in my mind, basic) functionality, such as:
- Notes
- Hyperlinks
- Icons/symbols
For now, it appears that you can only collaborate with other iPad users who also have CrowdMap installed. In the near future, the developer plans to add support for the iPhone, web browsers and other mobile devices. Map search and tagging are also under development.
I haven’t picked up an iPad yet – has anyone played with CrowdMap? Is it a worthwhile mind mapping app for this brave new computing platform?
Popularity: 10% [?]
Crowdmap might be an interesting use case, Multiple reporters at a large conference updating the same map with a different branch for each presentation or speaker. Or a debate as Andrew Wilcox created for the UK debates, he could have had one mindmapper following a specific candidate’s response closely. Students in a classroom setting working as a team could capture the lecture from multiple points of view and have a collaborative map by the end of the lecture.
- Does the map creator become the host for others to collaborate with? What happens if he loses his WiFi connection to the other users, does one of them become the host for the map automatically or do they all wait for the host to restart the application.
- Chuck Frey is absolutely right about the basics I’d add file attachments to that and images on the web (ie. iThoughtsApp).
- I think the addition of a web client/host will be an important next step to handle the issue if an issue with the network connection fails it should revert to the last sync and the web becomes the default host, that others update.
I look forward to trying this out with other mindmappers.
I like the concept.
But the realisation is not even on a beta state.
So this is quite expensive !!!!
NO COPY AND PASTE !
NO WAY TO MOVE A NODE TO ANOTHER BRANCH !
I thought mindmapping was all about reorganizing ideas !
Many bugs. Poor features. No formatting.
The idea is great, but the app is NOT ON PAR
Let’s hope the dev will make his job at last…
Right now, no one should buy this unfinished work.
update !
got in touch with the dev, a very nice person
seems it might evolve fast as he’s really listening to requests ans ideas…