Here’s what’s notable about this new app:

Seamless synchronization: As you would expect, this new app syncs seamlessly with your online repository of DropMind maps. I love to see this kind of integration, because realistically, a mind map you create on the iPad will be developed further elsewhere. DropMind for iPad enables you to view the maps you have stored locally as well as those in your web account, and to work with them regardless of their location. That’s the way it should be!

There is no doubt in my mind that mind mapping apps that synchronize files to a corresponding web app or the cloud (a file storage and backup service like Dropbox) are going to have a big advantage in the years ahead versus those that only allow you to e-mail files to yourself and others.

Properties inspector: Like other well-designed mind mapping apps for the iPad, DropMind utilizes a property inspector – accessible from the app’s toolbar – to enable you to change topic shape, font, and add icons, notes and links.

Nice use of pop-over menus: When you select a topic in your map, DropMind automatically displays a pop-over menu that gives you the option of copying the current topic, creating a sub-topic or deleting the current topic. This is quite convenient for creating new sub-topics, because you can do so right in the workspace. There’s also a toolbar icon that you can use to do this, but I’m a big fan of contextual commands that you can invoke right in your mind map, without having to rely on a toolbar. If a topic you select contains a hypertext link, this pop-over menu will also contain a “go to link” command.

Clever display of topic notes: If you select a topic that contains a note, the contents of it are displayed in a translcuent window at the bottom of the screen. Nice!

Support for floating topics: If you want to create a floating topic, you simply double-click in a blank area of the canvas.

Feedback on moving topics: Some of the iPad mind mapping apps don’t make it very clear what’s happening when you attempt to move a topic. I’m pleased to see that the developers of the DropMind app have paid close attention to making this intuitive. When you select a topic, a red “shadow” of it appears just below it. As you drag your finger to move the topic, it follows along, and places a red box around nearby topics as you pass by them. This shows you where your topic will “land” if you release your finger from the screen. It’s simple and very intuitive. Love it!

Conflict resolution: This is something I haven’t seen in an iPad mind mapping app before. Let’s say you made some changes to a DropMind map using the developer’s web-based mapping tool. Soon after, you modified the version of it that’s stored on your iPad, but didn’t have access to an Internet connection to grab the latest version. Now you have 2 copies of the same mind map, with slight differences. Which one is the right map? This tool enables you to tell DropMind which version should survive and be sync’d across both devices.

Anticipating user needs: Seavus assumes when someone downloads the DropMind iPad app, they may not have an online account. So the app gives you the opportunity to create one. Very smart! Even if you don’t actually use the web-based version of DropMind, this service is still useful as an online backup to the maps that are stored on your iPad.

Conclusion

I am somewhat particular in my expectations of mind mapping apps for the iPad and iPhone. They must have a certain minimum set of capabilities in order for me to take them seriously, namely:

• The ability to capture topic notes
• Support for hyperlinks
• Support for floating topics
• The ability to display icons and symbols
• Common-sense map management tools – how can I export a map, and how easy is the process?
• Undo and redo (these devices have small screens; you need to be able to easily recover from a mistake)

DropMind for the iPad shines on all counts. A great user interface design, combined with easy synchronization with DropMind’s “cloud” application help to make this app one of the best for the iPad.

The Most Improved Mind Mapping Software of 2009 is (drumroll)… MindManager.

The top 5 most improved programs, based on 215 responses, were:

1. MindManager (26.0%)
2. NovaMind (20.9%)
3. iMindMap (11.2%)
4. PersonalBrain (11.2%)
5. XMind (10.7%)

To view the full results as a stacked bar chart, please click on the image above.

It’s no surprise to me that MindManager was ranked number one. It has tremendous name recognition in this niche, and after some incremental improvements and a mediocre attempt at creating a collaboration tool (Mindjet Connect) in 2008, the company finally got it right in 2009 with Catalyst, a polished, full-featured collaboration environment that is really quite good.

This survey also shows us which programs are coming on strong as innovators. Gideon King and his development team at NovaMind have been relentless in pushing the envelope in terms of what’s possible with mind mapping software. It’s really cool to see that you, the readers of this blog, recognize their efforts, by NovaMind the second most improved mind mapping program in 2009 – and, significantly, only 6% behind MindManager!

iMindMap and XMind are fairly new entrants to the field of mind mapping software, making it very impressive that they came in number 3 and number 5. It appears that users and fans of mind mapping software recognize their developers’ commitment to innovation, too!

Finally, the survey results demonstrate that some of the developers of mind mapping software need to do some work in building name recognition. DropMind Desktop (37.7%), MindView (31.2%), VisualMind (30.7%) and MindGenius (27.9%) led the pack in terms of software programs that respondents weren’t aware of. DropMind is fairly new, and MindView was formerly OpenMind (the name change took place in early 2009), so those relatively high numbers are easy to understand. The other two programs have been around for a while, and I’m not sure why respondents aren’t aware of them.

Thanks to all of you who participated in this interesting survey!

Task information: You can now set task priorities, add, start and end dates, add task duration and percentage complete, as well as assign resources to task topics.

Filtering: In order to make sense of large, complex mind maps and zero in on the information you need, map filtering is essential. DropMind 1.1 now supports this capability. You can now filter topics based on icon markers, notes, hyperlinks, attachments and key topics or alerts. Nice!

Map parts: DropMind 1.1 enables you to save part of a map that you’ve created as a “map part,” and then re-use it later in different mind maps. This is a real time-saver, especially if you tend to frequently create the same types of mind maps (such as to do lists, meeting plans and business proposals). Business users will especially benefit from this new capability.

Alerts: You can now use alerts to set a reminder to open and work with a specific map at an assigned date and time. You can set an alert for any map topic.

New export formats: XML and Freemind have been added to the extensive list of export file types that DropMind can produce. When it comes to business applications of mind maps, more export formats is a very good thing.

Topic numbering: You can choose the numbering scheme from a predefined set of options and depth to which it will be applied within your mind maps.

Topic styles: You can modify the topic font, shape and color, alignment, size and margins, and subtopics layout, and then save these settings in the program’s style library.

Expanded language support: DropMind 1.1 now supports Japanese, French and Spanish languages.

Multi-platform support: DropMind 1.1 can now be used on the Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS and Linux Ubuntu operating systems.

A new Application Programming Interface (API): This will enable developers to write add-in programs to DropMind to further enhance its functionality. This could be potentially huge for Seavus and DropMind – but only if they can get the attention of developers.

Click here to view all of the new and improved features in DropMind version 1.1.

One of the biggest omissions that I complained about in the beta versions of DropMind was the lack of integration between the desktop and web-based apps. Seavus has addressed this limitation by offering two-way synchronization between DropMind and DropMind Web. The desktop version of the program also includes a convenient synchronization option. When it is enabled, your online maps will always be updated with the changes that you made on your locally stored maps – nice! I tried uploading a map from the desktop client to the web version, and it worked seamlessly.

The commercial version of DropMind also includes enhanced import and export options. During beta testing, the desktop program was able to import MindManager and FreeMind map files; the commercial version also enables you to import maps from XMIND and Microsoft Word document outlines. These two formats can be imported into the web version of DropMind, too.

The desktop version of DropMind now supports six export options: PDF, image, Word document, Rich Text Format (RTF) document, PowerPoint presentation and HTML. The Web version of DropMind offers export as image, Rich Text Format document, Word document, desktop DropMind file, PDF and HTML.

Another new feature: The beta of the Web version of DropMind featured a presentation mode. This capability has now been added to the desktop version. It enables you to generate separate slides of different topics by taking “snapshots” of specific branches and making them into a slideshow. You can also tell the program to auto-generate a set of slides – which wasn’t very impressive when I tried it with a map I produced in the program. I got better results doing my own snapshots, but still its performance was inconsistent. You first drag select topics to be included in a snapshot, and then select “take snapshot.” At one point, I selected three top-level topics to the right of the central topic. But when I took a snapshot, it only captured the bottom topic. Strange…

You can export presentation slides as a list of images. For some reason, DropMind groups them all into a zip file. I’m not sure why, but my personal preference would be for a set of JPG, BMP or TIF images.

In addition, the desktop version of DropMind contains the following new features:

• Insert parent topic
• Insert date and time on topic
• Mark topic is a key topic
• Balance map
• Choose map color with one click
• Unattach topic or whole branch
• Map outline view
• Same map as template
• Send map as e-mail attachment

The web version of DropMind also contains the following new features:

• Format painter, cut, copy and paste functions
• Spell checker
• Background gradient
• Flexibility in icon and image placement
• Outline view of the map
• Same map as template
• Send map as e-mail attachments

The desktop version of DropMind is available from the developer’s website for Windows and Linux operating systems. You can also sign up for an account for the web version here. A variety of pricing options are available.

It’s good to see this promising program improving. Map styles still look somewhat amateurish, however.

The DropMind web client

I found the DropMind web client to be well designed and easy to use. It offers a ribbon toolbar, which makes it easy to find the most frequently-used commands for creating and editing mind maps. Most common commands are grouped here, while the various map editing and enhancement functions are grouped in nested tabs in a vertical pane on the right side of the workspace.

I created a simple map with it, and found that it was very easy to add and edit topics, attach notes, icons and hyperlinks and to send invitations to share the map with others. The interface is well laid out and easy to understand. Multiple hyperlinks per topic are supported – which should be appreciated by business users. Everything was well behaved, and functioned as expected.

The DropMind web client offers what its developer calls a “four sphere map layout,” which it claims gives the user greater freedom to layout map topics. Most mind mapping programs distribute topics to the left and right of the main topic. Instead, drop mind distributes them equally above, below and to the right and left of the main topic – hence, the four sphere layout . This is apparently designed this way to maximize the use of the application’s workspace, since you can’t drag and drop topics from one location to another – not even to move a sub-topic from one parent to another. This seems like a strange omission, unless I just don’t understand how this aspect of how DropMind Web works.

The web client can import FreeMind and MindManager maps. From this online mapping tool, you can export your maps as an image, RTF document outline and to the desktop version of DropMind.

As you might expect, you can also share your maps with others, inviting them to view or collaborate on them. You can chat with others in real time, using using Google Talk, for enhanced collaboration.

One particularly cool capability of the DropMind web client is the ability to search online for images to add to your map. When you tell the program to add an image, a tabbed dialog box pops up that enables you to select from the icons included with the application, to browse your hard drive for one of your images or to perform an using the Flickr and Live image websites. It’s a very nice implementation!

In addition, DropMind Web can conduct Google and Delicious searches, using the text of the currently-selected topic as the search term. When I first decided to try these tools, however, I had a hard time finding their toolbar buttons – which were tucked below the right-side tools panel in an obscure location. Why aren’t these tools on the top toolbar?

Google search results are displayed in a pop‐up window within the application’s workspace; clicking on an individual search result opens the corresponding web page in another browser tab. How do you integrate the results of your search into your mind map? There isn’t an easy way. I tried to drag and drop one search result into my map, but nothing happened.

If you select a topic and do a Delicious search, the DropMind web client opens the search results in a new browser tab – different than the Google search functionality. Overall, I was disappointed that you can’t easily add the results of these searches to your maps. Ideally, this should be a drag-and-drop operation. According to the developer, future versions of DropMind will integrate with other social media services as well.

The desktop version of DropMind

The desktop version of DropMind (pictured above) works well, too, but I was a little disappointed with the fact that it doesn’t support the use of the “insert” key for adding new topics – almost a de facto standard in the world of mind mapping software. The program offers a selection of pre-defined map styles, but I found that many of the color schemes looked somewhat cartoonish for business use.

The desktop version of DropMind offers a surprising amount of flexibility when adding images to topics. By selecting the “image placement” button from the program’s toolbar, you can arrange the image above, below, or to the right or left of the topic text. Nice!

The program also provides numerous options for customizing your map background, including importing a background image and adjusting its transparency using a slider, and flipping or tiling the image. You can also choose from a range of solid background colors. Conveniently, DropMind ships with a modest selection of background patterns that you can easily use to customize the appearance of your maps.

DropMind offers a “focus” tool, which I thought would cause the map to be filtered to only display the currently selected topic and its children – so you can “focus” on developing its content. But instead, it only zooms the map in on that topic, while still displaying the entire map.

This program can import MindManager maps, and can export to PDF or image formats. Curiously, it doesn’t import FreeMind maps (but the web client does) and doesn’t export to RTF text outline format – which is essential if you start visually outlining an article or report in DropMind and then want to flesh it out in Microsoft Word.

Desktop/web integration

Seavus is only the second developer to introduce companion desktop and web-based versions of their mind mapping software; Mindjet was the first, with MindManager and MindManager Web, introduced in 2008. Ideally, this should allow for a seamless handoff of your maps between DropMind’s web and desktop versions. But unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case. In order to do so, you must export it from one platform and then import it into the other. This seems clunky to me, and here’s why:

The gold standard that I use for comparison isn’t a mind mapping tool at all, but rather a web clipping/personal information manager called EverNote. It makes the process of keeping its desktop, web client and iPhone versions synchronized very easy. All you have to do is click the “synchronize” button and the programs do the rest. This is what applications like DropMind and MindManager (which utilizes a separate application called Mindjet Connect to move maps between the desktop and the cloud) should aim for.

DropMind is currently in public beta; the developer hopes to launch both the desktop software and the web client in early May. Pricing will be announced at that time. The initial release of the desktop version of DropMind will be for Windows, with Mac and Linux to follow soon after. If you’re interested in evaluating DropMind You can download a free trial of the desktop program or sign up for the web service on the DropMind website.

Conclusion

The desktop and web versions of DropMind show a significant amount of promise, but like any beta of a version 1.0 product, they’re a bit rough around the edges.

One of Seavus’ biggest challenges, in my opinion, is trying to carve out a unique offering in a market for desktop and web-based mind mapping tools that is already very crowded. Offering something that’s based on Microsoft’s Silverlight technology or arranging topics in four “spheres” don’t offer much added value to users, and therefore does little to differentiate DropMind in their minds. What’s needed are new capabilities that make it easier for users to accomplish common tasks. Better integration is also essential, so users can seamlessly synchronize their maps so they can access the latest versions of them from any computer with an internet connection.

We’ll see what the minds at Seavus come up with as DropMind evolves.