Inspiration Software, a developer of mind mapping software for education and one of the pioneers of this type of program, has released an iPad app called Inspiration Maps. It offers a perfect set of features for teachers who want to incorporate visual thinking into their curricula, but it’s a little light weight for most business applications.

When you first open Inspiration Maps, you’re greeted with a template screen. Inspiration Maps gives you numerous templates to choose from. Many are educationally focused, but there are some business templates here as well, including:

• Cause and effect diagram
• Group project plan
• Root cause analysis

You can also create a blank diagram, without a template.

Creating a mind map in Inspiration Maps

Each topic in this app contains two buttons, located on alternate corners of the topic shape. The one in the upper left corner, which looks like a thought balloon, enables you to add notes to the topic via a bright yellow pop-over box – not the typical iPad dialog box – a welcome change! When you create a topic note, the button changes color from silver with a pencil to dark gray with document lines – a simple visual cue that it contains additional content. But it doesn’t scream for attention. It’s just right.

The other button, located in the lower right corner, looks like an arrow with a dotted line. Tapping on it creates a new sub-topic, joined with what looks like a hand-drawn connector line. Tapping once selects the sub-topic, while a double-tap enables you to type a name into it. This seems like extra work compared to most mind mapping apps I’ve reviewed. With other apps, when you create a new topic, the virtual keyboard pops up and you can immediately type a description into it. With Inspiration Maps, it takes an extra step.

Adjusting topic and map properties

You can change the properties of your map topics using an inspector button on the app’s toolbar. This opens a dialog box with tabs that enable you to change the topic shape (6 shapes are provided), the style of the topic (color, outline), topic text formatting and diagram-level settings (connector style, map background color). You can use a pinch gesture to manually resize a topic shape – nice!

One minor problem I ran into while editing a mind map is that sometimes I wanted to apply a style only to a single topic, but I inadvertently had several topics selected. That’s because the blue outline color Inspiration Maps uses to show that a topic is selected didn’t look much different on my iPad 1′s screen than the normal gray drop shadow color. Perhaps it’s more distinct on a newer iPad with the higher-resolution retina display, but I found it took a little getting used to on my “old” tablet.

You can also add images to your diagrams easily, Using any stored in the iPad’s photo library. This means you could use its built-in camera to shoot photos and then include them in your mind maps, useful in the classroom but I’m not sure how often it would be used in business applications. When you add an image, Inspiration Maps treats it as the topic shape, not as something you add to one. As with topic shapes, you can use a pinch gesture to resize images.

Brainstorming mode

One of my favorite features of Inspiration for PCs and Macs has always been its brainstorming mode, which lets you quickly add a series of ideas to your map, using only the keyboard and the Enter key. I’m pleased to see that the developer has included it in this iPad version, complete with the distinctive lightning bolt icon.

When you tap on the lightning bolt to enter brainstorming mode, a cloud appears over your map’s central topic (see the screen shot) and the virtual keyboard pops up. The “return” key changes into a “next” key, encouraging you to enter another idea. Each time you type and tap the “next” key, Inspiration Maps adds a new topic with the text you just typed. In this mode, the app doesn’t give you control over topic placement. It just creates room for each topic and places it on the screen. It’s up to you to arrange them the way you want after your brainstorming session.

In short, this operating mode is a very efficient way to add content to your maps quickly. I enjoyed working with it. I can easily see a business executive or a teacher, with their iPad connected to a projector, soliciting ideas from the people in the room, and then adding them quickly to the map on their iPad.

Outline view

Of course, Inspiration Maps has an outline view, just like its big brother on the desktop. This app displays a hierarchical view of your map against a tan looseleaf paper background. The layout is Spartan, but very functional. The left side of the screen displays arrow icons that can be used to expand and collapse the levels of your outline. If any topics have notes, the “filled thought balloon” icon is displayed to the left of the topic text.

When you tap on a topic to select it in outline view, a control bar pops up that enables you to indent or outdent it one level. A plus icon enables you to quickly add a new topic at the same level of your outline. And a globe icon enables you to navigate any hypertext links in your topics. Tapping on a link opens the iPad’s Safari browser and takes you to that URL.

On the far right of the workspace is a drag icon that enables you to move topics up and down the outline. This design is very smart, because it actually prevents you from accidentally dragging an outline topic to a different location in the outline.

Exporting

Inspiration Maps gives you a number of options for sharing your maps:

• You can send them via e-mail
• Save them as images to your photos folder
• You can print them, using the iPad’s AirPrint capability
• You can store and share your maps on Dropbox and iTunes

If you’re outlining a writing project (a common application for Inspiration in schools), you can export your map or outline to word processing apps, such as Pages. On my iPad, iA Writer, DocstoGo and iThoughtsHD also showed up on the export menu.

The one thing Inspiration Maps doesn’t do right now is produce a file format that the desktop version of Inspiration can open and edit. I tried this with a map I created on my iPad. After exporting it to my Dropbox account, tried to open it with Inspiration 9 on my PC, but it gave me an error message.

This isn’t surprising, considering that Inspiration 9 was developed prior to the iPad version. Presumably, the desktop version of the program would need to be compatible with the output of the iPad app, so it can properly interpret its file format and ignore any unsupported features. Perhaps in Inspiration 10? I’m not sure if this would be a priority for the developer, considering that they are completely focused on the education market.

Conclusion

This is a very attractive, easy to use mind mapping and outlining app. As one of the pioners in the mind mapping space, I’ve always had the deepest respect for Inspiration Software. So I Was very excited when I heard that they were working on an iPad app. It’s perfectly designed for the education market, but is perhaps a bit too light weight for business applications – especially considering that in most cases, you’re going to want to create a map on your iPad and then utilize its content in other software, such as a Word document or PowerPoint presentation.

Still, Inspiration Maps is an impressive debut. I can’t wait to see what the developer does with it in the coming months and years. It should be great.

The app is available in two versions: Inspiration Maps Lite is free, but limits you to creating only 5 mind maps and doesn’t support file sharing with other apps or online file storage services. The full version costs US$14.99. Both versions are available in the Apple AppStore.

Called Inspiration Diagrams, the new visual thinking app is designed to help students in grades 6-12 to create visual diagrams and outlines that help them to clarify their thoughts, organize and analyze information, integrate new knowledge and learn to think critically.

Inspiration will lead off with an abridged version of the app, Diagrams Lite, which will be available for free in the AppStore in March. That will be followed by a full version, which will be available for purchase in April.

Why is this product launch significant? Because in the last 2 years, iPads have made major advances into the classroom, and are now being incorporated into primary school curricula around the world. In addition, Apple recently announced a far-reaching education initiative that will make it easier for teachers and others to create books and materials for the classroom.

You know this education revolution is picking up serious momentum when even the Catholic church in the small town where I live is incorporating iPads into one of its grade school classrooms!

The challenge, I suspect, will be for teachers to actually figure out how they will integrate Diagrams into their curricula. Hopefully, Inspiration Software will provide teachers with some resources to help them do this. The ideal scenario, at least in my mind, would be for schools to teach kids how to analyze problems and develop innovative solutions using this mobile thinking tool.

• How to enable 30 people to co-edit a mind map
• Which mind mapping programs have an outline view?
• Concept mapping vs. mind mapping?
• A mind map template for conducting research
• Southbeach Modeler – a promising concept mapping tool
• Visualizing portfolio data

Mind Mapping Insider members can access this audio file and the valuable resources mentioned within it using the link below:

If you cannot see the link, you need to become a member of the Mind Mapping Insider membership group. It’s inexpensive – about the price of a few large cups of premium coffee per month! Click here to learn how.

Please be sure to send me your questions for the December coaching call.

I logged into my beta account, after choosing the option to convert it to a Webspiration Pro trial account, and had a look around. The interface is identical to what I saw when I first reviewed the beta version in 2008 (click the image above right to view a larger version). The application now offers nearly 50 mind map templates, a mixture of business (group project plan, problem solving process and social media campaign, for example) and college/educational (persuasive speech or essay, inquiry-based paper and study guide, for example). That’s nice to see, but the list of templates is a hodge-podge and could have been divided more neatly into business and college-level template folders. There also seems to be a number of templates that are focused on the needs of educators (vs. students) that I’m not sure really belong here.

The map collaboration capabilities of Webspiration Pro now include the ability to track who made what changes to your team map, as well as the ability to roll back changes to a previous version of the map. I also noticed that, in addition to downloading your mind map as an Inspiration document, you can choose options to download it as a Word document or transfer it to your Google Docs account. In particular, it’s nice to see the capability of moving your map from one cloud-based service (Webspiration) to another popular online document tool (Google Docs).

My only question is: Why was Webspiration in beta for 3 years? Normally, a program spends 3-6 months in beta, with a small group of testers. Inspiration Software says over 200,000 people participated in the Webspiration beta. To be fair, the application was launched just before the global economy went into the deepest recession in many years. The education market, which is Inspiration Software’s main focus, probably faced frozen budgets and limited spending on software for the last several years. Now that the global economy is starting to recover from the doldrums, it will be interesting to see where the developer takes this solid online tool. Will it become a leader in the online mapping space and continue to expand its palette of business-focused visual mapping tools? We’ll see.

Webspiration Pro is very affordable: subscriptions are US$39 per year (or $3.25 per month). No enterprise or volume pricing has been announced.

I said it in 2008 when I first saw Webspiration and I’ll say it again: This is a well-designed tool that is on par with the best web-based mind mapping tools, and is worthy of your attention. The cost is low enough that you can easily open an account and spend several months playing around with it to see if it meets the needs of you and your team.

You can learn more about Webspiration Pro on the application’s website.

People tend to get pretty passionate about it. Several years ago, one of the major software vendors in this niche decided to ask some non-traditional survey questions of its users, to see what people’s emotional connection was with their software. They asked questions like, “How would you feel if product X was suddenly taken away from you, and you couldn’t use it any more?”

They reported that numerous people got upset at the thought of having to work without their favorite planning and brainstorming tool. This story made me smile, but it points to something deeper, a connection between this method of visual thinking and who people are – and who they want to become. In short, mind mapping inspires people. That begs the question:

What, specifically, inspires YOU about mind mapping?

What gets you excited about it?

What kind of a tangible difference has it made in your life?

Could you imagine working and creating without it?

I look forward to your thoughts and insights, which are always thought-provoking. Thanks in advance for contributing to this discussion!

New presentation manager: For students who need to present their ideas in class, Inspiration 9 adds a new presentation manager, which will help them to quickly and easily create slide shows from their maps. The program will give students the freedom to add, duplicate, reorder and delete slides and talking points, as select from a library of attractive slide templates. The Inspiration website shows a screen shot that depicts a four-pane layout , with a vertical panel of slides on the left, the main slide work area in the center of the screen and a narrow pane on the right that will display the part of your map from which the current sequence of slides was created. Finally, a small horizontal pane below the workspace will enable students to capture talking points for each slide.

I think this presentation view is an important addition to Inspiration, because it will give students another way to output their work – and to do so within the Inspiration environment.

Inspiration Presenter: A free presentation player application will be included on the program’s installation CD and in downloadable form on the Inspiration website, which will enablepresentations to be played directly from Inspiration 9. Interestingly, this app will enable you to present using a single screen or take advantage of speaker monitor support that shows speaker notes and other presenter information separate from the slides that the audience sees.

More curriculum-focused symbol images: Inspiration has always contained an impressive library of symbols, shapes and images that can be used for map topics. Version 9 expands it by adding numerous new images that are focused on school topics, such as literature, math, history and geography. Sounds like a smart move to support students who are the primary users of Inspiration.

Lockable symbols in templates: Teachers will be able to lock symbols when developing templates – so once they distribute those map templates to students, they can’t inadvertently delete those symbols.

Linking phrases: For many years, Inspiration has enabled users to place words on topic connector lines, enabling you to create concept maps that denote the relationships between topics. Inspiration 9 adds a right-click command that enables you to choose from a library of relationship-based words and phrases, such as “generates.” “implies” and “results in.” Nice!

Mind map view: Inspiration has always enabled you to create mind maps – a central topic with sub-topics radiating from it – but version 9 adds a map view that looks more organic, with tapered and curved connector lines. In addition, you can add new topic and subtopic branches with one click, drag and drop ideas from one topic to another and add notes to topics.

Improved outline view: Inspiration 9 will add more organizing, outlining and writing capabilities to the program’s outline view. Specifically, you will be able to show symbols and linking phrases to help you to make visual connections between topics while working in outline view. You will be able to combine topics, as well as take longer single ideas and break them into multiple topics.
topics.

I look forward to playing with Inspiration 9 in the near future. It sounds like a worthwhile upgrade to one of the oldest and best respected mind mapping programs around – especially the presentation view.

Here’s what’s new in Webspiration:

Add your own images: You can now add graphics and images from the files on your computer or from a URL as a topic, a symbol and even into a note. I tried inserting a graphic from a URL; the application quickly fetched it and inserted it into my map, along with grab handles that I could use to resize it. This new functionality worked great, but it would be even better if Webspiration enabled you to drag and drop images from another browser window (I tried it in Internet Explorer 7 – it didn’t work).

A redesigned starter screen gives you fast access to the documents and tools you use most often, including links to recently opened and updated files, and recently invited people. In addition, a new “templates/examples” button gives you access to an expanded library of templates and examples you can use to jump start your projects. Many of these are clearly business oriented, covering applications such as:

• Developing an action plan,
• Analyzing causes and effects,
• Developing a job description,
• Taking meeting minutes,
• Conducting a performance review, and
• Performing a SWOT analysis (strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats)

There are over 35 templates and 7 examples in all. Each one is professionally designed and contain brief instructions. I predict that these resources will go a long way toward making Webspiration a valuable tool for business collaboration.

Improved chat tool: An improved chat tool integrated within the Webspiration interface lets you generate a complete and accurate log of conversations between map collaborators. All chat activity for a map document is permanently recorded and date- and time-stamped, and all document users can view the complete record. At the bottom of the chat window, a small icon gives you access to cut, copy and paste options for chat text, so you can incorporate it into Word documents and other reports – nice!

Conclusion

Although Inspiration Software has focused its flagship desktop mind mapping software on the education market in recent years, it appears that the developer is giving business users a nod with this well-designed web-based mapping application. It’s good to see that they’re continuing to add features and updates to it. They’re doing a great job!

Because there are over 20 commercially available mind mapping software programs on the market today, there are actually many bargains to be had. Earlier today, I did an informal review of all of the developers’ websites, and found an amazing 14 programs available for under US $100. In some cases, these are the basic versions of the programs. Two of these programs are actually free.

Here are the programs that you can purchase and download today for less than US $100:

Aviz ThoughtMapper (PC): $59

BrainMine (PC): $52

Eminec MYmap (PC): 29 Euro/approx. US $36

Freemind (PC/Mac/Linux): As its name indicates, this open source program is free. Nada. Zero. Zip. Zilch. $0.

HeadCase (PC): 50 Euro/approx. US $63

iMindMap 3 Elements (PC/Mac): $99

Inspiration 8 (PC/Mac): $69

MindApp (PC): $39

MindCad (Mac): $49

MindPad (PC): $70

MindChart (PC): $20

MindVisualizer (PC): $79

NovaMind 4 Express (PC/Mac): $49

XMIND 3 (PC/Mac): The developer offers a free open-source version, as well as a full version for a subscription fee of $49 per year.

One caveat: These programs vary widely in terms of how often they are updated by their developers. Several of them are getting pretty long in the tooth (e.g., HeadCase, MindChart), while others (XMIND, NovaMind) are state of the art.

One final note: If you’re looking for help finding the best program for your needs, don’t forget about my Mind Mapping Manifesto e-book.

A webified Inspiration interface

A horizontal toolbar at the top of the screen contains map level tools, which can be used to add topics and hyperlinks, and to switch to outline view. Above that is a set of drop-down menus, containng document, edit, view, symbol, link, effects, utilities, tools and help.

The bottom of the screen includes formatting tools, which control such things as topic font, size and formatting, line and arrow styles and more. This part of the screen also contains map zoom and collaboration controls. Webspiration displays a list of the map users and editors; clicking on a name pops up a dialog box showing all of the current contributors to the map.

A familiar floating symbols toolbar, long a fixture on the Inspiration desktop, makes an appearance on the left side of the Webspiration desktop, too, providing quick access to topic shapes.

What can it do?

Like Inspiration, Webspiration can be used to create mind maps, concept maps and process flow charts. It also offers an outline view – which has long been one of my favorite capabilities of Inspiration.

Also, surprisingly, the program’s popular RapidFire brainstorming mode – which enables users to add topics and sub-topics to their maps using only the keyboard and the Enter key.

Overall, it’s a very rich, well-laid out workspace that closely mirrors the experience of mapping in Inspiration. I actually found myself forgetting that I’m creating a mind map within a web browser!

Collaboration enhances the mapping experience

The biggest new feature of Webspiration is collaboration – you can invite people to share and edit a map. Inspiration Software says this feature is ideal for team projects, study groups, and for co-authoring materials. The process is easy and quick; after you have sent your invites, a small, translucent dialog box pops up to let you know how many it sent – that’s nice user feedback.

One person can edit a map at a time; when you’re done editing it, you use the “current user” pop-up window to relinquish your editor role so the map owner can once again edit it. There is no integrated chat function at this time.

Integration with Inspiration

Webspiration can upload map files from Inspiration 8 to the web space, and vice versa. I tried downloading a map that Brian Friedlander and I worked on together in Webspiration (pictured above; click on image for a larger version). It saved the map as an .ISF file in the directory I specified, and it opened with no problems in Inspiration 8. I also uploaded a fairly complext Inspiration map to Webspiration, and it appeared there quickly, with no apparent problems. I was pleased to see that it placed this map in a separate tab from the one that I was co-editing with Brian. Nice!

Conclusion

Webspiration is an impressive web mapping tool. I’d hardly call it a beta version, however. It appears to be full featured, stable and behaves the way I would expect it to. In fact, the experience of using it is so similar to using Inspiration that I’d say that the developer has a real winner here. No pricing has been announced for Webspiration; I would guess that it will be available via a monthly subscription fee after it emerges from beta testing.