NovaMind Software recently released a beta version of NovaMind 5.7 for Windows that has some intriguing new capabilities. Two of them have clear productivity benefits; the third I’m still scratching my head to figure out how it could possibly be used in a business setting.

Format painter

In Microsoft Word, the format painter acts like a smart cut-and-paste, enabling you to copy the formatting from one block of text and then apply it in other parts of your document. It’s a very useful feature, in my opinion. Imagine that capability within a mind mapping environment, and you’ll get the idea of what the developers of NovaMind have accomplished here. This is how the format painter in NovaMind works: You first select a topic, then click on the format painter button (which looks like a paint brush – just like in Word. The cursor changes to resemble a highlighter marker. Any topics you click when the format painter is selected are transformed to match the style of the “donor” topic.

In Microsoft Word, the format painter is designed so that if you click it once, it can only be used to format one block of text, and then it automatically shuts off. However, if you double-click it, it stays “locked” on until you toggle it off, so you can apply the formatting of the “donor” text to multiple blocks of text. I’m pleased to see that NovaMind has decided to mimic this behavior. I tried this feature, and it worked really well. Please see the video above for a demonstration of how this works. It’s pretty slick. The “marker cursor” provides excellent visual feedback, while a single click applies the formatting – no dragging the cursor as you have to do in Word.

New themes added

NovaMind has offered map themes for a while now – pre-set collections of topic, connector line, text and background settings that enable you to change the look of your mind maps very quickly – but version 5.7 adds several new ones, including corkboard and draft (which incorporates the new flexitopics – see below for details). But there’s more that has been enhanced under the hood, if you will – you can now designate themes as favorites and can select one theme to be used as the default for creation of all new maps.

If you are using NovaMind Pro or Platinum, you can create a new theme either from the current mind map or from an existing theme. As the screen shot below shows, NovaMind opens a new “theme view,” which displays a genericized version of a mind map with named elements, and a ribbon toolbar that enables you to adjust any of the map’s properties. You then give your template a name, and save it. That’s all it takes.

I’m impressed with how easy this template editor is to use. Many programs (like the aforementioned Microsoft Word) enable you to create templates, but the process of doing so is somewhat byzantine. In NovaMind 5.7 beta, everything you need is neatly arranged on the toolbar, and the theme name input box is even integrated there. This increases the odds that new users will feel confident to create their own themes.

Flexitopics

The third major enhancement in NovaMind 5.7 beta is something completely new called flexitopics. The format/topic shape menu now contains a new flexitopic option. This converts any topic into a flexible branch with several control handles, which enable you to stretch and reshape it at will. Advanced users can add or delete control points, giving you a very granular level of control over the appearance of your topic lines. This new functionality is tightly integrated with NovaMind 5′s new layout engine, which causes other branches to move out of the way, yet stay fairly close for a compact map layout.

Flexitopics can contain task information, checkboxes and adornment images (NovaMind’s term for icons or symbols); these elements follow the curve of the topic line.

What’s nice is that you can apply flexitopic formatting to any topic, and can create maps with a combination of normal and flexitopic lines. For even greater control. What’s curious to me, however, is how this new capability would be useful in a business setting. Also, NovaMind claims that flexitopics aren’t available in any other mind mapping program. iMindMap has offered a “freehand branch” for some time that enables you to draw complex shaped topic lines, and then manipulate them using control points.

I have now installed this beta version on two computers, and it seems to be very stable. If these enhancements are of interest to you, then you ought to download the beta and try it yourself.

1. Screen size: The screen size of the iPad is “just right” to enable visual mapping. Compared to the screen of the iPhone, it feels positively expansive. If you’ve ever tried to create a mind map on an iPhone, you know what I’m talking about.
2. Portability: The iPad is small, flat and very portable, which makes it more likely you’ll carry it with you to capture your ideas.
3. It’s fun: Its form factor – not too big, not to small, unobtrusive and easy to balance on your lap – makes it fun to create mind maps. In fact, I prefer it to working with a mouse and keyboard to develop my mind maps.
4. Tactile qualities: The touch interface of the iPad just feels right when mind mapping. Unlike a desktop PC or laptop, the user interface of the iPad doesn’t get in the way when you’re creating  maps on it. With the iPad, you use your fingertip to add and manipulate your map’s content. There’s something very tactile about it that brings the whole experience much closer to the organic feel of hand-drawing a mind map.
5. Capture your ideas – now: Because the iPad is an “instant on” device (you don’t need to wait for it to boot up) and has a long battery life, it’s ideal for quickly capturing ideas or adding content to one of your maps when you have 10 minutes to spare.
6. Connected mind maps: One of the most common usage scenarios for mind mapping apps on the iPad, iPhone and other portable devices is that you get inspired, fire up your device and capture some ideas on the fly, and then transfer them to a desktop mapping program for further development. This is a very powerful way to work.
7. Access your maps anywhere: You can carry your collection of mind maps with you wherever you go. Several mind mapping apps automatically sync with “cloud”-based services, ensuring that you always have one-tap access to your full library of ideas, projects and other visual summaries.
8. Presentation punch: You can easily use it to present your ideas to small groups of people, which will help to give your ideas a definite “Wow!” factor. Plus, you can annotate your ideas as you discuss them.
9. Team productivity tool: With several of today’s visual mapping apps, you can contribute to a team-based mind mapping environment without spending several hundred dollars on desktop mind mapping software.
10. Try it – you may like it! It’s an inexpensive way for you to figure out if you like mind mapping or not. Before you invest in desktop software, why not try out a low-cost mind mapping app for your iPad?

Sometimes you want to add a little pizzazz to a report. You don’t want a complex mind map that’s going to potentially confuse the stakeholders to whom you need to share a report. You just want something that’s going to jump off the page, that’s going to command attention AND communicate some useful information, visually. That’s when you may want to consider creating a highly stylized mind maplike the one above. It’s simple, but it packs a lot of visual impact.

In this new Mind Mapping Insiders tutorial, I demonstrate how to create this type of visual map, using SmartDraw VP.

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To sign up for the Mind Mapping Insider program, please click here. You’ll open yourself up to a wealth of advanced strategies and techniques that will help you to become a better visual thinker, problem solver and project manager – all for the cost of a premium coffee per week. Why not make an investment in yourself today?

Most people have SEEN mind maps – but static maps on a web page, in a PDF file or even in an online gallery don’t begin to hint at their awesome business potential. You see, the typical mind map displayed online usually only shows a hierarchy of topics and subtopics, and perhaps a few images. But a big part of the business value of mind mapping software is missing from the maps you’ve seen online.

If you’re thinking about investing in mind mapping software, but all you’ve seen are relatively plain looking visual maps that only contain words and pictures, you’re NOT getting the full story. In this video, I show you what you’ve been missing!

• How can mind mapping software be used to achieve breakthroughs in collaboration?
• How can you gain corporate buy-in to purchase mind mapping software (always a challenge, because the IT department rules the desktop)?
• What are some recent innovations in mind mapping (smart phones, tablets and innovative web-based apps)?
• How am I using these innovations in my work?

In addition, SMCHAT participants asked many other questions during the course of this one-hour session. I compiled the list of tweets from it using TwapperKeeper, and they are now available here as a PDF file.

The story of how I managed this maelstrom of activity is an interesting one, and it involves a mind map. First, I knew going into this session what the questions were going to be. So I prepared a mind map, with major topics representing each of the four main questions. I then brainstormed what I would ideally like to say in response to each question. These weren’t intended to be “canned” answers that I would rely on during the chat, but rather talking points that  I could refer to during the discussion.

During the chat, I used a two-screen set up: The first screen had my mind map, displayed full size. The second contained two Twitter apps. The first, HootSuite, was what I used to post tweets to the discussion. I had columns open to see if I received any direct messages from the SMCHAT host during the course of the discussion, so I wouldn’t miss any important communications from Kelli Schmith, the host of this session.

Most Twitter clients only update about every minute or so, which is far too slow for a fast-paced Twitter chat, especially if it’s a topic that participants feel strongly about – which this one definitely was! So I opened another app called TwitterFall in a browser window next to HootSuite and set it up with the hashtag #SMCHAT. Here’s what it looks like (I think this link should work, even if you’re not logged in. I tested it with two browsers). TwitterFall displays incoming tweets in real time, as if they were a “waterfall” of tweets, cascading down the screen. It has a full-screen option, which hides all of the extraneous interface elements and displays only the tweets that meet your search criteria.

TwitterFall is a bit overwhelming at first, but it made it possible for me to visualize the flow of discussion as quickly as it was happening. This enabled me to see if any participants had posted questions that I needed to answer, to post add-on comments to the knowledge that others were sharing and to keep an eye on the chat host, so I would know when she was ready to move on to the next question.

This set-up worked like a charm. I was able to keep up with the flow of discussion and questions using TwitterFall, and post relevant responses quickly. I was also able to glance at my mind map, and type in my responses to the main session questions. I didn’t want to get caught up in the moment and forget why I was there. So I tried to make my tweets a balance of responses to the ad hoc questions and issues that participants raised as well as the main points I wanted to make in response to each of the four main questions.

If you’re the guest of a lively Twitter chat like this one, you’ll find it’s the quickest hour you’ll ever spend in your life. But ultimately it’s one of the most fulfilling. You’ll get to meet some very smart, engaged people who you can add to your list of relationships on Twitter, and you get a sense for what’s on the minds of people – always valuable when you’re a publisher like me.

Thanks again to Kelli Schmith and the great people of SMCHAT for having me. It was a blast!

In this latest Effective Mind Maps report, we’ll take a closer look at what makes this mind map so impactful, and what we can learn from it.

This report is only accessible to Mind Mapping Insider members. Why not make a resolution for the new year to become a more effective mind mapper – which will enable you to become a better planner, problem solver and project manager? Sign up today to join the growing group of MMI members who have made the decision to be more influential and creative in their jobs.

1. Turn action items in your mind maps into tasks. Add start and end dates, percentage completion, level of urgency and other meta-data to these tasks, to help you drive your project forward efficiently.

2. Add priority symbols (1,2,3 or A,B,C) to topics that are the most important. This will make it easier for you to visually scan the contents of your map and pick out the most critical bits.

3. Schedule alarms on important topics. Alarms enable you to forget about an upcoming event until just before you need to remember it – freeing up more of what productivity expert David Allen calls your “psychic RAM.”

4. Use color, shapes, boundaries and other visual techniques to add emphasis to your map’s most important content. If you create a mind map that is only black and white, everything looks the same. You need to incorporate visual cues into your maps to help you quickly decode its meaning – and to make it more meaningful to others.

5. Use your program’s project management features to delegate tasks to your team members and to track their progress during the course of your project’s implementation.

6. Divide a large, complex mind map into several linked sub-maps. Consider moving all background or supporting information into a sub-map, as well as any information related to future project phases. Just the current segment of the project should remain in the main mind map, which will help you to keep focused on what you need to do now.

7. Connect all supporting information to your mind map as attachments or links. They function like shortcuts and will help you to keep everything you need just one click away.

8. Divide the content of your mind map into main branches for informational topics, ideas and action items. Visually segmenting your information in this way will help you to skim your mind map and zero in on the key pieces in which you’re interested.

Do you have any suggestions how how to make mind maps more action oriented? Please share them in the comments area below!

The OmniGraffle experience starts when you first open the app. You’re greeted by a set of visual instructions that explain how to perform common tasks in OmniGraffle for the iPad. But this isn’t just a static page, but an actual OmniGraffle document. It contains several regions where you can actually try the tasks you just learned about. That’s very cool, and it’s an approach that other visually oriented app developers would do well to emulate. The main menu of the app also contains seven very attractive examples of the types of diagrams that can be created with it, which should inspire users to utilize its extensive capabilities.

Creating basic shapes in OmniGraffle for iPad

This well-designed app contains a number of sets of stencils, which you can use to quickly build professional-looking visual diagrams. Built-in stencils include Shapes, 3D Shapes, Connections, Fonts, Fills, Software, and Variables. Many third-party OmniGraffle stencils are also supported.

To add a shape to your diagram, you simply tap and hold one to select it, and then drag and drop it in the app’s workspace. From there, you can manipulate the shape’s size using drag handles. An “info” button on the app’s spartan toolbar enables you to adjust its other properties, such as fill color, border thickness, shadow and text label positioning. Each shape can have a transparent shadow which falls on objects or layers that are behind it. You can decide just how fuzzy or sharp you want the shadow to be, as well as choosing its position, color, and transparency. OmniGraffle also supports linear and radial fills, blending up to three colors with customizable centers and angles.

From this info menu, you can also modify the canvas of your diagram, including canvas size, background color, units and scale, background grid and diagram layout (or chart, mind map, diagram growth direction and separation between nodes).

This diagram layout dialog box also contains a clever “layout now” button which, when tapped, attempts to rearrange your shapes to conform to the type of diagram you have selected. I dragged 4 shapes into the workspace, selected the icon representing or chart and top-down growth direction and then tapped the “lay out now” button. OmniGraffle moved all of the shapes into a horizontal line, neatly arranged as one level of my org chart. This is a cool feature, which should be very much appreciated by new users of OmniGraffle.

Selecting and moving objects

As you would expect, you move shapes around the workspace by tapping and dragging them. What’s unique and quite welcome is that as you move a shape around the workspace, guidelines pop up to help you quickly align a shape with other adjoining shapes – both horizontally and vertically – as well as to the horizontal and vertical centers of the workspace. This is a real time saver, and eliminates the need to select several objects and then use an “align” command to make them line up properly. Snap to grid functionality and layers enable you to create more complex diagrams.

The method that this app utilizes to select multiple objects is also very clever. You simply tap and hold your finger on the screen adjacent to one of the shapes you want to select. A blue star-like pattern appears on the canvas, beneath your finger tip. When you drag your finger, a selection box follows its direction, enabling you to select multiple adjacent objects — very cool!

The drawing menu

Within the drawing menu, you can add text to a shape, connect shapes, tap and drag to create different sized shapes and create freehand shapes. This two-tiered menu keeps the main menu simple, while a single tap gives you immediate access to the app’s more advanced tools. In other words, if you’re just starting out with OmniGraffle, you can accomplish most common tasks using only the Main menu. However, if you want to have more finite control over your drawings, you simply open the drawing menu to reveal additional options. In my opinion, this is excellent user interface design.

To add text to a shape you simply tap the text button in the toolbar, then a shape or the canvas; you can also double tap a shape to add text to it. From the info menu, You can adjust text label properties, including size, font, color and style (bold, italic or underlined).

To connect shapes, you select the connector line button from the drawing toolbar and then drag your finger between two shapes. The program intelligently connects them. Even if you start dragging the line from within the shape, it still snaps to its outside edge. This intelligent behavior means that you do not need to be very accurate when you tap and drag to start the line, thankfully. You can also create unattached lines and can use drag handles to adjust the endpoints of your line or add a mid-point to it. In addition, you can add a label to a line, which opens up a whole range of possibilities in terms of cause and effect diagrams, concept mapping and more.

The “make a shape” button lets you tap and drag to create shapes of any size; the context menu is used to change the default shape. A freehand drawing button gives you the freedom to create more complex hand-drawn shapes. If you drag a line roughly in a circle until you form a closed loop, the app treats that as an enclosed object, to which you can then add a fill color. I’m not sure how practical the free-hand drawing mode is, because it’s almost impossible to draw a straight line by dragging your finger.

Thankfully, this app also contains an “undo” command, which makes it easy to recover from any design mistakes you may make.

Add tables to your diagrams

Surprisingly, OmniGraffle for iPad even lets you create tables. To do this, you first select a group of adjacent shapes. Next, you touch and hold your selection, then release. The context menu that appears contains a “more” command, which gives you access to the “make table” command. The app automatically groups and arranges your shapes to create a table. The table has one column and as many rows as the shapes of your original selection. For example, if you had three shapes selected, you will end up with one column and three rows.

To add more rows and columns, you simply use drag handles on the right and bottom edges of the shapes. I tried this with three rounded rectangles, and found it very easy to create a table out of them, and then to use the drag handles (which look like miniature tables themselves) to add rows and columns to it. This is a very clever way to handle this functionality!

Adding images to your diagram

In OmniGraffle for the iPad, images behave in much the same way as shapes. You can add many of the same properties to them, such as a stroke or a shadow. An image sub-menu within the info menu enables you to control the image layout (natural size, stretch the image to fill the shape or tile the image within the shape) and opacity. I tried this with one of the images I have stored on my iPad, and found the results to be very cool. By default, the photo I selected filled the rounded rectangle I selected. This is an excellent way to add visual impact to your diagrams. For example, you could place an image of yourself along with your contact information in one corner of your diagram. This feature opens up a lot of possibilities!

Selection and styles dialog box speeds changes

OmniGraffle’s main menu also contains a “selection and style” command, which enables you to view all of the objects that make up your document, and the styles that have been applied to them. A set of buttons at the top of the dialog box enable you to select objects by layer or by a linear list. A second set of buttons at the bottom enables you to show or hide objects by type (lines and connectors, stroke style, fill style, shadow style and font style). These sophisticated tools enable you to select a a group of objects with the same properties and make batched changes to them. For example, this dialog box told me that my document contained two rounded rectangles. Clicking on that type of object in the dialogue automatically selected both shapes in my diagram.

This dialog box is also used to view objects by layer, and to drag and drop objects from one layer to another.

Geometry settings: An even finer level of control

For an iPad app, OmniGraffle contains an amazing depth of features. Using a geometry sub-menu within the info menu, you can even make changes to object properties such as position, size and rotation. You can also select a “lock aspect ratio” setting, which if it is turned on, proportionally changes both dimensions of an object size as you drag it to resize it. These are capabilities you would expect to find in a desktop drawing program, not an iPad app!

Importing and exporting files

OmniGraffle for iPad can import OmniGraffle for Mac files via Apple’s Mobile.me iDisk or WebDAV. You can also export your OmniGraffle document to these two services or iTunes, copy your document as an image to paste elsewhere, send it to the photo gallery on your iPad or AirPrint it. You can also e-mail it as an OmniGraffle file, PDF or PNG image file. Lots of options here! My one disappointment is that there isn’t a version of OmniGraffle for Windows, and I don’t own a Mac. I’d love to see how well a diagram created on the iPad holds up when opened in the Mac version of the program.

Conclusion

if you are visually oriented person and like to sketch or diagram your ideas, you will find OmniGraffle for iPad to be a worthy creative companion. If you’ve never created business diagrams before, this app is the perfect tool to help you get started. Its developers have obviously spent a lot of time anticipating how users will interact with their app, and have come up with some very clever solutions to give OmniGraffle for iPad exceptional usability. Omni Group, the developers of this app, have succeeded in creating a powerful yet easy-to-use tool that should surprise and delight you and should be an excellent complement to OmniGraffle for the Mac.

You can obtain this excellent app in the AppStore for US$49.99 – a bit expensive as apps go, but I think its incredible functionality justifies its price. For more information about OmniGraffle for iPad, please visit the product page on the Omni Group website.

In this mind map, the author attempted to convey some general information about types of business acquisitions. He or she simply copied and pasted a number of paragraphs from the Wikipedia definition of this term into a mind map.

In this latest report in my Effective Mind Maps series, we’ll look at some of the things that really ought to be improved about this map, and then we’ll look at another, more effective way to present this same information.

This report is only accessible to Mind Mapping Insider members. Why not make a resolution for the new year to become a more effective mind mapper – which will enable you to become a better planner, problem solver and project manager? Sign up today to join the growing group of MMI members who have made the decision to be more influential and creative in their jobs.

Such is the case with this week’s Effective Maps subject. The author of this map was apparently trying to fit as much as possible on a single sheet of paper. The result is a densely-packed mind map that is somewhat hard to read and interpret.

In this new Effective Mind Maps report, we’ll look at some ways in which this regional planning mind map could be improved.

This report is only accessible to Mind Mapping Insider members. If you’re ready to step up and become a more strategic player in your organization, sign up today to join this group of MMI members who have made the decision to be more influential and creative in their jobs.