The developers at NovaMind Software Pty. have recently launched NovaMind 4 Platinum for the Mac OS X platform. It features a very cool new presentation mode that breaks new ground in terms of functionality. Here’s how it works:
The NovaMind Presenter divides your map into a series of "slides," consisting of your entire map, each topic and its associated subtopics. Like other mind mapping software presentation modes, it "walks" you clockwise around your map and its contents, branch by branch. Where NovaMind differs is that it doesn’t make you, the presenter, click on each branch and sub-branch to expand it. It does that for you, creating a set of views with each topic and sub-topic automatically centered on the screen. This enables you to focus on presenting your remarks, and eliminates the need for you to fiddle with your map while you’re talking. Nice!
The top of the Presenter screen (above right) contains an elapsed time clock and the actual time – both of which are designed to help you keep track of how much time you have to complete your presentation.
Below that is a split screen; the left side displays the view of your map that your audience sees, while the right side displays the "slide" that will appear next on the screen. The development team designed the Presenter in this way to give you a preview of what’s next, so you can mentally prepare for it.
Finally, below the split screen is a selector panel, which displays a timeline of all of the map views that will be part of your "slide show." You can use it to jump to any "slide" in your presentation at any time. I can see how this will come in especially useful when a member of your audience asks, "Can you go back a few slides to X?"
Not only does NovaMind Presenter display your map’s topics and sub-topics in an attractive manner, it also presents any attached notes. These pop up as yellow "sticky notes," which your audience can then read. Note to self: Don’t be too verbose when adding ideas to notes, or nobody will be able to read them when you present your map!
If you want to see NovaMind Presenter in action, founder and lead developer Gideon King has created a Quicktime video clip that explains all; it does a great job of showing just how elegantly this works!
NovaMind 4 Platinum for Mac also offers some new task and project management features, which you can learn about here.
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