Great question.
Why is the company that makes everyone’s favorite desktop productivity application so interested in what’s happening with Web 2.0? Isn’t MindManager a desktop application and the web, well, the web? It’s all about XML.
When Mindjet re-engineered MindManager for Version X5 in 2003, it built it upon a new XML foundation. This meant that all of the data that is in a map from the topic text to the images is stored in the human-readable extensible data format XML.
So for a simple example, the XML text below will make a map with a central topic “Web 2.0″ and single main topic “MindManager”.
<ap:Map xmlns:ap=”http://schemas/mindjet.com/MindManager/Application/2003″>
<ap:OneTopic>
<ap:Topic>
<ap:SubTopics>
<ap:Topic>
<ap:Text PlainText=”MindManager”>
<ap:Font/>
</ap:Text>
</ap:Topic>
</ap:SubTopics>
<ap:Text PlainText=”Web 2.0″>
<ap:Font/>
</ap:Text>
</ap:Topic>
</ap:OneTopic>
</ap:Map/>
It just so happens that the language of Web 2.0 is XML. In essense, almost all of the Web 2.0 applications serve their data as XML. To see a list of available web services, take a look at the database at ProgrammableWeb.com. As I have said before, one of the great advantages of using XML is that it is easily transformable, so moving data from one XML format to another XML format is actually quite easy. In 2003, when we released MindManager X5 Pro, it used one of the first Web 2.0 applications, Google (GOOG) Web Search, and then we released the Accelerator for Salesforce.com, which intereacted with one of the most successful Web 2.0 applications, Salesforce.com (CRM). The Research Accelerator acts as a client for various web services from research and search sources like Yahoo (YHOO), Technorati, Microsoft (MSFT), and Google. We built that because we wanted to demonstrate a consistent interface for accessing research and search services while uisng MindManager.
Mindjet sees incredible innovation and competition (I think they go hand-in-hand) in the Web 2.0 world and we are very excited about how easily MindManager can act as a client for web 2.0 applications. If you are a MindManager user, take a look at the services at ProgrammableWeb.com, see if you use any of those services already, and if so tell us what services would make your work using MindManager more productive. If you are not a MindManager user yet, of course <marketing tone=”shameless”>you should download the free trial today</marketing>. But if you have a web 2.0 application and you want to get it in front of 750,000 business users while they are planning projects, brainstorming, and running business processes, send an email to labs@mindjet.com; we want to talk to you today!
Michael
Mashing up the One Big Web
Mashups are cool! What I find particularly exciting is the prospect of applying this paradigm to a context which is much larger than the web.
When you speak of the web, you are generally referring to the public web consisting of the freely available …