The Mindjet Blog

Archive for May, 2006

MindManager 6 Mac Ships!

May 31

Posted by Brook Stein in MindManager, Mindjet

This is a historic day for Mindjet.  Today, we launched our first ever Mac version of MindManager, Mindjet MindManager 6 Mac!  

Our Customer Service and Support team has received numerous requests over the years from our customers to create a Mac version.  18 months ago, when we started this project, we decided not to do just a port of our Windows version of MindManger to the Mac, but rather to create a native Mac application with a "Mac-like" interface built from the ground up in Apple’s Cocoa, an object-oriented application environment designed for developing Mac OS X native applications.  MindManager 6 Mac is a Universal application for the Mac that runs great on both PowerPC-based and Intel-based Macs.

MindManager 6 Mac Screenshot

A important feature in our Mac version was to make sure that the file format, .mmap, is cross-platform compatible with our Windows versions.  Maps that are created on Windows can be opened and edited on MindManager 6 Mac and vice versa allowing teams to work together even if they are on separate platforms.

We are excited to bring this version to the Mac community and invite you to download it and try it out!

11 Comments

Filmmaker/ MindManager User interview @ ontherun with Tablets PCs podcast

May 23

Posted by Hobart Swan in Mindjet

James Kendrick and Marc Orchant, hosts of the excellent ontherun with Tablets PCs podcast, have just posted an interview with Joel Rasmussen, a filmmaker who used MindManager on his tablet PC (and the Mac beta) to create Before the Music Dies. This new independent film is described as "a portrait of the nation that gave the world gospel, blues, jazz, country, bluegrass, rock, and roll, rap, and hip-hop."

Rasmussen used MindManager from early concepting of the film, for presentations to potential investors, for script development, for "every detail" of production, and then for all the scheduling details for an upcoming multi-city tour. Evidently, "Before the Music Dies" will be one of the first films to be actively promoted by MySpace.

1 Comment

PUSH Conference to be “Powered by MindManager”

May 16

Posted by Hobart Swan in Mindjet

Mindjet is totally excited to be part of the upcoming PUSH conference, the brain child of Cecily Sommers, founder and president of the Push Institute. We have been offered the opportunity to do a presentation of MindManager, do live mapping of key PUSH sessions and then make those maps available to participants.

As it happens, we have a line on two heavily discounted tickets to this amazing event. Admission is normally $1295, but if there are two of you out there who want to attend for just $695, let me know (hobart.swan@mindjet.com) and I will get you in for that price. (I will even toss in a free copy of MindManager so you may actually LOSE money if you don’t go! :o ) The event is June 11-13 in Minneapolis at the tres chic Walker Art Center.

Speakers include:

  1. David Allen: Allen was recently named "One of the world’s most influential thinkers on productivity" by Fast Company magazine. He is also, of course, a power MindManager user.
  2. Howard Rheingold: Best-selling author of Virtual Reality, Virtual Community, and Smart Mobs. Rheingold is a leading authority on the social implications of technology.
  3. Ze Frank: Performance artist, humorist, filmmaker, and award-winning webdesigner (what a strange combination). I saw him at PopTech last year and he was a riot.

    Go to http://www.pushthefuture.org/speakers.asp to see the list of speakers. There are many more amazing people on the program.

If any of you have attended PopTech, you know how stimulating and thought-provoking these kinds of eclectic events can be. My work productivity tanked after PopTech as I tried for days to put together into a new whole all of the diverse but related information I was exposed to at that event. But I like to think that I became a more informed person when all was said and done (that’s what I like to think, anyway…) 

Hope to see you there!

No Comments

Mindjet Product Design visits CHI Conference 2006

May 1

Posted by Gerelee Goltsev in MindManager, Mindjet

CHI 2006 was in Montreal, Quebec this year, and Mindjet was there to see the action.

I was excited to hear from many CHI attendees (both academics working on their masters or PhD’s and designers in industry) that they’ve heard of or use MindManager and love it.

I’m curious to know how many people who went to CHI this year also check out this blog? If you were in Montreal this year, let us know!

CHI 2007 will be in San Jose, CA for its 25th anniversary, and I want Mindjet to have a presence there by contributing via a presentation, a paper or maybe just having a booth. I think the community is ripe to explore mindmapping in a more serious way now that the concept has evolved and progressed here in the states.

Panels and papers at CHI touched on many issues that could apply to mindmapping and mapping software development in one way or another:

  • Applying tags for better search and bookmark creation
  • Mash-ups: i.e. embedding two or more different kinds of technologies to a website or application to build a more rich interface
  • HOP UI: mixing halo and proxy viewing techniques to get a grasp of what lays beyond a user’s immediate display (works especially well for maps or for small displays like in PDAs)
  • Agile Development pros and cons

These are just a few of the topics that caught my attention at CHI this year.

It was neat to see companies like Google, Yahoo!, Intuit, Sony and Microsoft there supporting User Centered design and the interaction design community as a whole. Carnegie Mellon, MIT and Stanford were among many schools represented as well.

Even though there is debate and varying points of view in this community, it’s great to see so many professionals and students in one place at the same time.

I’ll keep the Mindjet community posted on CHI participation in the future.

No Comments