Our talented Mac developers have created some very cool AppleScripts that serve as great examples of what can be done with MindManager 6 Mac’s AppleScript library.  You’ll find them in the Solutions Library of our Mindjet Labs.

If you are familiar with AppleScripting, we encourage you to take a look at our the AppleScript library  inside MindManager 6 Mac and create your own AppleScripts.

Link to sample MindManager 6 Mac AppleScripts

Color Main Topic Lines - The Color Main Topic Lines script takes a pre- existing map and changes the line color of each of the main topics so that they take on the colors of the rainbow.  A cool time saver that make your maps look great!

Map to OmniOutliner – This sample script demonstrates how an application can walk through the hierarchy of a map and transfer information from the topics of the map to another program. In particular, this script creates an OmniOutliner document whose outline structure matches that of a map.

OmniOutliner to Map – This sample script demonstrates how to build a map from hierarchical data found in another application. The script takes the front most document in OmniOutliner and builds a map in MindManager whose structure matches the outline.

Map to Pages Outline – The Map to Pages Outline samples both convert the structure of a map into a linear outline form and save the resulting text into Apple’s Pages word processor.  There are two versions of the script which each represent the structure of the outline, in Pages, in their own way.  MapToPagesOutlineWithTabs will indent subtopics in the outline by prefixing the topic text with tab characters.  This make the outline structure of the resulting document very apparent.  MapToPagesOutlineWithIndents uses Pages’ own outline capabilities.  The script changes indent level of the paragraph corresponding to a topic to reflect its level in the outline’s hierarchy.

Mail to Map – The Mail To Map sample script demonstrates how MindManager can represent information from other applications in new, and helpful ways.

The script examines the mail messages in Apple’s built-in e-mail client (often known simply as "Mail" or "Mail.app") and builds a map based on the contents of the currently selected mail messages in Mail.  It collects a list of the senders for each e-mail in the selection and creates a main topic for each unique sender.  For each e-mail sent by that person, it adds a subtopic that includes information about each e-mail that the person sent.

Spotlight to Map – The Spotlight To Map sample script is an example of an AppleScript Studio application. The objective of the sample is to demonstrate how to capture information in MindManager through AppleScript. This sample is packaged as a zip archive which contains the sample in both source code form and as a built executable.

The SpotlightToMap application allows you to search the contents of your hard drive for a word or phrase, and collects the results of that search into a map with the  query results sorted into categories within a map. The application relies on the Mac OS X Spotlight search engine to perform the query.

I’m happy to inform you that we have completed work on a new whitepaper entitled "Mindjet MindManager: A Vital Solution for Improved Project Management". This whitepaper provides an in-depth description of how MindManager enables you to manage projects successfully and provides you with the ability to implement best practices while integrating with your other desktop applications. It’s chock full of information for both old and new MindManager users – regardless of project size.

Download the new whitepaper now.

I just came back from a trip to Microsoft (msft) Tech Ed conference in Boston where I was invited to speak about the new MindManager add-in that I built for software requirements gathering for Microsoft’s new Team Foundation Server. When I was invited, I was sent a PowerPoint template to use, but I adapted it to a MindManager map template and, of course, I did my presentation with MindManager:

The conference was huge: 12,000 attendees with sessions and activities spanning over 6 days. In addition to the sessions that I presented, I went to some very interesting sessions about some of the new technologies that are coming out from Microsoft and their partners. Here are a few of the things that I learned about:

1. Windows Workflow Foundation: This is a free component of Microsoft’s .Net 3.0 that is both a workflow runtime that can manage very sophisitcated client- and server-based workflows. It also comes with a drag and drop workflow designer that can be integrated into other applications. Workflows are made up of activities that can be anything from web service calls to custom code. Very interesting….

2. MSDN Wiki: The team at MSDN is trying something new: with their online developer documentation, they are integrating a Wiki so that users can add their own comments and code samples to any article or page. Should we do this with our DevZone? 

3. SQL Server 2005: Britt Johnston from Microsoft talked to me about the upcoming features exposed in ADO.Net which abstracts data sources into an entity data model. I need to learn more about this because many of our customers are wanting to get their enterprise data into MindManager and we need to make it easier.

4. TechSmith Camtasia Studio: This is the product that I use to make the flash demos that I post on Mindjet Labs. It is a very cool tool and I got to meet some of the people from TechSmith to tell them how much I love their software. I would like to know how our customers would like to see their SnagIt and Camtasia products working with MindManager.

5. Altova SemanticWorks: I have started looking at SemanticWorks because I want to find ways of working with the semantic web with MindManager. Very slick interface and easy to learn.

6. CodePlex: This is a community software development site, like SourceForge. Should I put any of the Mindjet Labs solutions on CodePlex?

7. I picked up an excerpt of the upcoming Perason Education book Essential C# 2.0 by Mark Michaelis to read on the flight home.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that at the beginning of each chapter he has a mind map (that looks like it was made with MindManager).  In the preface, he explains that he does this because "Mind Maps allow you to absorb the flow from high-level to more detailed concept easily, with less chance of encountering very specific knowledge that you might not be looking for." 

What is clear to me is that by the number of Microsoft employees with the title of "Evangelist", Microsoft really values explaining their technologies and products to software developers.