Mobile Tech Minutes– Mindmapping in Digital Ink, a Screencast
One of the things I have been enjoying is using the Tablet PC to stimulate the creative process for writing projects. Our friends at WebWorkerDaily recently extolled the virtues of pen and ink mindmapping for writing projects and they are absolutely right about that. Mindmapping is a great free-form way to capture ideas on paper and then run with them. Doing these maps with pen and ink definitely stimulates the creative process, far more than doing them on a computer. Unless your computer is a Tablet PC and you can do it with digital ink using MindManager.
For me the advantages of ink mapping on a Tablet are outstanding. I can capture ideas as they flow, just like on paper, but I also get to use sophisticated tools to organize the ideas once captured. In this five minute screencast I lay out a simple map for a real article I’m kicking around. You get a chance to see the ideas flow in real-time, duly captured in ink on the Tablet. Once the ideas are captured into a simple mindmap, you’ll see how I can turn it all into an outline in ink with one push of a button.
In case you haven’t seen it yet:
http://gizmodo.com/5365299/courier-first-details-of-microsofts-secret-tablet?skyline=true&s=i
I’ve seen it and and we’ll have something up about it later. It doesn’t really apply to this topic, however.
Nice — it retains the creative stimulation of using pen and paper also means you can save, reuse, or edit as required
Exactly. What I find to stimulating about this method is often I visualize things better when I see how the various topics relate to one another. It makes my writing better.
I should point out another strength of this method. This entire session was conducted (and recorded) sitting in my nice big comfy chair in the living room. That’s why you hear voices in the background at one point. Totally stimulating way to work.
While this session was done in ink, since I didn’t need to share this with anyone, after the recording I selected all and hit the “Ink to Text” button. MindManager duly converted the entire map to digital text that can be shared with anyone.
That way no one has to be able to read my handwriting.
Its disappointing to see that more and more posts on this blog are PR posts with minimum novelty value and originality. One of the previous posts on screen sizes and this one are textbook examples. I think that rather than posting this, its better not to post at all. Since this blog was purchased by GigaOm, the quality has been deteriorating.
I’m sorry you feel that way but I must claim utter confusion over your comment about this post. Where have you ever seen this done before? What type of content are you looking for here?
Cool. I hope that Apple includes a similar app on their upcoming iPad tablet computer. Or at least let us connect to an iPad store to get third-party apps like this. Neat-o.
Lugus, isn’t this what this site is about, using
tablet pc technology/programs.
These “real world” presentation are interesting to me.
I like to see how others use their tablet pc’s, since
I don’t see any tablet pc users in our area (rural country side)
I agree but videos like this are all over the web and mindmanager has had both inking features and gestures for a few versions (if I am not mistaken, I have been using it like this for at least a year if not more). Its not so mind blowing to use a program and the features it has, I am sure mindmanager has a similar similar instruction video on their web somewhere. I am just saying that its disappointing. This blog used to bring stuff that regular users usually didnt come up with or didnt think of, not just a screencast of a mainstream software without any novelty generated by the blog post’s author. I am missing some depth here. For instance, I am missing a discussion about the usability of an inking feature in MindManager. A discussion by JK about a dilemma of using onenote for minmapping in contrast to a specialized software such as mindmanager. Advantages of using the pen compared to the keyboard. JK has lots of insight that regular users dont have, there is experience from years of technology use and software use. If I want to see a program work, I can download a demo and install it myself. What I am looking for in a blog post is the sort of insight that the author has that will somehow benefit me in a way that I cant benefit myself. Does that make sense?
But this costs over $300; is there something similar and cheaper for casual users?
Windows Journal (free) or OneNote can be used to ink map. They don’t have the organizational tools of MindManager. It’s a shame that MM is still so darn expensive. It’s the only mapping tool I know of that handles ink well.
I have written about this in the past but as an frequent user of both OneNote and MindMapper I deeply wish Microsoft would add more MindMapping features to OneNote… I would be a seriously happy Pastor and uber geek if they would but only do this one simple thing!!!
Blessings
I see there is even an online mapping tool – for free, at Mindomo: http://www.mindomo.com/
I haven’t had time to try it properly yet. Has anyone had a chance to kick the tires?