Daily Iteration

Apparently someone has been reading my posts, because in the last weeks I received invitations to test out three different tools in areas related to my previous posts. The kind folks at Comapping invited me to check out the new features they have launched - I will do it, as soon as I have time! I also got asked to review a new online project management tool called Wrike - again, I’ll get to it… And, last but not least (and not actually last in chronological order), Igor from Concept Draw sent me a free license to their Mind Map 5 Professional tool, so that I could check it out and write a review for it. This is actually the first time I get given something because of my blog, so I was pretty thrilled about it and tried to do a good job with this post - whether I succeeded or not I leave up to you, the reader.

Those who have been following my series of reviews will be aware that I specified some criteria for eligibility: there had to be at least one free usable license and/or account for the software or service, and I had to be able to use it from my two main desktops, Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. Concept Draw Mindmap is neither available for free, nor does it run on Linux (though you can get it for Mac). So why am I reviewing it? First, because it would be a nice comparison test to my previously selected champion, Freemind. Testing Mind Map will allow us to see how well Freemind stands up to a commercial competitor. And secondly, because Igor from Concept Draw asked me very nicely, so what’s the point in not returning the kindness?

So on with the review…

Concept Draw offers many products related to diagramming and technical drawing, and the first impression that you get is thatMind Map has kept true to its roots - there are more drawing tools thanwith other mind mapping tools, and the diagrams you can generate are really good looking. This guy has plenty of features, and even though it takes a little while to navigate through the interface (there’s a lot of buttons there), nothing is too hard to reach.

One of the most interesting features offered is a brainstorm mode. This is a different screen, with a little timer at the top right, which you can set up to count down as many minutes as you think are necessary to your particular session. Set a title for you brainstorm, click go, and the timer starts counting down as you enter all the ideas that come up in a very simple manner. Below you can see a video of this feature at work.

This is the first attempt at embedding video in the blog, and the video quality isn’t what I’d like - even though Jumpcut has the best quality Flash video I could find. You cen get the original .avi from the link below, while I try to find a better solution to stream high quality screencasts in the blog.

Another very nice feature of Mind Map is the large amount of formats you can export your maps to. All sorts of image formats (PNG, JPEG, BMP, TIFF, etc…), PDF, MS Word outline files, Powerpoint slide, and, best of all for all the project-heads out there (like me!), you can export your maps to MS Project XML format, so you can start transforming all those bright ideas you had during your brainstoming session into an actual project schedule right away. One that left me intrigued was the ability to export to Concept Draw’s own Project tool - this on I would very much like to take a look at (Igor, are you reading this )

Another point where Mind Map shows its heritage as a drawing tool is in the excellent quality clip art provided, which is actually usable without completely ruining the quality of your presentation. The only sugestion I would make here is to have it all as SVG files, so they would be scalable.

The screenshot to the right shows another interesting feature. You can open a topic structure to the left of the screen, while keeping the rest of the window areas visible to the right. While it does get cramped, it is a very useful way to get around larger maps, editing each topic without loosing all visual reference to the actual diagram.

Overall, Concept Draw Mind Map has proved to be a really nice tool, with some very nice features such as exporting to MS Project files, timed brainstorming sessions, nice display of topic structure, among others. A very positive aspect that I have not mentioned yet is that it generates beautiful diagrams - and lets you create personalized styles which you can save as templates and apply across all your diagrams. So if you need to create great looking maps for presentations, or could benefit from the timed brainstorming sessions and MS Project export, Mind Map would be a good choice for you. Bear in minf though, that at US$ 199 for the Professional version (the website does not make it very clear what the difference is between this and the Personal license, at US$119), this product is more suited to those of us who use this kind of diagram professionally (ar at least intensively). If you do, however, Concept Draw Mind Map is a fantastic tool for you.