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August 18, 2007

Get An Idea Burst With These Tools, Writers



No More Hard Drive!
100 Free Software Apps to Go Online-Only



Of special interest to writers are these:

Brainstorming and Mindmapping

"Mindmapping software is great for brainstorming, organizing information hierarchically, creating advanced to-do lists, planning and much more. Unfortunately, brainstorming software can also be very expensive, and far less convenient because it can't easily be shared with other collaborators. By contrast, these webware alternatives are not only free, but also provide the added benefit of being accessible from anywhere."

1. Bubbl.us. Bubbl.us is a basic mindmapping app with an easy to use interface, is multi-lingual, and allows maps to be embedded in web pages.

2. Comapping. Comapping takes mindmapping one step further, allowing simultaneous use by multiple users.

3. Kayuda. Kayuda is a mindmapping-plus app, good for developing "campaigns". Maps are shareable and serve as navigation. Add text and details to each node.

4. Mind42. Mind42 ("Mind for two") is another collaborative mindmapping application that is a bit closer to its desktop cousins, and throws in web sticky notes as well.

5. Mindomo. Mindomo might make you forget it's a webware app in terms of interface and mindmapping functionality. It has non-real time collaborative features.

6. Mindmeister. Mindmeister offers non-real time collaboration and many of the import/ export features of Mindomo. The interface lies between Bubbl.us and Mindomo in feature quantity.



3 comments:

Julia Styles said...

If you are sick of mindmapping, and you want to try another approach, check out www.brainreactions.net. Brainreactions is an online brainstorming social network. Invite others to join your brainstorm for free.

Eric said...

Thanks for the link. That was a great list of tools, very usefull too. I guess however those lists are just hints for you to go ahead and try new software. Noone tells you which tool is better and why. So I decided to share some of my personal experience :) I use comapping and a mind mapping tool and I use wrike for collaboration. These two are the best for me, cause they really save time. My whole team loves wrike, as it's so easy and based on emails. You just write an email to somebody and add wrike's address to the CC field. After that you work on this task together and share it with other people, if you want.

Lin Neiswender said...

Thanks for the personal evaluation Eric, that is helpful. We can use Wrike in our writer's group, so that's a great tip!