During installation of the latest Topicscape Pro (v.2.6 that we just loaded up on line) you will see a new option. One of the panels asks if you want to install two buttons in your Browser toolbar (Internet Explorer or Firefox). Here they are:
Press the ‘S’ button: The Topicscape Box will open very briefly and close again. It will then contain a shortcut to the page you are viewing.
Press the ‘M’ button: The Topicscape Box will open and use Topicscape’s method to make an Internet Archive (.mht) file in the Box. As with Topicscape and Topicscape Box, you can carry on surfing, and build a queue of MHT requests, leaving the software to get on with its work.
The MHT file will include the panel that Topicscape adds to show the source of the page.
Topicscape Box does not need to be open for these buttons to work.
Roy
Please sign up to the Topicscape Google Group for brief Hints and Announcement about Topicscape.
Follow @roygrubb on Twitter for mind mapping tips.
To fly: Use keyboard cursor arrow keys (then add Shift, Alt or Ctrl).
Press the Home key to return to the starting position.
Slow zoom with + and - on the number pad.
Dramatic Quickzoom: Hold Shift, then click on topic cones.
Hover over topics to see …
details in the Details Panel,
an enter button, and
sometimes an “open link” button.
Click a topic cone to reorganize the landscape around it.
Don’t forget you need an up-to-date driver for your 3D graphics hardware for WebView to work (just like Topicscape). Here’s reference for Troubleshooting.
University of Dundee medical mind maps links in 3D information landscape on-line. The first time you visit, please give the program time to download.
These Dundee Uni mind maps cannot be linked to directly, or downloaded, but a read-only viewer for the software needed can be accessed from a link at the same site and this allows the mind maps to be explored dynamically. This Topicscape WebView shows what is available but you will have to go to the web site to view the maps themselves. The structure in the 3D WebView reflects the way the maps are organized at that site.
The medical mind maps source Allergy Cases has maps about allergies and immunology. Links to all the allergycases.org mind maps can now be found organized in an on-line 3D Topicscape.
I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago. Now that I have permission from Peter Jones to use the lists on his pages of links organized according to Hodges’ Health Career Model, I can announce that it is on-line and live in the form of a read-only Topicscape. You can search (just type) and visit the pages (links are in the details panel – just click). Links to the four main pages of links in the Hodges’ Health Career Model site are in the four main topic cones: Intrapersonal, Political, Science, Sociology.
Give it time to load the Topicscape software first time. Subsequent visits will be much quicker.
For you to fly around and explore this you will need a PC with 3D graphics hardware with an up-to-date graphics driver (requirements here).
There’s a wiki page with some helpful pictures that explain the few things you need to know to get you flying and zooming with the best of them.
If you need any help, email me at r dot g at topicscape dot com.
WikIT (the mind mapper’s wiki) has had an article on the use of mind maps by the medical profession for a while. Recently I’ve been adding to this and it turns out that they are quiet giants in the use and publication of mind map collections.
If this most important discipline is making heavy use of mind maps, both in study and after graduation, perhaps there’s hope yet for those of us who believe that one day, mind mapping will go mainstream.
I came across this site by Peter Jones long ago, and at the time spent several hours browsing its collection of well-organized and very interesting links on subjects organized under its main domains:
Recently Peter left a comment on a post at another of my blogs, and that reminded me of his interesting collection. I started looking at how it might fit into a Topicscape.
Here are some screenshots showing the top level, a focus on one of the four domains (Sociology) and a deeper focus on one of the topics under that domain (Patients, Carers and Self-care):
Each topic cone has a link to the relevant page. This renders four enormous pages of links as a 3D landscape organized under multiple topics and sub-topics. You can zoom and fly around this, as well as center the landscape on different topics at will.
I’m hoping to be able to publish this as an on-line Topicscape soon so that you can try for yourself, but I need to make sure that’s OK with Peter Jones first.
At long last, Topicscape’s free Student Edition has been upgraded to version 2.0, with many ease-of-use enhancements, incorporating some of the elements first seen in Topicscape Pro 2.0 :-
Topicscape SE is aimed at students wanting an easy and attractive way to record their web research and revision notes, and prepare homework and term papers. It can import from FreeMind and export back to FreeMind.
It may not have the 2D/3D, tagging, import/export juicyness of Topicscape Pro 2.5, but it’s a useful tool for study . . . and it’s fun.
Oh, and did I mention it’s free? . . . and always will be.
After several weeks of intense work, the online Topicscape Pro User Guide has now been migrated to the Topicscape Wiki and fully covers version 2.5 that was released a couple of weeks ago.
This has been a major restructuring, update, and rewrite, with refreshing of many illustrations.
The list of contents has been made much more functional, with embedded brief comments on what each section covers. This should be useful when deciding which section to open. For those rare users who like to read a user guide from beginning to end, there is a link at the foot of every wiki article to the next section. Here’s the Contents List.
Please let us have feedback and suggestions for improvement.
We hope to release a new installer with an updated Help system later today.
Yes, it’s left its Beta status and gone gold: You can now download 3D Topicscape Pro 2.5.
Differences;
What’s new;
Pro licenses
‘Help’ migrates to wiki;
User-made video.
The differences from 2.15 are very significant. Most noticeable is that it allows an almost instant switch between 3D and 2D views.
But also, it has options for flying like Google Earth (in 3D) or Cooliris (in 2D – see above), improved navigation and user controls, much greater visibility of files and file previews from the 3D and 2D views, enhanced MindManager import, and the capability of moving the main “My Topicscapes” folder around without re-installing and manually copying files. It has now been tested for Windows 7 compatibility.
The illustrated “What’s New” page has details of a couple of additional capabilities that weren’t mentioned in the Beta What’s new.
If you have a Topicscape Pro 2.0 license, you will be able to run vsn. 2.5 straight away – it’s a free upgrade. A reminder: Topicscape Pro 1.0 users can upgrade for a modest $29.99 charge by clicking the Buy Now button. If you accidentally load a Pro 1 license into Pro 2, Topicscape will fail to load some components and won’t run. In that case, you’ll have to uninstall Topicscape Pro 2 and install it again.
With the release of 2.5, we have decided to mostly externalize the Help system. Topicscape Pro itself now contains a 20-page Help of essential information, but the main help is half-way through being transferred to the Topicscape Wiki – a few more days and we hope to have that done. It has a fully hyperlinked Contents page. This means we can update the help without having to release a new installer. If you still want the Help on your PC for offline reference, you can download the PDF.
One of our users, David Esko, made a great vid: http://is.gd/5phL4 Take a look!
