If you visit this blog regularly, you may recall that in a post titled “Information systems, technology and the human factor“, I wrote about a thinking framework called, endearingly (or not), VPEC-T.

Name aside, I believe it is a very interesting and valuable tool for those involved at the sometimes-painful surface between business and technology.  Now, Anders Jangbrand from Sweden has offered an interesting and readable first look at this mental discipline.

We are living through difficult times, when every dollar counts in business, and the mental filter that VPEC-T provides is a good one to apply at an early stage of a project or venture.

Roy

1.  A new version of the current live Topicscape Pro – 1.64 – is on line,
      and
2.  The release candidate (the one we hope will be the basis for the live launch) of Topicscape Pro 2.0 is also ready for download by Beta testers.

Topicscape Pro: 1.64

This is mainly a bug-fix release, but it has an improved support feature.

• The License Loader is more user-friendly.
• Windows Desktop Search in Vista was broken and now works again.
• There is a new skin – ‘Hot cobalt’.  Why ’Hot’?  . . . set a flag on a topic and watch it glow with a moody red heat.  Download the new skins installer.
• When editing information in the Details Panel, in some cases it was possible to lose the changes made.  That is fixed.

This is likely to be the last release of 3D Topicscape Pro version 1 series, as we move on to version 2.

Topicscape Pro 2.0 final Beta

Full details are in the revised PDF file, again with the additional new features and changes (since the third release of this Beta) highlighted.

The additions / changes are as follows:

Increased flexibility with Skins

• for different Topicscapes.  If you don’t select a special skin, Topiscape will use whatever you have chosen as the standard (default) skin.  If you choose a skin for ‘this Topicscape’, Topicscape will remember that from then on.  This means that if you have many Topicscapes, you can recognize the Topicscape you’re working on immediately from its appearance.  There are 21 skins an all now, each of which can be customized further to meet your own needs and taste.
• There is a new skin – ‘Hot cobalt’.  To see this you will have to download the skins installer and check the box to have it install for Beta. 

Extended Quickzoom

• Now you can zoom along the 3D Hit and History Lists using the same Shift+mousclick (Quickzoom), as you use for cones in the ‘Scape.. The demo has been extended to cover the newly-introduced capabilities.

Help extended

• Help has now almost caught up with all the goodness of Pro 2.0.  It will be fully up to date by the time 2.0 goes live.

Bugfix

• A bug in editing in the Details Panel when it was brought up from the minimized position has been fixed.

This version expires on April 7th. It will be the last Beta 2.0 release, and we hope to have the live version out by early April.

Roy
(follow me on Twitter @roygrubb for mind mapping tips and hints)

The 3D Topicscape Pro 1.64 and the Skins Installer are here: http://www.topicscape.com/download5.php

The beta is in the usual place.  Beta users, please log in first.

Topicscape has a capability that makes web research particularly easy: It lets you capture web pages and file them in Topicscape with a single drag.  And because it queues up the MHT-making process, you can carry on browsing while the MHT (Internet Archive) file is made.

This means that as you search and browse you can drop interesting items into Topicscape and just keep going without breaking stride.  Later you can go back and review your findings in detail.  This works out of the box for Internet Explorer.

We had a user ask recently when we were going to make FireFox interact with Topicscape in the same way, for dragging favicons to make an MHT (Internet Archive) file with a single operation. 

This reminded me that we haven’t emphasised the solution to this recently, other than adding an FAQ about it, but FireFox is getting ever more popular so more an more users must be encountering this, and maybe not all have visited our FAQs.  This is a FireFox issue rather than a Topicscape one and thanks to Topicscape user Michael Shroder, we were able to provide a solution.  Yesterday, I retested this with the latest version of FireFox (3.0.7) and was pleased to find that it’s just as good as ever.  Here it is:

Open Firefox.  Go to http://www.unmht.org/unmht/en_index.htmland click on the .xpi link to install the .mht add-on for Firefox. (Click on it, Firefox gives a warning. Click on the options button to add www.unmht.org to the add-ins list. Close that, and click on the .xpi link again and it installs.)

Change the file association so that .mht launches Firefox instead of IE. Directions can be found here:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2052279_change-file-type-associations-windows.html?ref=fuel

Previewing the file in TopicScape works (except in Vista because MS removed the function), and double-clicking the file opens it in Firefox.
 
Roy

Adam Sikinsci, someone who can challenge the world’s best mind mappers (and win), has done a ‘compare and contrast’ of several mind mapping packages and wrapped it up in the form of a guide to the mind mapping process for beginners.

He kicks it off a mind map in his own inimitable style, and follows through with a similar map rendered in four software packages, and another by his friendly rival Paul Foreman.

It’s a fascinating comparison and the textual explanation that follows allows us to share Adam’s great insight into mind mapping.

Roy

 The philosophy of WikIT, the mind mapping wiki, is that no type of information map is “right” in all circumstances, and no set of rules works always, or even most the time.  Often, one of the various types of mind map will be very stimulating and fit our needs, while at other times a concept map serves us better.

When?  Well, if you’re trying to capture your knowledge of a topic, or build up knowledge as you study, a concept map is an excellent way to start, especially if you are a visual thinker.

Some people use the term “concept map” for any web that is not bound to the limitations of a strict hierarchy. This implies that any node/concept may potentially connect to any other node.  This is an important feature of concept maps that distinguishes them from mind maps, spider diagrams and the like.

Others stress the importance of relationships between concepts, and the linking phrases describing the relationship. The developers of concept maps included this requirement at an early stage when laying out this way of visualising knowledge.

Together, these two characteristics make concept maps a rigorous way of laying out knowledge and understanding visually.

WikIT has an article about how to make a concept map that gives a stage-by-stage example, with thinking discussed along the way.

Roy

Just to show I’m not prejudiced, here’s a related post about “How to make a mind map“.