A while ago, Nick Duffill published a paper on Root Maps (Oh yes! that’s not “route maps”).
I didn’t pick up on it until Wallace Tait referred to it on Twitter yesterday. And after seeing it, I felt it had to be part of WikIT. And now it is: Root Maps
The other item is a guest blog post that I was recently invited to contribute at the Visualmapper blog. It’s an overview of information map types and when to use the different varieties, all hanging off a large mind map which you can download in MindManager form, image or PDF.
I am often asked “Which is the best mindmapping software?”
It’s a complicated question, because I’m not one of those mind mapping fundamentalists who think that mind mapping has to be done one way no matter what the maps is for, no matter who’ll see it and no matter how long it is expected to live and grow … Oh, and before I forget, no matter what your budget is!
So I wrote an article on topicscape.com, talking about which software I’ve found best for what.
That was two or three years ago, and it needed an update, better organization and more images to help readers see the types of maps produced. Moving the updated article to WikIT, the mind mapping wiki, seemed like a good idea as well.
A new Topicscape Pro installer is now online here.
The Outlook connection to Topicscape Pro was not working in 64-bit versions of Windows. The symptom: Outlook objects in Topicscape, like Tasks, Contacts or Calendar events, were not opening in Outlook when double-clicked from inside Topicscape.
Fixing this required a change in Windows Registry handling and that change was made in the Topicscape installer. As Topicscape itself has not changed, its build number is the same.
You only need to download the latest version if you are using Outlook with Topicscape and you are running 64-bit Windows 7 or 64-bit Windows Vista.
Imagine holding a virtual highlighter in your hand as you read web pages, documents, or PDF files. You highlight sections of text you want to save or indicate images to preserve, and with a familiar keystroke, send them to Topicgrazer.
It works with web sites, text, Word documents, PDF files, spreadsheets and more – anything, in fact, that can be saved to the clipboard. Each snippet is headed with its source if it came from a web site or Word, for example.
By the time you have finished, all the portions you select are extracted and gathered in one document that you can open with Wordpad, MS Word or OpenOffice Writer.
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.
