A new Topicscape Pro Beta (1.51) was put up online on the 30th April (and a first revision is up today). It is ready for download by all full license holders and Beta Users. This Beta expires on 29th June, and well before that time we hope to release the live version of Topicscape Pro 1.5.

This is how the new Topicscape Beta can now help you manage your information in its 3D mindmaps:

Duplicate checking
Now you can drag in one or more files to Topicscape, drop it on the new ?=? panel and see which files are already in the current Topicscape. Shows size in bytes, colors different size or date in red, points out if the duplicate in that Topicscape is actually a missing occurrence file, and shows which topic it is in. Then it allows you to control what to do next, one by one (replace, delete the external one or bring it in anyway). This is really useful if you are tidying up multiple copies of different versions of documents that should already be in a Topicscape.

Quickopen introduced
In any topic, you can now “promote” one occurrence. This will show the icon for that occurrence above the cone in the ‘Scape, allowing you to click once on that icon to open the document in the application of the occurrence. Naturally a ‘fileless occurrence’ may not be promoted in this way, nor may an occurrence that has no application associated with it on your PC. Occurrences with no associated application show the default Microsoft ‘unknown file’ icon.

Association type visibility
When association types were introduced in the previous Beta, to see them, you would click and hold on an association line. That would show the Association Details Panel and allow you to read and edit the association text (and the topic names). [Reminder - association types are the verb phrases you can now add between topics. For example, “is the capital of” may be an association type between topics France and Paris.]

We have continued our planned implementation of Association types and now this new beta provides other ways of viewing them that you will want to use when you are just viewing them, not editing. Hover over and association line and you will see a blue hint expressing the full association phrases. If you have not edited these, they will just say, for example, France is a parent of Paris, and Paris is a child of France. If you have edited them, they might say France has its seat of government in Paris, and Paris is the capital of France.

You can also opt to see Association types as strong blue panels in the ‘Scape when you click on a topic. You will see the association type for the connection between the selected topic and its parent(s). You will only see this if a) you have edited the standard association types (the default “is parent of” and “is child of”) and if b) the new checkbox in Tools | Options | User Preferences | Miscellaneous operations | Suppress standard association types is checked (ticked).

There’s an option to see all associations at one time: press Shift+F7 once. This will toggle on all association lines and their descriptions, subject to b) just mentioned above. Press Shift+F7 again to toggle this off.

Association-types search
There is now a checkbox on the Advanced Search panel to make the search look in association types. The example just mentioned would be found if you search for “capital” and checked the “association types” checkbox.

Association-types to FreeMind and back
Our implementation of FreeMind round trips has been further enhanced to include association-type texts. These won’t be immediately visible in FreeMind, they are stored as attributes, because FreeMind makes mind maps, not concept maps, so does not have association types. But storing them in the attributes means that re-importing an exported FreeMind back into Topicscape will preserve any association types you have added.

Coming up!
Soon we shall be releasing a Beta that supports tagging topics and occurrences and filtering the visible topics by tags.

Please give us your feedback about the new Beta!

Thanks

Roy

A new Beta version of Topicscape Pro, version 1.5 Beta, is now on-line.  You’ll need an account, which you will have if you have a full license or are a Beta User.  This is the second Beta release of Topicscape PE Pro and will be a free upgrade to all Topicscape 1.0 or Pro full license holders.  (More about applying for Beta User status at the end of this post).

An expired trial of Topicscape on your PC will not stop this Beta from running.  The Beta will expire on 30th April, but we shall either release a full version then, or release a new Beta with a later expiry date.

Here are some of the new things that the new Beta 1.5 does:

• Exports your 3D mindmaps to FreeMind and imports FreeMind files to make 3D mindmaps.

• Support thumb-drives / USB flash drives.

• Starts more quickly.

• Lets you capture knowledge in 3D concept maps using Association types to label links between topics.

• Supports rich text descriptions for topics.  2000 characters of plain text descriptions for topics or occurrences.

• Options to see a topic’s contents from the ‘Scape scene.

• Option to see loose associations more conveniently.

• Optionally uses your Google Desktop indexes for better file-content searching.

• Shows history of search terms used.

• Immediately jumps to the result if a search finds only one hit.

• Flags occurrences with color, or as ‘Finished with’ and search with these as criteria.

• See the “flagged” color of occurrences and topics in various lists for faster recognition.

• Shows just flagged topics in the ‘Scape if F6 is pressed.

• Toggles Quickzoom on and off, and fly while zoomed using CapsLock.

• Provides a new shortcut for leaving the Topic Center (double-left click on cone wall).

• ‘Tab’ around the topic in the ‘Scape.End, Shift+End, Page Up, etc., now work better.

• New shortcuts to make topics and occurrences.

• Can inform if a file dropped on the new “Duplicate?” panel is already in that Topicscape.

• Can merge topics.

• Offers to merge a topic and a folder with the same name when dropping the folder into Topicscape. 

Here’s the link for more about the new features and how to use them

And here’s the link for applications for Beta Users - we need some information about your PC to help us handle any bug reports.  If you apply, you will want to know this: We will only use your email address for the adminstration of the Beta tests and to inform you about new versions of Topicscape.  We will not pass the information to anyone else.  You can ask to be removed from our database at any time.

MSN changed their search engine results page today.  As a result TopicCrunch could not process searches correctly.  We have fixed this and a new version is now online. 

All purchasers (and trial users whose installation has not expired) should download this and install it.  The link is here:

http://www.topicscape.com/TopicCrunch/download-topiccrunch.php 

Roy

If you use TopicCrunch you may want to know if it will work in Vista.  Yes, it does.  Our deep searching software has been tested on Vista and found to work normally. 

 Topicscape Pro and Topicscape Lite are under test with Vista.  It’s fun to see the 3D mindmapping window move into Vista’s own 3D environment.  It will take a few weeks to complete our full test plan and make any necessary adjustments. 

3D Topicscape 1.05 has just been retired.  3D mindmapping enthusiasts will be happy to hear that it has been replaced with 3D Topicscape Pro and 3D Topicscape Lite. 

Lite is a very capable tool with the 3D mindmapping attributes that users of Topicscape have come to expect. It is well able to organize ideas and information in a way that was never possible before Topicscape came along, but Lite has been designed with a simple interface in mind.  It works well for To Do lists, getting things done (GTD), task visualization and quick ideas sparking and capture.

3D Topicscape Pro moves on, to provide :

- really beefed-up import and export - to allow you to bring work done with other tools forward into Topicscape and extend it more than ever before possible (XML, OPML, text for reading, structured text, folders and files as well as MindManager and other software);

- the ability to make LiveLinks to items in Outlook (2000-2007) and many other products that support URIs, like MyInfo, Whizfolders, UltraRecall, EverNote and ConnectedText. This means you can link Topicscape to your work in other applications: click an occurrence in Topicscape and have a specific item opened for you in the other software.

- many skins so that you can choose the one suitable for your working environment;

- topic flagging - find topics that are important to you even quicker; - link Topicscapes with a precision link right to a specific topic;- richer ability to save web pages locally - better than Internet Explorer 7 - so you can retain complex pages, in most cases viewing them exactly as they appear on line.Topicscape Pro is the heavyweight lifter for complex project management, dealing with information overload and  organizing the long tail of reference information that most of us accumulate.

From now on, 3D-Scape will announce when new versions of products are ready for download here (like the TopicCrunch announcement below).  You can subscribe to the RSS feed, of course, but an alternative way that avoids seeing my other posts (about visualization, general computer problem solutions and so on) is to use Google Alerts. 

1. Go to http://www.google.com/alerts 
2. Enter, for example, TopicCrunch and Topicscape,  
3. give your email address,
4. choose Type “blog” and a frequency. 

Then when we make an announcement about the products here, Google will send you an email with a link to it.  Couldn’t be easier.   Oh, and don’t forget to allow emails from google.com to go through your spam filter or you may not see them.