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Mindsystems Amode
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Posted by Ian Goldsmid
May 15, 2009 at 10:12 PM
Hi Alexander
I didn’t control my CRIMP, and did also buy Mindview 3 Business Edition. For me it now represents the best of all Mind Mapping tools for getting my INITIAL thinking clear around goals, actions, scheduling & priorities - its got a terrific UI - mind maps just seem much more “grokkable” in Mindview than they do in competing products.
And then AMODE is my current contender for managing all the actions and associated info (web pages, documents, notes) over time. Actually, another thought just occurred re AMODE functionality - it would be really great if they enabled drag and drop from Outlook (Email/Calendar/Tasks) - or provided a toolbar button in Outlook to export to AMODE, like MindManager does.
Regarding Stratovista, I bought it and tried it - really great ideas/intentions, very poorly implemented imho, at this point anyway (well, that was several months ago now). Though the developer is very trustworthy and has super integrity. There were some bugs I couldn’t live with at the time, and he promptly returned my money.
Cheers, Ian
Posted by Ian Goldsmid
May 15, 2009 at 10:35 PM
P.S especially to Alex of Mindsystems:
Is it the case that drag and drop to AMODE won’t (ever) be possible?
Clearly at the moment its not possible to drag and drop e.g. a web link to a Node or a Node’s note. That’s a significant productivity damper. Almost all products of a similar nature enable drag and drop linking.
Hopefully this lack of drag & drop linking is temporary?
Ian
Posted by Ian Goldsmid
May 15, 2009 at 10:57 PM
P.S again:
Especially to Alex of Mindsystems
Now that I’m using AMODE intensively today - it just struck me why haven’t they implemented assigning text categories to Topics. There’s linking Topics, and Topic Icons which is great - but text categories (especially if they can be grouped as in MindManager) are an extremely useful filtering device.
Ian
Posted by Alex (Mindsystems)
May 18, 2009 at 12:11 PM
Hello,
No we don’t have text categories, but that does not actually indicate a deficiency, we just do things differently. If you are a MindManager user, you may be conditioned to expect certain functions, this is perfectly ok but it is important to remember this may require some acceptance of alternative logic. There are some overlaps in ideas and methods, but there are also differences which also incidentally why Amode is better suited to some tasks..and conversely MM is better suited to others.
To explain the background, MindManager is something we have chosen to include as a import/export option, but it is not the centre of the Amode universe. Amode is designed to be a free standing application, so as with other import/export candidates we have mapped values found in other applications as best we can to what is found in Amode.
So with text categories in MindManager and not having those in MindManager, the first question we need to ask is ?what are you loosing by not having them or is it just you are used to these options?? Regardless of the answer, we just need to explain the logic that will achieve the same thing in Amode.
To Categorise things in Amode you could use a variety of methods. Colour coding, icons and icon filters, creating multiple projects within same file to house different categories, setting keywords in tickler notes and filtering on those. In Briefcase mode you could use project even stacks to categorize projects on a larger scale. There really are a very wide range of possibilities, it just requires us to think about what we are trying to achieve.
Remember, Mindsystems has actually been closely involved with MindManager since before their company even had a name! In fact our CEO translated the first MM help files from German to English. So as a MM user as well, I know Amode uses a different logic and just requires me to approach without expectation. Once you get into the Amode grove, you will actually see although it handles things a bit differently it can achieve the same results.
The Outlook importing is in the pipeline already. The drag and drop linking is something we can add, I can?t say when but it would be a free update item because it is relatively easy…but to be honest has not been mentioned before so it may be specific to a particular working style.
In relation to adding applications like browsers, there would need to be a ground swell of support for that. As a general statement, our disposition is not to try an duplicate functions already handled well by other applications. It is kind of like the people that first decided to put TV on mobile phones…sounds like a great idea, very impressive, but really..why are you trying to do it when it is already handled well by another technology. I manage the Mindsystems Helpdesk, and I can tell you that when MM8 was released, the browser thing polarized customer?s. Some thought it was impressive, but many more asked the question ?why would I want to view a web page inside another application when I can use Firefox or IE??... others complained about the lack of screen size etc. So all I can say is we are receptive if people want it, but also realistic about what people have said on mass about that type of thing previously.
It is quite late for me here! So I hope all (or at least some of this makes sense). Thanks again everyone, these ideas will help the application and benefit the user base.
The new set of video tutorials will be out on the Mindsystems website this Friday afternoon.
Alex
* PS. There was one older post that gave ThemeReader a review saying it did not export results to KnowledgeLink (and therefore Amode, because Amode reads the .kl format). This is not correct. For anyone that needs to know about this, open Amode and hit F1, then search for the help topic about ThemeReader. This explains it. In terms of the results of Cirilab?s engine, we definitely agree the formatting could be improved and we will try to get to that this year (Amode permitting!), but it is also vital people understand the different between context/thematic results and traditional linear search results.
Thanks (again) all!