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Is it worth it?
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Posted by Stephen R. Diamond
Sep 8, 2007 at 12:49 AM
Ian Goldsmid wrote:
>Unfortunately, as far as I know, Mindgenius
>development is not happening.
Googling around on the Internet, I find MindGenius in something of the position in Great Britain as Inspiration in the U.S. They have penetrated the British education market more deeply than I realized. Having established this niche, would it make any sense to stop development?
The specifications for version 2 don’t look like any huge leap over version 1. It looks like MindGenius was born fairly mature, which also has consequennces for pace of development.
>The best feature is its ability to add nested
>categories, and other useful properties to Topics, and then to create arbitrarily
>complex filters.
That’s the most distinctive feature (but how do MindManager’s capabilities compare?). Also probably the most sophisticated. I don’t right off see how I would use it. For me, the implementation of the Map Explorer as a hoisting mechanism is the best feature.
Posted by Stephen R. Diamond
Sep 8, 2007 at 12:56 AM
Chris Thompson wrote:
>
>I’ve never understood the popularity of
>mind mappers either
Good. An opportunity to test a theory. The popular wisdom is that mind mappers are for people who “think visually.” Not being entirely sure what that means, I’m not going to say it’s entirely wrong. But if one aspect of “thinking visually” is having superior Spatio-Visual abilities, I think in that respect the adage is exactly wrong. My evidence is limited though. The hypothesis is that mindmappers and the like serve to support weak spatial abilities instead of further benefitting those strong in that area. A good indicator of spatial visualization is your sense of geographical direction—the ability not to get lost in transit. Another is the ability to visualize what something looks like rotated or otherwise spatially transformed.
Anyway, since you find mindmappers otiose, the prediction is that spatio-visual ability is an area of relative strength. In a sense, you reject mindmappers because you are visual enough without them. Right or wrong?
>Cassius wrote:
>>As far as I can tell, mind maps just present a graphical
>representation of an outline.
>>In Inspiration, for example, one can create an
>outline and with a click or two convert
>>it to a mind map or one can do the reverse.
>(Admittedly, Inspiration is clunky to
>>use.)
>>
Posted by David Dunham
Sep 8, 2007 at 02:46 AM
Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>I use a mindmapper in the manner
>of a pure outliner (albeit with the unfortunate two panes, which seems unavoidable
>with a mind mapper).
I haven’t really used it, but I thought Inspiration was a one-pane outliner and mind mapper?
Posted by Ian Goldsmid
Sep 8, 2007 at 05:08 AM
Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>
>
>Ian Goldsmid wrote:
>>Unfortunately, as far as I know, Mindgenius
>>development
>is not happening.
>
>Googling around on the Internet, I find MindGenius in something
>of the position in Great Britain as Inspiration in the U.S. They have penetrated the
>British education market more deeply than I realized. Having established this
>niche, would it make any sense to stop development?
>
>The specifications for version
>2 don’t look like any huge leap over version 1. It looks like MindGenius was born fairly
>mature, which also has consequennces for pace of development.
>
>
>>The best feature
>is its ability to add nested
>>categories, and other useful properties to Topics, and
>then to create arbitrarily
>>complex filters.
>
>That’s the most distinctive
>feature (but how do MindManager’s capabilities compare?). Also probably the most
>sophisticated. I don’t right off see how I would use it. For me, the implementation of
>the Map Explorer as a hoisting mechanism is the best feature.
Stephen - Mind Manager V7 Pro has a decent power filter, much better than the previous V6 - but its still nowhere close to Mindgenius in building a sophisticated filter. There is hoisting now for Mind Manager 7, if you go to Mindjet.com/labs and install the free Map Explorer, it provides pretty much identical capability to the one in MindGenius.
One of the biggest drawbacks for me in Mind Manager, is that as the map gets even somewhat large, the ability to move around really slows down - kind of gets “sticky”., and I have a quite powerful PC, a core duo 6600, 2 gig ram, but MM still feels too sluggish when moving around the map.
I hope you are right that Mindgenius are just moving slowly rather than stopped. I appreciate your vote of confidence about it.That has resurrected my interest in it, so I’m giving it another shot. Mainly because I am thinking ahead to having a very large map, and with Mindgenius power filters, hoisting, and ability to create Category & Resource maps, this makes me feel confident I will be able to find the trees in the forest so to speak.
Ian
Posted by Cassius
Sep 8, 2007 at 06:22 AM
Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>
>...
>Good. An opportunity to test a theory. The popular wisdom is that mind
>mappers are for people who “think visually.” Not being entirely sure what that means,
>I’m not going to say it’s entirely wrong. But if one aspect of “thinking visually” is
>having superior Spatio-Visual abilities, I think in that respect the adage is
>exactly wrong. My evidence is limited though. The hypothesis is that mindmappers and
>the like serve to support weak spatial abilities instead of further benefitting
>those strong in that area. A good indicator of spatial visualization is your sense of
>geographical direction—the ability not to get lost in transit. Another is the
>ability to visualize what something looks like rotated or otherwise spatially
>transformed.
>
>Anyway, since you find mindmappers otiose, the prediction is that
>spatio-visual ability is an area of relative strength. In a sense, you reject
>mindmappers because you are visual enough without them. Right or wrong?
A sample of size 1 (me) suggests that the answer is WRONG.
1. As demonstrated by actual testing, my analytic abilities are strong; my visualization abilities are weak.
2. I have a reasonably good sense of direction, due to my analytic abilities, not visualization. [Although here in Northern Virginia, where the cows really did lay out the road structure, I can become disoriented.]
3. I scored well on a US Air Force Navigation test, because of my analytic ability to match topographic features, not because of my meager visualization abilities.
4. I have a strong antipathy toward mind mappers: Why should I use a tool that requires an ability, the lack of which I have in full measure?
-c