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Looking for fast online concept mapping
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Posted by Dr Andus
Apr 21, 2015 at 11:15 PM
Are there any online equivalents to concept mappers like VUE, CmapTools and Scapple?
I mean that they are fast to use for brainstorming (as oppposed to services focusing on drawing pretty charts for presentational purposes, and therefore being too slow) and that they do not enforce a hierarchy by requiring a central node (as mind mappers do, of which there are a lot).
Posted by Paul Korm
Apr 22, 2015 at 02:31 PM
Cacoo (cacoo.com) is good. Doesn’t support rapid brainstorming and might be too over-featured for what you want.
Posted by PIMfan
Apr 22, 2015 at 06:30 PM
Based upon your requirement for quickness in order to support brainstorming, you might want to take a peek at Creately (http://creately.com/). Very quick for adding items to a drawing.
Not sure if there is a specific concept map template, but the list of templates and diagram types is impressive.
PIMfan
Posted by Dr Andus
Apr 22, 2015 at 08:21 PM
Paul and PIMfan, thank you for your suggestions. I tried them both and they are quite similar. But they still seem to be more geared towards being drawing apps than brainstorming tools. They seem to me like online versions of SmartDraw, which I similarly find too slow for concept mapping (though like it as a drawing app).
The main drawback of these is that I end up faffing around with stuff like trying to change the size of the font, or the size or colour of the box or get the connecting line with the arrow to attach, rather than be banging out my ideas, which is what I want.
It’s interesting how many online mind mapping and chart drawing apps there are, but how few fast brainstorming tools. In fact I’m looking for a concept mapping version of Workflowy. Workflowy is great for brainstorming in an outline format, but I also need to map out ideas and relationships between them visually.
Posted by zoe
Apr 22, 2015 at 08:34 PM
Have you tried out the beta of Oinker.me? The nice thing about it is that it supports Markdown, drag & drop for images and video links, and is non-hierarchical and non-linear.