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).

Cacoo (cacoo.com) is good. Doesn't support rapid brainstorming and might be too over-featured for what you want.

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

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.

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.

Thanks, zoe,

Oinker looks interesting (only watched the video), but I'm really looking for something as close to VUE and the like as possible, basically a quick way to type text into boxes or ovals and connect them with arrows (to create a network).

It's for when I'm working online on my Chromebook, so Chrome apps would also be fine (though couldn't find any in the Web Store).

This isn't pretty, but it might do the job for you:

http://simplemapper.org/

zoe wrote:

This isn't pretty, but it might do the job for you:
http://simplemapper.org/

Thanks, that looks perfect! I'll need to test it out tomorrow, to see how fast it can do the mapping.

I like Boardthing for brainstorming. boardthing.com

It uses an affinity diagram paradigm with some light-weight drawing tools.

Exports to opml, text and html.

There is a JRE version of Vue -- though it is cranky and requires fiddling with Java security settings.

https://vue.tufts.edu/VUEApplet/info.cfm

Paul Korm wrote:

There is a JRE version of Vue -- though it is cranky and requires
fiddling with Java security settings.
https://vue.tufts.edu/VUEApplet/info.cfm

Wow, that would have been great! Unfortunately, it looks like Chrome OS no longer supports Java plugins :(

$Bill wrote:

I like Boardthing for brainstorming. boardthing.com

Thanks for the tip. Looks good for creating some post-it note type notes, but I'd like to be able to connect the nodes with lines and arrows, and in Boardthing these are hand-drawn, which means they do not attach and do not move with the nodes when you rearrange the nodes.

zoe wrote:

This isn’t pretty, but it might do the job for you:
http://simplemapper.org/

While the concept looks interesting, when I tried it I found it cumbersome and buggy. It takes too long to construct a map, so it's not suitable for brainstorming for me. But thanks anyway, it was worth a try.

At the moment I'm stuck with remote-accessing VUE on my PC, but I wish I had a cloud-based option for fast concept-mapping.

Mindmup could be a compromise, as it's possible to connect nodes freely, but there is still a central-node-based hierarchy (i.e. a classical mind map, rather than a concept map with entirely independent nodes).

I've been playing around with draw.io.

It supports saving in several different cloud-based storage systems (Google Drive, Dropbox, or local browser cache). It is very full-featured, but you can easily get simple stuff down on the canvas without worrying about the extra features if you prefer. Multiple file format export, and support for true concept mapping (no central node).

bubbl.us

very basic, which might be what the Dr ordered ;-)

Paul Korm wrote:

bubbl.us
very basic, which might be what the Dr ordered ;-)

Thanks, Paul. It looks like bubbl.us though enforces a mind map hierarchy (central node), and I'm looking for a non-hierarchical concept mapper.

zoe wrote:

I've been playing around with draw.io.
support for true concept mapping (no central node).

Thanks for this, draw.io can indeed do the job, I bookmarked it. It's amazing it's free.

It also reminded me that ages ago I did try Lucidchart (which is not free, or, rather, the free version is limited), and having looked at it again, I found that it had a slight edge over draw.io in that it handled curved connectors better. E.g. if you rearrange a concept map in draw.io, the connectors can get rather tangled and messy, while Lucidchart keeps them neat.

In any case, both draw.io and Lucidchart can do free concept mapping online, which is what I was looking for, so thanks again.

Er, no -- bubbl.us doesn't work that way. It has two modes:

enter unconnected notes (as many as you want), or enter a note with a child

there's no central node in the version of bubbl.us I've been using

can draw links between any notes

http://d.pr/i/dTYA

Dr. Andus wrote

Thanks, Paul. It looks like bubbl.us though enforces a mind map hierarchy
(central node), and I’m looking for a non-hierarchical concept mapper.

Paul Korm wrote:

there's no central node in the version of bubbl.us I've been using

Paul, many thanks for the explanation and the screenshot. I gave it a try and you're right, bubbl.us might actually be the simplest and quickest online concept mapper from the ones I looked so far, so fits the bill perfectly!

Good to hear. Thanks!