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For this
week's article, we have Part 2 of my two-part tale on mind mapping. This
time around, I'm talking about how mind mapping relates to the Tablet
PC, and telling you a little about an excellent new mind mapping application
available specifically for Tablet PCs.
Mind Mapping
and Tablet PC Users, Part 2
By Bill Mann
In Part 1
of this article, I told you how mind mapping is a great tool for anyone
who needs to organize information and take notes. Organizing information
and taking notes are certainly two of the primary activities of Tablet
PC users, which says that mind mapping should be a natural for the people
reading this article. You can to mind mapping on a Tablet PC straight
out of the box. Just open Windows Paint and start drawing your map as
if you were doing it on a piece of paper. You can create your mind that
this way, including the benefits like the ability to erase branches in
moved into new locations without running a hole through the screen. And
of course being able to store virtually infinite numbers of mind maps
on your Tablet PC should be carrying around stacks of yellowing paper.
Even so,
this isn't a very elegant or satisfying way to use a $1500 piece of equipment.
What you really need is a tool that can take advantage of all the processing
power inside your machine to make mind mapping on your Tablet PC better
and more efficient than doing it on paper.
If you have
followed the Tablet PC news this week, you've probably figured out that
the mind mapping tool I want to tell you about is the newly released product,
MindManager for the Tablet PC (MMTPC). MindManager is an excellent computer
mind mapping tool that I've been using for years now. MindJet, LLC, the
publisher, has come out with MindManager versions for the PC, Palm OS
devices, and Pocket PCs. While all those versions of MindManager work
well and take full advantage of the platforms they run on, with MMTPC
the product family has moved to a new level.
With MMTPC,
you work much the same way you would if you're creating your map on paper.
When you started new map, MMTPC starts with a place for you to enter the
central theme of the map, sitting by itself the center of the map pane.
As with previous versions of MindManager, you can use the keyboard 28
the central theme, add new branches, show relationships between branches,
color code and prioritize branches, even create links to web pages, documents
residing on the PC, or other mind maps. You can attach additional information
to branches, expanded collapse them dynamically, and exchange information
with Microsoft Office applications. If you can think of something you
would want to do the mind map, MindManager can probably do it. But what
makes the Tablet PC is its pen interface. Having to enter information
with a keyboard just isn't the Tablet PC way. So switch MMTPC into pen
mode.
Watching
MindManager switch to pen mode is sort of like watching Clark Kent turn
into Superman. It's still the same app, but the icons become bigger and
the look bolder. These changes optimize MindManager for pen input by literally
giving you bigger targets to hit. In pen mode, you can handwrite the theme
and topics. If you can take notes using only the topic and branch structure
of a mind map (you must still type any additional notes attached to a
branch) you can get all the advantages of MindManager plus the convenience
of entering information with the Tablet PC pen.
Taking notes
on the screen with a digital pen is more natural than typing notes on
a traditional notebook computer or PC. If the only thing MMTPC did was
allow you to handwrite the short phrases or words that represent topics
in a mind map, it would be useful. But MMTPC's collection of pen gestures
really turn this into a full-featured Tablet PC application. MindJet has
created 18 custom gestures for MMTPC. These range from "Insert Branch"
and "Edit Branch" gestures to standard copyediting gestures to "Zoom In"
and "Zoom Out." With these gestures, working on mind maps in MMTPC can
be a "pen only" affair.
Another cool
thing about Tablet PCs is that thanks to the pen, it's easy to sketch
on the screen. MMTPC lets you create sketches while you're working on
your mind maps, and incorporate the sketches into the map.
MindManager
for the Tablet PC is definitely an application that any Tablet PC user
should investigate. I use it almost every day, both for taking notes and
for designing the books that I write. Microsoft Tablet PC division VP
Bill Mitchell was right when he said, "The additional pen and ink capabilities
developed using the Tablet PC platform provide users with a rich set of
tools to enable more natural, free-form thought flow."
You can download
a 21-day trial version of MindManager for the Tablet PC at the MindJet
web site (www.mindjet.com).
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