NovaMind News

Last week I received a question from a NovaMind user, asking me how to make his Mind Maps better through use of single keywords. His question was in response to the NovaMind Lesson 4 which is about brainstorming and Mind Map creation. He is a biology teacher and wants to create better Mind Maps for his class, but finds that they always end up with lots of words on them.

In that lesson, I talk about one of the principles of Mind Mapping where you are to choose keywords and use them on your Mind Maps. This is because it is the combination of the keywords plus the associations between them that both work together to give you a set of neurological connections between the ideas. This way of organizing things also works best for sharing the information because different people have their brains “wired” in different ways, and when you just have the keywords there, it fits in with both their world view and your world view.

Another aspect is that if you have a complete sentence there, there is just passive acceptance of information input - you are not actively making the connections in your brain, and you are also missing out on the natural extension of the ideas to new areas - this is stifled by completed sentences.

Having said all that, let me quote my reply to Lai:
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This is a common issue when people are not used to Mind Mapping.

After having worked with Mind Mapping for many years, I have come to the conclusion that there are some times where you do want to have phrases and sentences on branches rather than just words. This is the exception rather than the rule though.

I suggest you try putting just one or two words on each branch and see how you go. It will force you to think carefully about what ideas are really representative of the point you are wanting to make with the paragraph. In some cases, a paragraph may convert into one main keyword and several sub-branches with a keyword on each.

This really does open up thinking about the core meaning of the topic and the association of the refinements and explanations to the main topic.

Many people I have taught this to have made the switch to this way of organizing their thoughts and although they found the transition difficult at first, now they say they will never go back.

In Mind Mapping, there is no “right” or “wrong” way to organize your Mind Map, so don’t be scared to try things out and find what works best for you.
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I hope you find this useful to help enhance your Mind Mapping

All the best

Gideon

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Here is an article on the basics of how to Mind Map:

How to Mind Map

This is similar to the one I posted on hubpages that I mentioned in a previous blog posting.

I hope you find this useful in increasing your Mind Mapping skills.

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All the best

Gideon

NovaMind is a sponsor of the VizThink conference, and I will also have a stand at the conference.

The goal at VizThink is to bring together a broad cross section of the visual thinking community. We will be covering a number of different aspects of visual thinking, including:

• designing compelling and effective information graphics,
• visual techniques for analyzing data,
• visualization as a brainstorming tool, 
• using storytelling for presentations,
• aligning individuals using visualization,

…and many other topics.

As a sponsor of the event, we can provide you with a discount code for entry to the conference - just use the code PCN01 during registration for the conference in order to receive a $100 discount off the registration price.

This promises to be a very interesting and useful conference, and I hope to see you there.

Gideon

You can visit us at booth number S2638 of MacWorld conference and expo.

Scott and Michele will again be helping me out on the stand, as they did a couple of years ago, and we had lots of fun then, so with the new stand and new products, it should be even better this time.

Hope to see you there…

Gideon

I will be attending the BETT conference in London from the 9th to 12th of January.

BETT is the world’s leading educational ICT event, attracting over 600 educational suppliers and close to 30,000 visitors, and bringing together the global teaching and learning community for four days of innovations and inspirations.

If you have any software needs you would like to discuss for your school or business, just send me an email and we’ll arrange to meet while I’m there. As this is my first time to BETT we won’t have a stand at the show.

I hope to see you there.

Gideon

NovaMind 4 Pro for Windows released

You can now download the recently released NovaMind 4 Pro for Windows. The new version has a user interface very closely modeled on the Microsoft “fluent” interface design as found in Microsoft Office 2007. This builds on the familiarity that many people now have with the new user interface from Microsoft.

As part of this new interface, most operations that will change the look of the branches or the Mind Map are previewed live as you mouse over the options. This makes it very easy for you to see how the changes would look before you make the changes.

If you have been using the old version of NovaMind, you will notice many operations have been simplified, and you may like to quickly look through the new tutorials that go through the details of using the new program.

A year ago when we started development of NovaMind 4, we made a big decision to completely separate the Windows and Mac versions, only keeping the core file format and overall functionality the same. This was done with the express goal of providing the best experience for you on whichever platform you are using.

We have received feedback from our Windows users who have tried the Mac version as well, that they believe that the NovaMind 4 for Windows user interface is better than the Mac interface. We have also received feedback from Mac users who have tried the new Windows version, saying that they think that the NovaMind 4 Mac interface is much better than the Windows one. This is exactly what we were aiming for in the user interface design - to produce the best user experience for you on both platforms.

As well as the new user interface and live previews, NovaMind 4 introduces many new features such as:

• the ability to create Mind Maps from templates,
• keytip shortcut key access to all the commands,
• themes to make your Mind Maps look great,
• background styles and shape styles to make it easy to apply the same styles to multiple Mind Maps or shapes,
• new text handling system with live update of font information for both selected text, insertion point, and selected branches which are not being edited,
• preview of layout setting changes so you can see how your Mind Map will be laid out before you apply the settings,
• a special formatting floating panel which allows you to set all the attributes of a branch or shape from one place,
• new tabs for multiple Mind Maps with instant previews of the other Mind Maps in the document without having to switch to those maps to see them,
• document view where you can see and work with multiple Mind Maps in one window, changing the settings for all or a selected set of them all at once,
• a new sidebar with the graphics library, adornments, branch notes, and suggesterator all within easy reach,

…and many more refinements.

As with our Mac releases we will be continuing to enhance the Windows product with frequent updates as we continue to improve on the product.

Our attention is now focussed on the implementation of the Platinum edition of NovaMind for Windows - stay tuned for news on this as development progresses.

You can download NovaMind Pro for Windows from the NovaMind web site .

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Héctor Cabello Reyes used the screenwriting capabilities of NovaMind to write the screenplay with which he won the French national cinema center’s professional screenwriting competition.

Héctor says “My modesty suffers when I say this, but the prize I got is the highest in France, and thus in Europe (for France is Europe’s biggest film market and producer). It’s the “Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC) - Aide à l’Ecriture” (Cinema National Center’s Screenwriting Aid), which is a money-denoted prize, rewarding 5 screenplays among 80 scripts, all written by professional screenwriters, i.e. writers who already had a screenplay produced and released. So it’s a very important prize, because it says that, this year, your screenplay’s among the best of all the professional ones.

View the award web page

And, well, among the 5 screenplays, mine got first, with jury’s congratulations ! I’m pretty proud of it !

It’s a comedy about to 60 year old men who lied all their life long about their participation in the resistance during the militar Coup in Chile in ‘73, and who get blackmailed : they’ve got to kill the Dictator, even if they’re about to become grandpas and have never actually touched a gun in their life…

About my prize winning screenplay, the answer is yes, it was totally written in Nova Mind !”

Our congratulations go to you Héctor - well done!

We have just seen in the latest time magazine this photograph of Al Gore in his office, with his three screen Mac, and what appears to be a NovaMind Mind Map on the wall. The article talks about his notes and Mind Maps that he uses to write his books and organize his thoughts.

Another significant milestone in the development of the next versions of NovaMind was reached today when NovaMind 3.3 for Windows entered beta testing.

This is very exciting because it marks the start of the wrap-up of the development of this massive project to totally re-engineer the internals of NovaMind for Windows.

We have a much larger group of beta testers than we’ve had before, and are hoping to get plenty of feedback from them so we can debug the program quickly and release it to you.

I’ll keep you updated as we progress.

Gideon