NovaMind News

NovaMind will have a stand at the BETT show in London. Amongst the team manning the stand will be both NovaMind’s founder Gideon King and Cathy Schneider, NovaMind Marketing Manager for Europe, and we’d love the opportunity to talk with you, so if you are in the area of the Olympia stadium between the 13th and 16th of January, please do pop in and say hello.

We will be demonstrating NovaMind 5 technical preview for both Windows and Mac at the show, and we would be happy to be able to show you what’s coming. You can visit us at stand SW107.

Learn more about the BETT Show and register online for FREE

Transcription

Bonjour, je suis Cathy Schneider, Marketing Manager Europe chez NovaMind. Aujourd’hui, je souhaiterais vous présenter quelques nouvelles fonctionnalités de mise en page que vous pourrez retrouver très prochainement dans NovaMind 5

Un des problèmes majeurs avec les cartes heuristiques, ou autrement appelés Mind Maps, est quelles deviennent immenses très rapidement, et tous les logiciels existants ne règlent en rien ce problème.

Nous avons testé l’ensemble des logiciels de Mind Mapping présents sur le marché et vérifié si l’un d’eux offrait une bonne mise en page et évitait ce problème de perte de place. Devinez ce que nous avons découvert ? Oui, c’est exact, AUCUN d’entre-eux n’offrent une mise en page digne de ce nom. Je suis persuadée que si vous utilisez déjà un des ces logiciels vous êtes pénalisés par ce problème.

Alors qu’il devrait en fait s’agir d’un élément fondamental d’une application de Mind Mapping, n’est ce pas ?

Voici à quoi cela ressemble avec les autres logiciel de Mind Mapping (ici, il s’agit d’un produit concurrent, et si vous l’avez déjà utilisé, ou bien même un autre, vous avez expérimenté ce problème) – vous ajoutez des sujets, des sous-sujets et cela déplace considérablement les autres sujets, laissant de large espace inutilisé, comme ici…

Et cela s’accentue dès lors que vous avez plusieurs sujets et sous sujets qui se développent sur plusieurs niveaux, cela pousse l’ensemble et ressemble à ca.

Vous ajoutez un nouveau sujet, qui ne pourra en aucun être positionné prés d’un autre avec tout un ensemble de sous sujet qui ne pourront de toute façon pas s’entre mêler mais qui vous font gaspiller un espace considérable sur votre Mind Map

Chez NovaMind, nous nous sommes dit que nous ne pouvions laisser cette imperfection et nous avons décidé de vous proposer quelque chose de bien mieux que ca

Voici quelques unes des nouvelles fonctions de mise en page disponibles dans NovaMind 5

Cette vidéo est réalisé en utilisant une version Alpha de NovaMind 5, il se peut donc que ce vous voyez aujourd’hui diffère quelque peut avec la version qui sera commercialisée. Mais en regardant cette vidéo aujourd’hui, découvrez l’innovation et prenez connaissance des avantages de la toute nouvelle mise en page de NovaMind 5.

Il y a 4 types principaux d’objets dans vos Mind Maps :

• les sujets
• les bulles d’annotations
• les sujets flottants
• et les formes

Aujourd’hui, nous allons nous intéresser uniquement aux sujets. Pour NovaMind 5, nous avons travaillé sur l’un des principes majeurs, à savoir, garder l’ensemble de vos mind maps le plus compact possible et éviter une perte d’espace totalement inutilisable.

Vous pouvez noter, qu’avec NovaMind 5 si vous ajoutez des sous-sujets ici, les sujets eux-mêmes se positionnent de façon à ce que les lignes de connections s’effleurent sans jamais se toucher, seul l’espace nécessaire à séparer visuellement les sujets entre eux est utiliser.

Mais que se passe-t-il lorsque l’on écrit dans le sujet du dessous ?

Comme vous pouvez le voir, lorsque l’on modifie le sujet, l’écart se referme et lorsque l’on écrit, le sujet est déplacé de façon à utiliser le minimum d’espace nécessaire.

Cela est encore plus évident lorsque vous utilisez un sujet de forme ovale.

Si vous réduisez le sujet, les autres s’adaptent ensemble de façon à rester les plus compacts possibles.

Maintenant, si vous redimensionnez votre sujet, l’ensemble s’écarte automatiquement. Les autres logiciels de Mind Mapping ne vous permettent même pas de redimensionner vos sujets comme vous le souhaitez. NovaMind 5 le peut et vous donne la possibilité de les redimensionner élégamment.

Désormais, vos Mind Maps gardent automatiquement la dimension minimum et la plus compact possible sans que vous n’ayez à vous en préoccuper.

Maintenant, intéressons nous à un autre de vos besoins précédemment plébiscité ; avoir la possibilité de disposer vos sujets de haut en bas dans une arborescence. Voici comment nous y avons répondu…

Avant cela, je me permets de vous rappeler que nous utilisons une version Alpha pour cette vidéo et que l’aspect actuel sera certainement modifié avant la commercialisation, mais cela vous permet d’avoir un 1er aperçu sur cette fonctionnalité.

Vous pouvez désormais aller de la droite vers la gauche comme ceci…

Vers le haut…

Mais nous voulions faire plus que cela et vous donner encore plus de flexibilité dans la mise en page, nous avons donc ajouté la possibilité de choisir également l’angle d’inclinaison que vous souhaitez. Regardons cela dans une autre Mind Map…

Bien sur, cela rend la mise en page de NovaMind 5 bien supérieur à n’importe quel autre logiciel de mind mapping actuellement disponible.

Nous avons souhaité allez encore plus loin, et ne pas avoir cette flexibilité de mise en page disponible uniquement depuis le sujet central de la Mind Map, mais également possible à partir de chacun des sujets, vous pouvez désormais faire ceci…

Dorénavant, vous avez une flexibilité encore inégalée par aucun autre programme de mind mapping, cela vous permet toutes les mises en page de mind maps, exactement comme vous les souhaitez.

Pour les deux mises en page les plus traditionnelles, à savoir horizontales et verticales, NovaMind 5 vous offre la mise en page la plus compact du marché. Nous vous offrons également la flexibilité de modifier vos sujets et sous sujets automatiquement sous l’angle voulu et de garder ainsi vos mind maps les plus compactes possible même inclinées.

…mais nous ne nous arrêtons pas la.

Nous vous proposons la fonction ultime. Il est absolument remarquable d’avoir cette flexibilité de mise en page, mais nous souhaitons souvent déplacer un sujet et le positionner a un endroit bien précis. Et que se passe-t-il ? Les différents sujets se chevauchent, et nous devons déplacer tous les autres sujets un a un.

Maintenant, vous pouvez positionner vos sujets ou bon vous semble, le logiciel garde le contrôle et adieu les chevauchements intempestifs.

Si maintenant je bouge mon sujet ici, les autres sujets quant à eux restent ou nous le souhaitions.

Si vous mettez un sujet au dessus d’un autre, il sera automatique déplacé.

Si vous ajoutez un sujet qui en pousse d’autres, ils seront automatiquement déplacés mais garderons leur liens avec les sujets-parents. Vous n’avez plus à vous soucier des chevauchements inopportuns.

Voici une des raisons pour laquelle nous sommes vraiment impatients de vous proposer NovaMind 5!

 

 NovaMind 5 topic layout (French): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Brisbane, Australia. 9th December 2009:

With the significant amount of interest that has been generated by NovaMind 5, it became necessary to expand the NovaMind sales and marketing teams worldwide. As part of that expansion, NovaMind are pleased to announce that we now have a full time European presence with the hiring of Cathy Schneider, as the NovaMind Marketing Manager for Europe. She will be working with the rest of the sales and marketing team to address the needs of our European customers.

Cathy brings a wealth of experience, having worked as a marketing manager for Mindjet, selling MindManager in Europe, and therefore is thoroughly familiar with Mind Mapping. She also brings experience as a business manager, sales manager and after sales manager, and is fluent in French, German and English.

Cathy says “I’m very excited to be joining NovaMind at such a fundamental time where I can leverage the full spectrum of my experience. I see tremendous continued opportunity for NovaMind and look forward to helping the company expand its product line, increase its brand awareness and reach new customers.”

One of the first things Cathy did upon joining the team was to translate one of the videos about NovaMind 5 into French, and the resulting video is available at this URL: http://www.novamind.com/features/nm5.php#topiclayout

NovaMind founder, Gideon King said “NovaMind 5 is a complete redesign of our Mind Mapping software from the ground up, and it is great to see the huge level of interest out there. It has become obvious that nobody else in the market is addressing the fundamental needs of Mind Mappers. This has generated a lot of interest in NovaMind 5, and the need to grow our sales and marketing team significantly.

We are delighted to be able to welcome Cathy to the team to firmly establish our presence in Europe. She brings with her the experience of working with MindManager for several years, and is therefore able to both be up to speed on Mind Mapping principles and uses, as well as seeing the unique advantages of NovaMind.”

Cathy is available to take enquiries from companies and individuals from the UK and Europe, and can be reached at cathy@novamind.com . She will also be at the NovaMind stand at the BETT show at the Olympia stadium in London, 13th to 16th January 2010 – stand SW107.

It was recently announced that there would be integration between NovaMind and iThoughts, giving you the capability to exchange files between these two top of the range Mind Mapping applications.

This video shows you how easy it is to transfer MindMaps back and forth between NovaMind and iThoughts. The demonstration is done using NovaMind for Mac, but works equally well with NovaMind for Windows.

For further information about iThoughts, and to get your copy of NovaMind or iThoughs, please visit http://www.novamind.com/ithoughts

 

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Integrating Mind Mapping Techniques with Microsoft Project and Microsoft Project Server, Creating Powerful New Project Management Tool

Bonn, Brisbane, Phoenix – September 16, 2009 – A powerful new combination of project planning software packages, enabling business managers to develop comprehensive project plans in even faster and more effective ways, was announced today by Wodey Informationssysteme and NovaMind Software. ProjectLINKER for NovaMind 5, developed by Wodey Informationssysteme, Bonn, Germany, and NovaMind Software, Australia, elegantly couples the latest business mapping software, “NovaMind 5”, with the latest “Microsoft Office Project”, letting enterprise teams plan, map, track and clearly understand their activities as never before.

For more information and screenshots of the new plugin in action, please visit http://www.novamind.com/projectlinker

Through ProjectLINKER for NovaMind 5, project plans and data are bi-directionally synchronized between NovaMind and Microsoft Office Project as well as Microsoft Project Server. This allows organizations to gain unprecedented visibility into their resources, as all projects, complex and small, can be tracked in Microsoft Office Project Server. The solution now makes it faster and easier to report project status in a visual intuitive format to executives and client stakeholders. Without further training, business managers will have access to resource availability during the initial planning phases resulting better business decisions, more accurate plans and more realistic expectations.

ProjectLINKER for NovaMind 5 offers business leaders clarity and transparency in their project portfolios. Additionally, teams can record project history, status, and multi-project overviews – all with graphical indicators to enhance visual reporting. The use of ProjectLINKER for NovaMind 5 for project planning can accelerate the deployment of Microsoft Project Server 2007. Due to its powerful, yet easy planning capabilities, even the smallest projects can be planned and tracked in Microsoft Office Project Server.

ProjectLINKER for NovaMind 5 will be presented for the first time in the Microsoft Office Project Conference, September 14 – 17 2009 in Phoenix, AZ. Wodey Informationssysteme will demonstrate the tool during the conference and will have a booth in the exhibition hall as well. Also, both companies, Wodey Informationssysteme and NovaMind will announce their partnership on the Project Conference. In Germany, the product will be presented on the Microsoft exhibition stand on the “discuss & discover” – platform from October 20 – 22, 2009 in Munich, as Wodey Informationssysteme is going to be one of the 20 Microsoft partners in Germany.

The German and English product versions of ProjectLINKER for NovaMind will be available soon. Please keep yourself updated through http://www.novamind.com/projectlinker

About Wodey Informationssysteme

Wodey Informationssysteme is being valued as a leading specialist in the field of enterprise-wide implementation of visual and holistic project management programmes. The service portfolio ranges from a first analysis, over the to-be-concept and a pilot model to the realisation of the project. After the implementation process customer-specific requests will be fulfilled and all parties involved will be trained according to their different roles and responsibilities. Wodey Informationssysteme offers training and coaching programmes as well as support for professional project management.

The company is a Microsoft Premier Project Partner, and has a lot of experience with Mind Mapping, having previously developed a version of ProjectLinker for Mind Manager, but have now stopped developing for Mind Manager, in favor of working with NovaMind. Reiner Wodey, Managing Director, holds a membership at the Microsoft Partner Advisory Council in Redmond, USA. Wodey Informationssysteme is headquartered in Bonn, Germany and is being represented in 13 additional countries. For more information, visit www.wodey.de

About NovaMind

NovaMind is used by businesses, in education, and for personal effectiveness, for tasks such as note taking, managing to-do lists, brainstorming, research, problem solving, decision making, presentation preparation and delivery, project planning, knowledge management, writing, and many other uses. NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 7 years, and has been available for Windows for over 3 years. It is rapidly gaining recognition for its many unique and innovative features and ease of use. NovaMind 5 is set to take Mind Mapping beyond where any Mind Mapping software has been before, making Mind Mapping even more powerful, intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at Gideon/at/novamind.com.

NovaMind are pleased to announce that we are working with the developers of iThoughts Mind Mapping software for iPhone and iPod Touch to bring two way exchange of files from both NovaMind for Windows and NovaMind for Mac. The integration is currently undergoing internal testing right now, and already supports the exchange of Mind Maps including:

• Text
• Notes
• Hyperlinks
• Topic position
• Color
• Shape
• Percentage complete
• Priority
• Collapsed status

This integration further extends the reach of NovaMind, meaning that we have integration between NovaMind and both the top Mind Mapping applications on the iPhone: iBlueSky and iThoughts.

We have heard from our customers that many of them have one or both of these applications, and find them very useful for Mind Mapping on the go. NovaMind’s founder, Gideon King said “we believe this shows the power of partnerships, where we are now able to bring our customers easy access to the two best Mind Mapping applications on iPhone and iPod Touch, allowing people the choice of software to use on their iPhone, secure in the knowledge that it will work with NovaMind.”

The first public release of the new version of iThoughts including NovaMind support is expected in a few weeks, and will be available as a free update for existing iThoughts customers. It will work with the current version of NovaMind.

Chuck Frey, author of the Mind Mapping Software Blog just posted his exclusive preview of NovaMind 5, entitled “Exclusive preview of NovaMind 5: New version offers a wealth of innovative new features”.

In his article, Chuck says that NovaMind “have always been innovators in this software genre, but they’ve outdone themselves this time, incorporating many new features and enhancements that are like nothing you’ve ever seen in mind mapping software before”.

When commenting about the new mind map layout engine in NovaMind 5, he said that it was efficient, maintaining a clean map layout while preventing topic overlaps and eliminating much wasted space. He also contrasted the freedom you have to place topics where you want them, with the rigidity of other Mind Mapping applications which have little or no control over topic placement.

He mentions some of the many new features in NovaMind 5 like multiple topic images on a single topic, and the more powerful shapes, which “enable you to add some unique visual enhancements to your maps”.

He talks about the new powerful plugin architecture of NovaMind 5, and the comments from developers working with the plugins, about how easy it is to interface with NovaMind.

To close the article, he comments “I appreciate the innovation and passion that Gideon and his team have poured into NovaMind during the last few years. The results are quite impressive, and continue to push the envelope as far as what’s possible with mind mapping software!”

To read the full article, please go to http://mindmappingsoftwareblog.com/exclusive-preview-of-novamind-5.

To find out more about the features of NovaMind 5, and watch videos about the new version, please visit http://www.novamind.com/features/nm5.php

NovaMind Software has just released a new video at http://www.novamind.com/features/nm5.php highlighting the problems with Mind Map layout present in all other Mind Mapping software currently available on the market, and the solution NovaMind has developed for the “space explosion” problem. One of the major problems with Mind Maps is that they get huge, pretty quickly. And all the software that’s out there at the moment makes it worse.

Gideon King, founder of NovaMind, says “I have tested just about every piece of Mind Mapping software out there to see if anyone had a good layout system to avoid the space explosion problem…NONE of them have a decent layout system. I’m sure that if you’ve used any of the Mind Mapping software currently out there, you have suffered from this [space explosion] problem.”

He goes on to suggest that the layout of the Mind Map should really be the fundamental building block of any Mind Mapping application.

In the video, he demonstrates the magnitude of the issues in other Mind Mapping applications, and then shows how NovaMind 5 has been designed to keep the Mind Maps compact at all times. This is true even when editing topics in such a way as they bump into other topics. The other topics are only moved by the minimum amount required to ensure that the topics don’t collide.

He then goes on to demonstrate several other features of NovaMind 5 that are not available in any other Mind Mapping application, like the ability to alter the angle at which the topics are stacked, both for the Mind Map title, and at any level of the Mind Map, and the ability to move topics to wherever the user desires. This is coupled with a system that honors the position that other topics are in, except where they overlap, and even then, only moves them by the minimum amount necessary to avoid collision, and honors as far as possible, the relative positions of the topics.

Mr King says “These layout capabilities are just one part of NovaMind 5, which is already generating a huge amount of interest in the market. The layout system is one of the core foundations of the product, and is clearly superior to anything else available. It lets you get on with your brainstorming and task management, secure in the knowledge that NovaMind is keeping your topics in the best possible position for your needs. It’s the perfect combination of power, flexibility, and ease of use.”

The video, and more information about NovaMind 5 is available at http://www.novamind.com/features/nm5.php

About Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way people think — they organize the information in the same way our brains organize information. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures used in Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

Mind Maps cater to both logical left brain thinking and pictorial right brain thinking at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

About NovaMind

NovaMind is used by businesses, in education, and for personal effectiveness, for tasks such as note taking, managing to-do lists, brainstorming, research, problem solving, decision making, presentation preparation and delivery, project planning, knowledge management, writing, and many other uses. NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 7 years, and has been available for Windows for over 3 years. It is rapidly gaining recognition for its many unique and innovative features and ease of use. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

 

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Last week, Chuck Frey posted an article on the Mind Mapping Software blog, entitled 8 little-known things you can do with NovaMind, which I recommend you read…and I thought I would give you some bonus ideas here too.

These apply to NovaMind 4 only (NovaMind 5 has a significantly improved user interface).

Here are your 6 bonus NovaMind Mind Mapping tips:

1. Sidebar Customization in Windows: Show the sidebar with the image library, adornments, notes etc by clicking on the relevant icon at the bottom right of the window. Resize the width to your preference. Hide it away by clicking the X in the top right corner of the panel.
2. Palette Options on Mac: Drag the palettes to reorder them, minimize them using the “-” button, flip them using the arrow icon at the top right of the palette to see the advanced options. In the Pro and Platinum editions, drag them off to become floating windows, stack them to connect them as a single floating window, click the “x” button to close the floating palette and return it to the palette panel. Hide the palette panel completely by using the minimize triangle at the top of the palettes panel.
3. Mac Toolbar: Hide the toolbar by clicking the lozenge shaped button at the top right of the window. Click it again to show the toolbar.
4. Template Chooser: If you don’t want to see the template chooser when starting NovaMind, you can turn it off in the Preferences. You can still create a Mind Map from a template by using the “File / New From Template” option.
5. More Images: If you have not downloaded the image libraries, go to the supporting files page for Windows or Mac and download and install them. The image libraries will give you a huge selection of images (1,400 for Express and Pro, and 2,300 for Platinum) that you can just drag on to your Mind Map.
6. Create your own Templates: (Pro and Platinum) Save your Mind Maps as Templates so you can easily reuse them – they will then show up in the template chooser when you create a new Mind Map from a template.

I hope this helps you get more out of NovaMind. Happy Mind Mapping!

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NovaMind is moving office this weekend and Monday. We will try to keep disruption of support services to a minimum. The web site will continue to be fully operational during our move.

With the growth in the number of users of NovaMind (over the last 9 months in particular), and the massive interest in NovaMind 5, it’s time for us to move to bigger offices to cater for additional staff as we continue to expand. With the new office, and new procedures to handle our international staff, we should be able to grow the company to at least 5 times the current size using the new office as our home base. We’ll be gradually increasing our staff numbers in the short term, as we can’t bring too many people on right in the middle of the ramp up to NovaMind 5 without negatively impacting the delivery of NovaMind 5, but following the release of NovaMind 5, we expect to be growing rapidly.

The new office is a brand new office building, so we have had the privilege of designing the entire layout exactly the way we wanted it, and we’re very excited about moving into it. Here are some pictures during the construction. They say it will be ready by Friday – I hope so!

2009 is definitely “the year” for NovaMind, with exciting new developments happening every week. It’s been over 7 years of really hard work to get it here, so it’s very rewarding to see it finally really get past the point of critical mass and be heading into a massive growth phase. I guess I was a little worried about the “global economic meltdown” everyone is talking about, but it appears that companies and individuals are actually realizing that they need to work smarter and more efficiently, so we have seen strong sales throughout the economic turmoil.

And of course, we couldn’t have done it without you, our customers who have told your friends and colleagues about NovaMind, and have bought NovaMind and upgraded as we release new versions.

You are just seeing the beginning of what NovaMind will become, as I reinvest the profits into building better software, support systems and services for you.

Laurent Coussirat, President and Founder of the group, explains :

“As a manager of 3 companies, I was first a simple user of Novamind software, needing to improve my efficiency, organization and communication. As a consultant, I was also using Novamind for brainstorming, interactive meetings, and innovative presentations.

So much convinced by those useful tools, I decided to distribute them in Europe through a new shop online specially designed and dedicated to NovaMind software : www.store-become.com.

We have been working a lot on the design of the store website, to make it attractive, clear and user friendly, as well as creating a secure area where a user can log in and see details of their orders, license keys, and invoices at any time, instead of just receiving them once by email.

We created also a new department inside the company, with value added services focused on :

• Creativity methods and tools
• Map design on demand
• Mind mapping approach
• Training
• Coaching

Novamind software has changed the life of our team inside the company, and is changing, more and more, the life of our customers ! We push hard to promote Novamind solution and our value added services on the European market.

Thanks to Gideon King and his team for those amazing tools. We wait now for the fantastic version 5 ! ”

This is a version of the Mind Map they have created for their home page showing some of the main benefits of using NovaMind:

And here is a Mind Map created “on demand” for a customer who needed to do a business presentation on their commercial strategy for a chain of jewelry stores:

Laurent mentions that there are a number of other templates on the www.store-become.com web site, and more to come each month.

We are very happy to welcome Become Partners as a NovaMind reseller.

Find out how easy it is to become either an affiliate or reseller on the NovaMind web site.

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Juan Gómez-Jurado uses NovaMind Mind Mapping software to write his books…and apparently it is working out rather well for him, seeing as he has sold over a million copies of his book “God’s Spy”, and has also received over half a million dollars for his last book.

He says that NovaMind is essential for his writing process, and is very much looking forward to NovaMind 5, which will be released in September/October. In his own words:

“For mind mapping my last novel, I used Novamind 4, and I want to thank you. Novamind 4 was amazing, esential throughout the whole process.

I’m starting to mindmap my next novel, and would love to do it on Novamind 5.

I’m gonna buy the update asap…Your software is so good that I received 500K$ for my last novel. That says it all!!

And I’m really eager of grabbing Novamind 5.”

Juan Gómez-Jurado
International best-selling author
(Including “God’s Spy”, which has sold over 1 million books)
www.juangomezjurado.com

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NovaMind 5 has been completely redesigned and rewritten using the latest and best technology on both Windows and Mac platforms.

NovaMind 5 makes use of advanced features such as hardware accelerated animations and multi-core processors to give you the most advanced mind mapping application available anywhere.

This video shows you some of the user interaction within NovaMind 5 for putting images on topics, and also gives you some information about the plugin system.

More information is available at the NovaMind 5 announcement page.

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After over 2 ½ years of research and development NovaMind are delighted to announce a revolutionary new Mind Mapping product: NovaMind 5, due to ship in September/October. Further information is available at http://clk.bz/p-novamind5

NovaMind founder, Gideon King said “We saw that none of the Mind Mapping products out there were addressing the fundamental needs of mind mappers, so starting in October 2006, we went right back to the basics. With the experience of having already had a successful Mind Mapping product in the market for over 5 years, and collecting feedback from users, and conducting surveys, we had all the information to be able to design something absolutely stunning – something that does what you expect and operates the way you want it to.”

Both the Windows and Mac versions of NovaMind 5 have been built from the ground up using the latest technologies to take advantage of hardware accelerated animations and graphics processing, multi-core processors and the latest user interface designs to give the best user experience possible.

Mr King says “Everything was up for intense scrutiny, from how the Mind Maps are formatted, and how they change when you edit the topics on your Mind Maps, right down to the structure of the individual topics and the user interaction with them on every level. We took nothing for granted. Our task was simply do whatever it took to create the best Mind Mapping software out there. Period.”

Included in NovaMind 5 is a wide range of new topic shapes, providing the opportunity to create more visually rich Mind Maps. The new design elements include things such as floating topics, attached shapes, callouts, and “FlexiLine” topics which can be shaped as desired, and have the text flowing smoothly along the line. This applies also for the link lines which are used to show secondary relationships between topics – these now have a choice of over 30 terminators for the start or end of the line to indicate the nature of the relationship, as well as the ability to scale the terminator to show the relative importance of the relationships. Text labels can flow along the lines or be attached to the line at any point along the line, and multiple labels can be used per line.

There is a wide range of new topic shapes available now, allowing you to create more visually rich Mind Maps.

One of the key differentiators of NovaMind 5 as compared with any other Mind Mapping application is the sophistication of the new layout engine which both arranges the elements of the Mind Map automatically, according to a range of layout styles, but at the same time allows user control of the positioning of the topics. This is completely unprecedented technology, and makes the whole process of working with Mind Maps a natural feel.

Another unique thing in NovaMind 5 is the theme and style system which make it easy to create fantastic looking Mind Maps using professionally designed themes, design your own themes, and reuse the styling of existing elemnents of a Mind Map.

Included are a number of new ways to automatically color topics on the Mind Map, starting from any topic, allowing the user to set the coloring up in one place and have all the descendant topics be automatically colored with the desired colors.

A plugin architecture is built in to both the Windows and Mac versions of NovaMind 5, allowing for the extension of the Mind Mapping experience by third parties.

Mr King says “this is just an overview of some of the new features of NovaMind 5. We’ll be releasing more detailed information closer to the release date. NovaMind 5 is clearly head and shoulders above any other Mind Mapping application currently available, and we’re very much looking foreward to releasing it.”

Chuck Frey of Innovation Tools says “In the 3+ years I have been reporting on the world of mind mapping tools and software, NovaMind have consistently been the innovators – the ones to watch who tend to come up with the cool yet practical capabilities that no one has thought of yet. NovaMind 5 promises to deliver yet another leap in what’s possible.”

For further information about NovaMind 5, see http://clk.bz/p-novamind5

About NovaMind

NovaMind is in use in over 90 countries and is available in 10 different languages. It is being used by businesses, in education, and for personal effectiveness, for tasks such as note taking, managing to-do lists, brainstorming, research, problem solving, decision making, presentation preparation and delivery, project planning, knowledge management, writing, and many other uses. NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 7 years, and has been available for Windows for over 3 years. It is rapidly gaining recognition for its many unique and innovative features and ease of use. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

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The scriptmapping functionality of NovaMind is featured in issue 15-11.04.09 issue of Filmecho on pages 36 and 37. This highlights the growing presence of NovaMind in the European screenwriting community, where it has been used to write award winning screenplays, including the one that Hector Cabello Reyes wrote to win the top professional screenwriting award in Europe.

For more information about the screenwriting capabilities of NovaMind, please the scriptmapping page at: http://www.novamind.com/screenwriting/

NovaMind, producer of Mind Mapping for both education and business use, today announced that they have joined the Memory4Teachers initiative which will provide teachers with a range of educational resources and software applications, as well as data storage on 2GB USB keys which will be given away free to 750,000 teachers across the UK.

“NovaMind have been involved in education for the last 7 years, and being able to help out so many teachers with NovaMind Mind Mapping software is like a dream come true for us”, said Gideon King, founder of NovaMind, and internationally recognized expert on Mind Mapping. Gideon King is also the author of the seminal work on the use of Mind Mapping in education, “Teacher’s guide to Mind Mapping”, and says “The effectiveness of Mind Mapping in education has been repeatedly proven, both in the effective presentation of information, memorization, study and research. Specific techniques can be used to engage visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning simultaneously, leading to much improved comprehension and retention of the information.”

NovaMind has a number of unique features which make it ideal for education, like the ease of creating visually stunning Mind Maps, rainbow coloring, flexible branches, and an all time favourite with the students; the Suggesterator, which suggests new directions for thinking based on the existing content of the Mind Map. It also has the ability to print out Mind Maps without the text on the branches so that students can fill it in with their own keywords for better memorization of the material, and again when revising, starting with the blank Mind Map structure gives visual and spacial cues which have been proven to significantly improve the recall of the actual content.

NovaMind is dedicated to providing the best of Mind Mapping software and educational resources for teachers across the UK through the Memory4Teachers system, and will also be making educational videos available to the teachers and students to further enhance their effectiveness through the use of Mind Mapping and related thinking techniques and tools.

Since 1998, RGS Media Group has been working with the public, voluntary and private business sectors providing creative and cost efficient media solutions specifically within the UK education sector. The Memory4Teachers memory sticks are an extension of this dedication to the education industry, showing yet another initiative which will help teachers significantly through the free storage space, integrated software and resources.

The memory sticks are password secure and are preloaded with a fully interactive control panel, a diary, timetable and lesson plans as well as offering support for all national curriculum subject areas. The memory sticks also provide teachers with direct access to recommended educational websites.

About NovaMind

NovaMind is in use in over 90 countries and is available in 10 different languages. It is being used by businesses, in education, and for personal effectiveness, for tasks such as note taking, managing to-do lists, brainstorming, research, problem solving, decision making, presentation preparation and delivery, project planning, knowledge management, writing, and many other uses. NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 7 years, and has been available for Windows for over 3 years. It is rapidly gaining recognition for its many unique and innovative features and ease of use. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

As we saw in the last video, there are a lot of areas of strategic planning where Mind Mapping gives you a strong strategic advantage, both in the planning process and also in explaining what the business is all about to investors, staff, and customers.

When you get to the level of business planning, some of the same theories and techniques apply, and certainly the use of things like the SWOT analysis Mind Map is very valuable as you put together the shorter term business plans, but there are a lot of other things you can use Mind Maps for at the business planning level.

There are several Mind Maps referred to in this video, which you can find at these locations:

Business planning; annual review; business plan outline

Elements of a marketing plan

Marketing plan

Mind Maps in planning

Running meetings using Mind Maps; Mind Mapped agenda

One of the significant issues with more traditional business plans is that they tend to end up as long boring documents that few people read and even fewer understand, and therefore they are ignored by precisely the people who could benefit most by following them.

By contrast, using Mind Maps for business plans allows you to create engaging, unique, memorable business plans. The color, shapes, images, and summarized nature of the Mind Maps makes them memorable and useful.

When creating a business plan, we once again brainstorm the particular areas we are interested in at the time, but this time, everything is cross-checked with the company strategic plan to ensure consistency, and to make sure that the business plan is advancing the company in the direction of the long term goals.

Just like the strategic plan in the previous video, you can create individual Mind Maps for each of the key areas of your business, and then produce a summary Mind Map which highlights the key points for use with clients and general staff, and you have the more detailed Mind Maps available to use with the staff who are employed in that particular area of the business.

When using Mind Maps for planning, it is important to use the general planning principles, as shown on this Mind Map. The first step is brainstorming, where you start at the center of the Mind Map with the subject, then add branches for each main idea or objective, and then generate the ideas for the sub-branches as quickly as you can, without worrying about organizing them at this stage.

The second stage is one of organization, culling and scoping, so that you have the main objectives at the first level, and then the supporting goals and objectives, and eventually down to whatever level of detail you need in the Mind Map. At this stage, you are comparing the things that you are putting on the Mind Map with the strategic plan, to make sure you are going in the right direction, and also looking at the feasibility and desirability of the ideas. Some ideas are not appropriate for the particular business plan being created, but may be worth keeping for later, and these ideas can be put into another Mind Map for later implementation.

From the resulting Mind Map, you refine it until you get to an action plan for each area of the business, by confirming the objectives and making sure the tasks have been identified properly, and then prioritize and schedule them.

The last, and most important part of the process is to make sure you have appropriate measures in place for tracking and feedback into future plans. These mechanisms can be built into the Mind Maps, so you record the feedback in the appropriate places on the Mind Map as the plan is put into action.

Let’s look at one area of your business planning to give you some ideas of how it could be helped by the use of Mind Maps – let’s pick marketing plans.

So you would start at the high level and perhaps draw in a Mind Map from your strategic plan and update it to match the needs of your current business plan, so we look at various aspects of the current market position, an overview of the market, do a SWOT analysis of the market, set your objectives, and then work out what strategies you are going to apply.

From there, you might create a plan for use in your detailed planning, where you address specific issues. The example Mind Map gives pretty typical issues and structures, so you might like to download the Mind Map from NovaMind Connect and customize it for your needs, but of course at the same time, it is just an example which shows you the concept which you can apply across all areas of your business plan.

So those things all relate to your business plan itself, but there are so many other areas of businesses where Mind Mapping can be used, that I thought I would mention some of them just to give you some ideas that you can work with and further improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your work.

Here are some ideas around using Mind Maps for meeting planning.

Before the meeting, you can put together a Mind Map for the agenda and distribute it to the attendees. This is a good way of limiting the scope of the meeting and also showing on the Mind Map the objectives just the same way as you would for a project plan. Then during the meeting, when you have the Mind Map in front of you, it will help maintain focus and also pace the discussion because everyone can see how many topics still need to be covered. You can record the meeting minutes directly on the agenda Mind Map, recording the main points and action items as sub-branches below the items being discussed. Then at the end of the meeting, your Mind Map can be distributed as is for instant meeting minutes.

There are example Mind Maps on NovaMind Connect which give some specific tips to get the most out of using Mind Maps for your Meetings.

Another place where the clarity of Mind Maps can be very useful is for staff reviews.

Goals can be identified, the meetings that were held during the period, the issues that were encountered, and how they were dealt with, what the employee learned, the expenses, and finally the major wins, so you can end on a positive note. Now if you go into a review period with the knowledge that this is the way you will be assessed, you can make sure that all areas are covered well when you are going about your daily business, and get a fantastic review.

Hopefully this will have left you with lots of ideas and starting points for using Mind Maps in business planning and also general day to day running of businesses and doing your job better an more efficiently.

 

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NovaMind Software is pleased to announce the immediate availability of NovaMind for Windows in Spanish and French. This means that the Windows version of NovaMind is available in English, Japanese, German, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Hebrew, French and Spanish.

Gideon King, founder of NovaMind Mind Mapping software said “We are happy to have the opportunity to support our growing international family of users with Mind Mapping software they can use in their own language. While it is possible to create Mind Maps in any language using NovaMind, it is easier for users when they have the user interface available in their own language.”

The Mac version of NovaMind is available in English, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese and Spanish, and is used widely around the world.

Mr King says “Last time I checked, which was about 3 years ago, NovaMind was already in use in at least 88 different countries. I strongly believe in the power and usefulness of Mind Mapping, so it is very pleasing to be able to help people around the world by providing software to improve their productivity and effectiveness.”

About Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way people think — they organize the information in the same way our brains organize information. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures used in Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

Mind Maps cater to both logical left brain thinking and pictorial right brain thinking at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

About NovaMind

NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 6 years, and has been available for Windows for over two years. It is rapidly gaining recognition for its many unique and innovative features and ease of use. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

NovaMind Software is pleased to announce the immediate availability of iBlueSky integration. This allows creation of Mind Maps in iBlueSky on the iPhone or iPod Touch, which can be sent by email to anyone on the iPhone contact list, and opened directly in NovaMind for further editing and refinement.

Having iBlueSky Mind Mapping software available in your pocket on iPhone or iPod touch means that the user has at their fingertips (literally) the ability to:

• create to-do lists whilst in the moment so as to avoid forgetting anything
• take notes in meetings where there is no laptop available
• jot down ideas as they arise, and organize them
• be productive anywhere and everywhere, in those spare moments waiting in line etc.
• solve problems and make decisions using Mind Mapping techniques, at any time
• brainstorm in places where it would be impractical to take a laptop
• summarize and memorize information no matter where you are

For further information about iBlueSky and NovaMind integration, please see http://www.novamind.com/ibluesky/

Gideon King, founder of NovaMind said “We are very excited about the possibilities that this integration of NovaMind and iBlueSky brings. Late last year we surveyed our customers, and one of the most common requests for new capabilities was for integration between the Mac and Windows versions of NovaMind and an iPhone Mind Mapping solution. We feel very fortunate to have been able to develop a very close working relationship with Tenero Software, the developers of the top Mind Mapping application for the iPhone.”

At the moment, the communication is one way, but Andrew Ebling, founder of Tenero Software says “by the end of January, we should have both directions working via our import/export web service”.

There are many benefits of being able to transfer Mind Maps to NovaMind, because NovaMind allows the user to:

• Use different branch shapes and styles, and add images and adornments to branches
• Have full control over the color of the branches
• Add notes and hyperlinks to the branches
• Add task and resource information
• Give presentations directly from Mind Maps
• Export to other programs such as MS Word, Powerpoint, MS Project and Merlin
• …and have all the capabilities of NovaMind to create stunning looking and powerful Mind Maps

“We believe that the benefits for both the iBlueSky and NovaMind users are huge, and are just really glad to have the opportunity to be able to provide this amount of value to them” says Mr King.

About Mind Mapping

Mind Maps are diagrams that work the way people think — they organize the information in the same way our brains organize information. They make it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

Our brains like thinking in pictures. The smooth curves and colorful pictures used in Mind Mapping create powerful images for your brain to remember.

Mind Maps cater to both logical left brain thinking and pictorial right brain thinking at the same time, which makes them a very good way of storing and recalling information, presenting things to other people, and brainstorming new ideas.

About NovaMind

NovaMind has been the top Mind Mapping program available on Mac computers for the last 6 years, and has been available for Windows for over two years. It is rapidly gaining recognition for its many unique and innovative features and ease of use. NovaMind makes Mind Mapping intuitive and fun.

For more information about NovaMind, please visit www.novamind.com or e-mail Gideon King at gideon(at)novamind.com.

In these days of information overload, the compact way of representing ideas that is embodied in Mind Mapping is essential. You can summarize a huge amount of information in a very compact space. For us to be able to cope, we need efficient knowledge generation, management, and use.

Watch this video to find out all about knowledge management. Actually more than just knowledge management – we’ll examine how knowledge is created, what it is, and how you can use it.

We are fed with a huge amount of data all the time, and we are pretty good at sorting through the incoming data and applying our understanding of the relationships between the different pieces of data and its meaning to us, so we can turn the data into information. In this process, we delete, distort, and filter the data to fit our understanding of the world. The raw data is turned into something that is summarized, described and defined in terms that fit with the information we already know.

This massively reduces the amount of material we need to deal with, and also helps us process new data as it comes along, but still we are overwhelmed with the amount of information. We need to turn the information into knowledge, so we generalize the information and look for overall patterns that fit with our current knowledge. Knowledge allows us to have the concept of how things work, so we can develop strategies and methods that we know from experience will work. We will also be able to more easily process information because we know the patterns that we expect the information to fall into, and are able to recognize those patterns with new information.

Now if we purely operate from the level of Knowledge, we are able to implement strategies that are effective at dealing with issues, but we will not be very good at creativity or invention of new solutions.

So beyond knowledge there is what we can call Wisdom or Understanding. In order to go from knowledge to wisdom, we need to understand the principles behind the patterns we see, and the reasons that the strategies work. We recognize meta-patterns in the knowledge – patterns that define the patterns we observe. Once we recognize those reasons, it builds a framework of “truth” around our perception of reality, so we are able to form hypotheses as to what the principles are, and test them to form principles and archetypes that we can use to drive creativity, invention and coming up with new paradigms which either fit with the truth of our reality or challenge it in new ways. Having this framework of wisdom in place helps with good decision making, efficient processing of options, and creative thinking that stems from solid principles.

We thrive on being at the edge between overload on the one side and boredom on the other side. If we have inefficient ways of dealing with data and turning it into information then we will have data overload problems, and if we have inefficient ways of turning information into knowledge, then we will have information overload. What most people term information overload is actually a combination of data overload and information overload. If we get overloaded by either data or information overload, we are likely to either withdraw from the information flow and adopt a “whatever” or “I don’t care” approach, or do some sort of more mundane task or work, or blob out in front of the TV, or distract ourselves from the actual task we should be doing. In one way or another, we either cut down our input or our processing of it to avoid the feeling of overwhelm.

On the other end of the scale, if we are not stimulated with enough data, or the data we are receiving already fits with what we already know in every way, we get bored, and sometimes do things that actually sabotage situations or relationships because subconsciously we have become bored.

As you can see, our typical reactions to overload are unhelpful because we get into stuck states and just give up completely, and our reactions to boredom are often unhelpful because we sabotage things just to make life interesting.

While it is possible to go through life with very few tools and strategies to be able to cope with overload or boredom, if you live your life like that, you are likely to be very unfulfilled and accomplish very little. On the other hand, when you use the right tools and techniques to be able to deal with increasing amounts of data, information and knowledge, you will enter a “flow” state where you are able to achieve massive amounts in a short space of time, and be able to be creative and a visionary. It will both make for massive personal growth and productivity, but will also allow you to feel in control of the situation, going with the information flow.

If you feel bored, and develop the skills to be aware of that situation before you artificially introduce drama, then you will go and seek out more stimulation – more data, more challenges to tackle, and you will get the immense satisfaction of dealing with the hard problems and conquering them.

When you are dealing with a lot of data and information at once, it’s like a pipe, and if that pipe gets blocked, then all the information and data piles up behind it and very soon you have an overload situation and everything shuts down and you start using your tactics to get rid of the incoming information, or ignore it, and the whole flow process stops and you stop learning, stop gathering knowledge, stop creating wisdom, and stop being creative. One of the most common causes of this happening is when you get stuck making a decision, which is why I made the video on decision making, so you never need to have that blockage again.

But the more subtle issue is if you have more data than you can handle going in to the pipe, and the pressure gradually builds up and builds up and you don’t know how to handle it, until it eventually explodes.

Now if the knowledge is inaccessible, or difficult to understand, then it is useless to you or whoever could benefit from it. When the knowledge is readily accessible and actually used in the decision making and problem solving processes, and creative green field thinking, then you have the sum of the knowledge and experience of everyone and every situation that contributed to that knowledge at your disposal to allow you to make the most of every situation.

Of course this is where Mind Mapping comes into play.

As you gather the data, you can put it into a mind map, and as you do so, you are naturally deleting, distorting and filtering the data to become information and to match with the knowledge and information you already have. This helps deal with data and information overload. As you arrange the mind map, you are starting to group the information so that the linkages between the ideas convey meaning, and the organization is exactly the same as when information is organized in your brain. At this stage you are still operating mostly from a left brain logical perspective, but at the same time you are naturally creating an image that is attractive to your right brain too.

As you graft the branches and use the colors and branch shapes and images to indicate the commonality of ideas, you are building the understanding of the patterns within the information, and generalizing back to the root branches. This allows you to gain the level of overview of information that is necessary for it to be knowledge where you understand how it all fits together, and how your objectives are going to be met.

So you are automatically turning the data into information and the information into knowledge as you create and refine your Mind Maps. This knowledge consists not only of the keywords on the branches, but also the colors, positioning and connections the branches have, as well as the images, boundaries, task information, priorities, branch notes, and all your hyperlinks to other documents, web pages and resources. They all go to make up the sum of the knowledge contained in the Mind Map. The compactness and richness of this visual representation of the knowledge makes Mind Maps excellent knowledge management tools, so that when you (or somebody else) need the information, it is right there in an easily understood format, and with all the richness of the information and data behind it.

Having the knowledge represented graphically in this way is a great help in going the next step to wisdom and understanding where you get the picture of the principles and the underlying patterns in the knowledge, and can therefore propose archetypes and principles that can drive forward through a brainstorming process to new and innovative solutions.

Using Mind Maps in this way ensures that you can manage the volume of data, process it efficiently into information and package it up into knowledge without getting overloaded. This means you can move through wisdom to true creativity based on a solid foundation of understanding. To my knowledge, there is no other tool better suited to this process of creating and maintaining close to optimal performance than Mind Mapping.

 

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