Monday, February 4, 2008

FreeMind and Flash

fm I have been investing quite a bit of time lately looking at various tools that can help me better organize and correlate information. In the mind mapping camp, FreeMind is making a concerted comeback after a period of arrested development since the last major release in 2005 (v0.8). The new and upcoming features are quite impressive for an open source development, and FreeMind may yet rival more professional tools such as MindManager.

One of the interesting features in the current version of FreeMind is the ability to publish interactive mind maps onto web pages using a Flash plugin. The FreeMind wiki contains a gallery showing many uses of mind maps rendered with the Flash plugin, and I have added a map I brainstormed on Issues in Publish and Subscribe systems for content distribution (this is a biggish map so right click the central node, selecting fold all from Node, to start from the main topic).

You can also find the mindmap used to write Anonymity on the Edge in an interactive Flash format here.

I often use mind maps as the first stage in defining the scope of a risk or threat assessment. There are several interesting examples of security mind maps available on the web on including threats to mobile devices, ISO17799:2005 areas, general IT security, and a colourful map on password awareness.

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7 comments:

www.cattechnologies.com said...

One of the interesting features in the current version of FreeMind is the ability to publish interactive web maps using a Flash plugin is very much interested.

olj said...

Thank you for the hint. The software looks really nice.

Anonymous said...

FreeMind is buzzing along in Beta, as it has been for a looong while. I use it and follow the forum, and it seems that many users are using it in Beta quite happily. Would-be users who work in a corporation may have their IT department saying "no beta software", and be stuck with 0.8.0 for now, but for the rest, the beta is well worth a try.

The popularity of FreeMind can be seen from the number of mind mapping software authors who have made it an import and even an export option with their own software. I know of nine - compare that with the six that can talk to MindManager.

Regards
Vic
http://www.mind-mapping.org
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software

Unknown said...

Vic, good observations. Earlier I was looking for a way to email a reply to you but I guess this posting is the best way.

regards Luke

Unknown said...

This blog is really interesting, actually i must to say i prefer flash because is a fast program and easy to use. I don´t like the complex program. I just looking for one that be eficient all the time and flash it is. that is why i prefer to buy viagra because i always have a great result in my sexual life.

Anonymous said...

Its quite impressive one of the best tool it help me a lot in my project.



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Antonio P said...

Please, I tried to use flash mind maps but I can't get hyperlinks to work. I saw your flash mindmaps have working hyperlinks....how did you do that?