Archive for the ‘map part’ Category

Mapping Twitter Favourites, Conversations et al with MindManager

Monday, January 17th, 2011

Recently Mattias Kareld asked on Twitter:

“Is there an easy way to get my favorite tweets into a mindmap? Would be great to sort them in a #mindmap. I mainly use #mindmanager.”

My conclusion is there are two ways:

  1. Use a News Feeds – Map Part to add your favorites ( favourites ) or anyone elses using an RSS feed of the form http://twitter.com/favorites/twitteraccountname.rss to your map. You can do this from at least MindManager 6 which is what Mattias is using.
  2. Use the TweetJet experimental web / cloud application to capture the tweets, save to a xmmap file and process with MindManager.  This process can work upto a point for non-MindManager users. Anyone can access the experiment.

Twitter conversation in a MindManager mapI entered into a conversation with Mattias and we came to a solution using the former method.  He has blogged the details of the Map Part solution in Organising my favorite tweets in a mind map

I used the latter to map the conversation with Mattias and others.  There were 45 tweets related to the question, mainly exchanges between Mattias and myself.

You can see the scale and complexity of the conversation in the thumbnail view opposite.

Here is how I mapped the Twitter conversation and note you do not need MindManager to create a map.

Mindjet the developers of MindManager have created a free (under-development) online cloud tool which imports Twitter information to a map. It can be saved or printed but the map you create only exists whilst the page is open (vapourware!). Read the Mindjet blog summarising the Twitter Tool.  Or jump straight to the simplest version of the Twitter Mapping tool, (it takes some time to load on first use), connect it to your Twitter account, ignore all the instructions and click on My Profile. Now you can click on any of the normal Twitter groupings such as Sent, Direct, Favorities etc and the map will be populated with your tweets or ones to you.  Go back and read the instructions if this grabs your attention!

I used the Search Twitter topic to assemble the Tweets I needed for the conversation map. Click that, enter a search term and you get a set of Tweets. You can repeat for different search terms. Using this I gathered together the Tweets in the extended conversation with Mattias and others.

The only editing (apart from adding more sub-topics / Tweets) you can do on this map is deletion. So prior to saving or printing you may wish to delete the instructions, feedback and other unused topics. Printing the resulting map is also possible.

The map can also be saved in .xmmap format to your computer. This file format can be opened by at least the following applications: MindManager from version X5 onwards (PC and MAC), MindManager for iPhone, iThoughts HD (iPad), ThinkingSpace (Android). I saved the map, edited it and then exported it with MindManager to produce the Big Clickable Picture, an Outline and a Flash viewer. You can also save the file, change the file type to .xml and open it an XML viewer or editor.

Is this a useful process?

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Grumpy Old MindManager User

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

MindManager 9 was released in August 2010. Some features from previous versions were omitted and people moaned including me. During this week I have missed three lost features again:

  • A working project planning tool like JCV Gantt.  See this discussion in the Mindjet Forum – Task Info operations’ behavior remain a mystery to me
  • Topic Alerts
  • Outlook Map Parts: I can use the MindManager 8 ones but frustratingly whilst opening an Outlook window for e.g. a task, it does not add the task to to the current topic.  You have to go to the Task window in Outlook, open the Add Ins Ribbon and then add the task to the map.  Made the mistake of demonstrating this to a client before Christmas thinking it was still working in MindManager 9! :(

Will Service Pack 2 wind the clock back and when will it appear?

What are you grumpy about?

p.s. I am also grumpy about:

  • Why some web sites bring Firefox to a grinding halt or was it the Skype Add Ins Manager.
  • Why Windows can’t remember the actual size of my extension monitor. It often uses an approximation of 1360 x 768 but it’s actually 1440 x 900.

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Posted in map part, Outlook, planning | 5 Comments »

The Social Network Map Parts are for Facebook and MySpace. What about Ecademy and LinkedIn?

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

For a few years now MindManager has provided Map Parts which create a “dashboard” of your Facebook and MySpace social network.  There is an open API and it should be possible to do the same for Ecademy and LinkedIn.  Do you know someone who could develop the map part?  If yes connect them to me please.

Technical Notes:

On this web page:
- The Flash player file is 1.8mb it takes a while to download and get running
- Open the branches to see the contacts. Click a cross or right click the central topic and show all levels.
- Click the link to go to their profile
- Click the note to see profile text
- You can’t edit it.

Wiith MindManager on your PC:
- The file is 122kb and loads instantly in your PC.
- The network contacts displayed in refreshed when you open the map or refresh the map part
- You copy contacts to other maps
- You can annotate the contacts with notes, call outs, tasks, email link, calendar events, topics, links to folders, files and web pages.

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Managing Files and Folders with MindManager

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

MindManager File Explorer Map Part

1 Using the File Explorer Map Part

MindManager comes with a tool for mapping folders and files. You add one of the Map Parts to a map and point it at a folder. Depending on the choice of Map Part you will get the files, folders or files and folders added to your map.

2 Dragging and Dropping from Windows File Explorer

Open Windows File Explorer and select file(s) and folder(s) (hold down the Ctrl Key to do multiple selects) and drag to the map.

 

3 Adding a hyperlink
You can use the Add Hyperlink tool to add files or folders links to the map.

MindManager Hyperlink tool

 

4 What’s the difference?

MindManager File Explorer Map Part4.1 Sub Folders
The Map Part will show one level of subfolder(s). If you right click the Map Part icon on a folder and Refresh you will add the next level down.

Folders added by dragging and dropping are just a link.

4.2 Refreshing
Map parts can be refreshed. Any files or folders added or deleted after the map was edited will be added or deleted.

5 Sharing with Associates

You can share your map of files and folders with others by
• Using Export > Pack and Go or Send > As Attachment
• Export as Web Pages. Use the Clickable Image Map template and then copy the exported folder and the sub-folder called Linked Documents (which contains all the linked files) to your web or network server.

6 Attaching Files

You can attach files in MindManager using the Paper Clip tool. This takes a copy from your disk and embeds it in the map file or allows you to create a new document and embed it in the map. Opening, editing and saving an attachment changes the file in the map not the file stored on the disk drive.
Attachments can only be accessed by MindManager users from the map. Attached files are not exported with the clickable image map web export.

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