Great Tool: MindManager

Ben Carey blogged about how useful Mind Manager is here and here. All the other tips I've gotten from Ben's blog have been great, so I decided to give Mind Manager's demo a try. Holy smokes. Ben wasn't kidding. This is what Microsoft's One Note wished it was half of. It's terrific for rapidly brainstorming out ideas, organizing them into a sensible map, assigning tasks, and showing interrelationships. I love the visual aspect of it, and I think it's a good start for a Big Visible Chart. I've played with it for outlining a couple book reviews, laying out infrastructure tasks and knowledge building I need to do, plus have started an initial map of a potential project I may be working on. MM Pro even links tasks from maps into Outlook, so it's a great organizational help for keeping your work straight. I've just scratched the surface of this neat tool. I'm sure I'll find more great stuff in the next couple weeks. The brainstorming aspect of MM is what really attracts me. I've sat in plenty of BS (brain storming, not the other BS) sessions where I wished I had a good tool for capturing ideas flowing out. MM helps with not only the capture of ideas, but I believe it would be a terrific helper in keeping creative ideas pouring out. The professional version's not cheap: $350, but the standard version just doesn't seem anywhere close in comparison. I can't foot the bill for Mind Manager until I get some steady revenue coming in, but it's definitely on the list for future tools to buy. Until then I'm stuck with the crappy Mind Manager wannabe One Note which came with my MSDN subscription.