Mind Mapping Online: Mind Meister at version 3

My first post about Mind Meister, an online mind mapping tool, was written more than one and a half year ago, and at the time the product was just about to be launched. In the last year Mind Meister has dramatically evolved from an experiment to a mature online collaborative suite. The other day I received an email from them announcing the new 3.0 version. They were sweet enough to call me a “key influencer” in that message and they also told me not to whisper a word before November 3rd, 14:00 UTC. How about that?

Well, it’s been well over November 3rd, the United States has it’s first Afro-American President, Barack Obama, things have settled, so to speak, so we can move on with our tiny little review.

Beforehand, you should know that Mind Meister has its own blog and that some of the new features are already outlined there, so if you are impatient, you can go directly to the related post on their mind mapping blog. But if you care to spend another 3-4 minutes around, here’s a quick list of what impressed me:

• very good support for tasks within mind maps – now tasks can have a priority, a start date, duration and an email reminder. Cool.
• new user interface with what they call “organic lines”, meaning the mind map will look a little more natural when you drag around the nodes
• export enhancements, especially in the export dialog area. Oh, you can export now in the MindManager format, the default format for all the mind mapping I do
• export related also, the ability to print the mind map via PDF integration
• there is an OpenId integration now, although I haven’t been able to sign up with my OpenId, I guess this is a temporary glitch
• new team admin interface (if you go for the business package, see pricing below)
• there is a new embed API, which, from what I could think right now, it would make a huge difference in the future. The ability to “script” my mind mapping is one of those things that make me think, you know…
• there were also a number of significant improvements in sharing – it’s a collaborative suite, after all, but I’ll be honest with you and confess that I haven’t used that feature yet. Although I think there is quite a market for such a feature…

All in all, this version 3.0 seems to bring important enhancements. More important, the price has been adjusted, so that a premium account is now 4 USD / month, and a business account is 6 USD / month. Worthy to note is the fact that there is also an academic package, at only 15 USD / year.

OmniFocus for iPhone – a GTD application reviewed

A simple Google search for omnifocus is revealing more than 220.000 results (as of October 2008), which, for a personal task manager application, is a lot. And I would say that this popularity is well deserved by OmniFocus. Not only because it won the Apple Awards for Best iPhone Productivity Application in 2008, but because is a really useful piece of software. OmniGroup, the makers of OmniFocus, are well known in the Mac world for their OmniOutliner and OmniPlan products. I used OmniOutliner a lot until I shifted to mind mapping but I still use it from time to time even today. As for OmniPlan, it was a key factor in big projects, when I used to run my own online publishing business.

But from a large structure planning application to a personal organizer implementing GTD there is quite a gap, and one cannot expect to apply the same knowledge in both areas. Maybe this is why OmniGroup made some very interesting moves back in 2006-2007, bringing into the development team of what they called at that time Omni Fu the icon GTD blogger Merlin Mann, and the maker of a popular GTD implementation called Kinkless, Ethan Schoonover. I dare to say that OmniFocus wouldn’t be what it is today without the advices and know-how of those GTD gurus.

But enough with praises, and let’s start reviewing OmniFocus for iPhone. I expect this post to be rather big, so put aside some time to read it. Also, I must say that the intended audience for this goes from the unexperienced iPhone user who wants to increase personal productivity to the moderate GTD follower, so if you fall between these categories, give it a read.

GTD with an iPhone

The first and the most important thing about OmniFocus is its compliance with the GTD methodology. For those of you unaware of this concept, GTD is a methodology invented by David Allen, which can dramatically boost one’s personal productivity. In short, by using GTD you are doing stuff (Actions) grouped together (Projects) in specific locations (Contexts) and by taking one step at a time (Next Actions). OmniFocus lets you add your Projects, fill them with Actions, assign them to Contexts, and see when and where you can do them. But a picture is worth a thousand words (have I already said that?) so here is how the home screen of OmniFocus looks like:

OmniFocus home screen

Projects and Contexts are just usual handles for task management, so these are pretty self explanatory, but what you can see at a glance in the home screen is also the time constraint for your activities. Being able to see on the home screen how many tasks are due soon, how many are overdue and how many important (flagged) tasks you have is such a time saver. Another noticeable thing is the lower sidebar, which features icons for nearby contexts, syncing, and quick add an action to Inbox. That lower bar is available all over the application. Simple and clear interface.

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