Soroush Javidi

Anyone who's into GTD, is also familiar with Mind Mapping, which was popularised (coined) by the psychology author Tony Buzan. Wikipedia describes mind maps as

A mind map (or mind-map) is a diagram used for linking words and ideas to a central key word or idea. It is used to visualize, classify, structure, and generate ideas, as well as an aid in study, problem solving, and decision making.

You can learn more about mind maps, if not familiar yet, in the full wiki entry. There are several commercial products available for mind mapping, that I have come across on the Internet a few times; one of them being MindJet, and the other being Mindgenius which is made by Tony Buzon's company. I haven't used any of them, so can't say much about them! But I did come across this one a few days ago which I've given a spin! FreeMind was featured on sourceforge as their February Project of the Month. I hadn't heard or seen any reviews of it before (unlike MindJet, which I've heard of before), so I thought I'd give it a try and write a little about it.

Well, first of all, the website is in the form of a wiki, which made it very easy to quickly pick up stuff about their software, so that was a plus! (No getting lost on a website!) Secondly, their product is OpenSource and is licensed under the GNU General Public License, which is great! The installer is only 3MB in size (version without SVG export support), so that'll make it easy for those on a slower connections (I feel sorry for you!). You do need the Java Runtime Environment 1.4 or higher though, if you don't already have it installed, since their program is written in Java and requires it.

Once installed and setup (it was very quick), it was very easy to get to know the software. It has 3 Modes: MindMap (~edit), Browse(~read only) and Files(~view files). They have a sample file which shows you the different features. For example, you can use hyperlinks and points to website or internally to your files! Pretty neat! And of course, you can format what you write, make it bold, italic, or whatever! And you can also undo what you have written, which is useful! I created a simple mind map, which you can see below (click for larger view). I was trying out some of the features! The Cloud feature is very nice, as it gives you a way to group several nodes (branches) that are related. You can also use icons with your nodes that make it easier to find/map ideas.

There's some handy keyboard shortcuts for the software that I picked up: use [Insert] to insert nodes, use [delete] to delete nodes and use [Ctrl+up/down] to move your nodes up or down! No need to fiddle with the mouse! Once I finished making the mind map, I exported it to a PNG file, which you see above! You can also export to XHTML (see example), XSLT, Open Office Writer document or JPEG (and of course SVG, if you do the full install).

I'd like to see a PDF exporter, since that would make it easier to share your mind maps with others, but it's still possible if you print to PDF (if you have a PDF printer software installed)PDF export is supported through the SVG export support of the program (Thanks Chris!). I think everyone will be happy as there is a variaty of exports!

Overall, I think this is a great free software, has great capabilities and it worked great on my computer (not slow, or anything like that). If you're a GTD follower/fan or just want map your ideas for your essay, research or something else; then I suggest you give FreeMind a try! Thumbs up to the developers! If you use anything else, or have tips on using mind map software, then please share in the comments!