Submitting your ideas to MindMeister should be as easy as possible. Good ideas are rare and fleeting, and when you have them you should be able to capture them quickly.
For this purpose, we've created the Geistesblitz Tools - a couple of cool add-ons for your Mac OS Dashboard or Windows Vista Sidebar and your web browser. As well as these, you'll find an overview of a host of new features that we'll be releasing over the next few weeks, as well as some internal information in this newsletter. Oh, there's also a poll for the new layout of map lines that we'd appreciate your input on!
Have fun reading,
The MindMeister Team
The Geistesblitz Tools
GEISTESBLITZ, (noun, m.) ['gæstes blîts]:
literally translated as mind flash, is a sudden insight or idea, often brilliant and unexpected. Consisting of the German words Geist (as in Zeitgeist) and Blitz (as in Blitzkrieg), it is probably best translated into English as brain wave or flash of genius.
The Geistesblitz Tools allow you to quickly submit your ideas (or Geistesblitzes) to your default map in MindMeister (remember, you can set your default map in the Properties dialog). The ideas will be inserted in a special branch top left of the root and remain there for you to copy to other maps, or move around in the default map.
Geistesblitz tools currently come in two flavours:
|
Dashboard Widget / Sidebar GadgetSet up the widget once with your MindMeister username and password, and fire off new ideas at will! Using the widget is fast and intuitive and besides, we think it looks rather dashing... System Requirements: Mac OS X (10.4 or higher) or Windows Vista
|
|
Quicksearch ExtensionsSubmit your ideas to your MindMeister default map directly from the search field in the top right-hand corner of your web browser. If you use the "Remember me" function on the MindMeister login form, you won't even have to sign in! System Requirements: Firefox 2.x or Internet Explorer 7 |
Upcoming Features
It's been a quiet few weeks on MindMeister. But although we're quite proud of them, we haven't spent all our time on the Geistesblitz tools - they are nice add-ons, but the productivity of our mind mapping users happens elsewhere.
So, over the course of the next two to three weeks we'll be rolling out a number of new features that should benefit most of you - here's a short list:
- Links between maps / ideas
- Automatic Layouter
- URL and Mail Links
- Changes view date slider
- Reworked, more organic lines [more]
There are two more surprises that we're currently working on which deserve a more thorough introduction than a mere mentioning in a feature list - stay tuned!
Poll: Which lines look best?
As already mentioned above, we've done some work on the mind map lines to make them look smoother and more organic. However, we're not quite sure what degree of "curvedness" to go for, so we thought we'd let you have a pick!
|
It's simple - just click the link below and let us know which line type you like best - you can also tell us to make it configurable if you think your tastes vary! |
Internal News
Till and Michael, the two founders of MindMeister, will be talking at RailsConf Europe 2007, which takes place from 17-19 September in Berlin.
Till will be speaking on Browser-based Testing with Selenium, whereas Michael will present the story of MindMeister in a Development Case Study. Both talks are scheduled for the last day, and we hope some MindMeister users will turn up too!
To unsubscribe from this newsletter click here.