Discussion on:

Five reasons to use MindGenius on your projects

I have been looking for something like this for ages, never had much luck. Thats for the info about freemind. If it works anything like mind genius, then its exactly what I need.
sam - seo tips

Hi, Andy, and thanks for following up.

(Note: I have no relationship whatsoever to SourceForge or its FreeMind project, so no, this is not "comment blog spam", and I receive no benefit from them except many of their excellent free products just like everyone else can.)

Sorry I wasn't more clear, though I still think I was _adequately_ clear. My comment, "Editors, please try harder to improve this, as has been pointed out many times," was directed at the Editors, not any author(s). My goal is to reduce the occurrence of articles that purport to include a market survey (as yours does IMHO) but leave out significant players (as your does). TechRepublic editors often allow this shortcoming in their publications, and many of us readers complain about it often, as it causes us more work (to do our own research to confirm or refute the authors' conclusions) and it reduces our opinion of the value of TechReplublic publications, so in effect we are trying to help TR improve their service, which would in turn benefit all readers, and presumably would also benefit TR in some tangible way, e.g. more advertising revenue due to increased market share.

My post is a specific application to your article of my general belief/principle:

When you go beyond just raving about MindGenius (which would have been just fine, and in line with the title of your article) and begin _implying_ that it is the "best deal", you incur the responsibility to be "fair" (maybe a better word would be "complete", which is the word I chose) and include _all_ the significant contenders, which FreeMind certainly is, again IMHO, and in the opinion of many presumed experts. For example, it has more "Likes" than _all_ the other alternatives _combined_, on http://alternativeto.net/software/mindgenius/, and there are hundreds of similar posts. When cost to obtain software is considered, which is so important to so many small businesses etc. nowadays, it is hard to beat its value-per-cost: It's nearly infinite, as yielded by the straightforward mathematical result of dividing its high value by near-zero cost to obtain, which last is just the effort to download it and any contribution given.

IHTH

Jim

Hi -

I use MindGenius to capture ideas, track issues, maintain meeting minutes and do high level functions with a WBS. I then use MS Project for project schedule administration. If you combine both these tools, you have a powerful toolkit for your projects

Andy

Thanks for the kind words! When I first saw MindGenius I thought the same thing about how it was similar to other tools on the market. Then I took a deeper dive at the features and the nuances make it stand head and shoulders above the rest.

The Map Explorer and Category Map generation sold me.

I do have a section on mind mapping on my blog at:

http://www.tacticalprojectmanagement.com/table/mind-mapping-project-management/

Let me know if you have any questions!

Andy

For large project management administration, you are correct that any mind mapping tool will make project schedule management difficult. This is why i recommend using the mind map to generate the WBS and high level scope. Export it to MS-Project and refine it.

From a meeting minutes perspective, I create a mind map for each "workstream" I own in the program and maintain notes. The % complete feature is very useful for the follow-up and action items. These actions don't make it into a project schedule but as an action item tracker with meeting minutes, MindGenius is an excellent productivity tool.

Thanks!

Andy