Re: Tops in 2005

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 4827

Posted by sub
2005-12-30 16:21:21

Steve,

I am not so sure that my own verdicts will be very useful to you as our approaches are rather different; I have no problem in investing serious money in software tools, such as in the case of Mind Manager, because the use of those tools provides me with significant advantages in the market where I operate.

As I wrote earlier, I use such tools for public presentations and not for the management of the original informational content. I have only used Personal Brain for the latter purpose; contrary to you, I actually found that—if I could break down my information to small items with a maximum of, say, 5-7 links per item- I could build very big large databases with no problem. However, PB provided me with minimal overview of the information structures and virtually no export ability.

Re the presentation potential:

(a) I would urge anyone who has ever used Corel Draw or any other “classic” vector drawing tool to create conceptual diagrams to try out Concept Draw, Smart Draw, Visio or a similar object-oriented program. There’s a quantum leap in productivity, aesthetics and flexibility with this new generation of software.

(b) Mind Maps are becoming ever more popular in business so I needed a professional mind mapping application for my customers; I personally find Mind Genius more flexible in terms of the visual result, but there’s a multitude of plug-ins available for Mind Manager and I selected it on those grounds. Stephen has written elsewhere on Visual Mind’s advantages.

(c) Personal Brain is great to carry along in presentations and I have used it for interactive demos; it never fails to impress.

(d) Aibase is still in its infancy but the concept is solid enough. I suggest you take a look at it a year from now; hopefully a variety of sample databases from different disciplines will be available to show off the program’s significant potential.

That’s it for now; more as it happens

alx

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