Forum Posts Feed
Mindsystems Amode on Bits
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jul 1, 2009 at 02:32 PM
I just noticed that next Wednesday, July 8, Mindsystems Amode will be on sale at Bits du Jour at half its normal $200 price. I haven’t tried this application, but know that some here have been interested in it. Here’s the link to the preview:
http://www.bitsdujour.com/previews/
Steve Z.
Posted by Derek Cater
Jul 2, 2009 at 07:36 PM
I bought Amode about six weeks ago and have been very impressed with it. It is a very capable product, is extremely intuitive and has a very responsive developer. I think it is a steal at the Bits du Jour offer price.
At the highest level of organisation within an Amode ‘Solution File’ are ‘Projects’, which you populate with ‘Topics’ and ‘Subtopics’ (there are no restrictions on the number of levels to the hierarchy) in a tree. Each topic and sub-topic has a notes pane, which supports cut, copy and paste, text alignment, bullets and numbered bullets, tables, image insertion, spell check, etc. Notes can be imported from and exported to various MS Office and OpenOffice document formats. And Amode is ink-enabled, so ink notes can be taken on a tablet PC, which I am now even more pleased to have.
In addition to the notes pane, for each topic and sub-topic you can link or embed any number of external files, whether they are documents on your hard disc or web pages. Linking allows you to keep the size of the Solution File low, while embedding is best if the Solution File will be opened on a range of computers. And whether attached or embedded, the file is opened by its native programme (which you must have installed, of course).
Also, for each topic and sub-topic, you can set a number of project management variables, such as start and finish date, priority, percentage complete and dependencies with other tasks (finish-to-start, start-to-finish, start-to-start and finish-to-finish dependencies are all possible). You can assign resources (physical and human) to each topic and sub-topic and you can set their hourly or daily rates. You can also set up default and custom calendars. Having assiduously plugged this information in, Amode will produce a cost quotation for you, if you so wish. Dependencies and resource allocations operate across all projects in a single Solution File, which is a good reason to group a number of projects within a single Solution File rather than create a new File for each project.
In addition to the tree view, you can select to display any topic and sub-topic in Amode’s Calendar and/or Gantt views. The calendar can be zoomed to the day (in increments from five to 60 minutes), working week, seven-day week or the month, while the Gantt view can be zoomed from 15-minute to monthly intervals.
All of these features are presented in a very user-friendly way. As I said in a previous posting, anyone who has used a two-pane outliner, an electronic calendar and a Gantt-chart-producing project management software programme will feel at home in Amode within half an hour.
The developer is responsive too. Of the three minor bugs I have reported, one was corrected in the second of the two updates released to date, while the other two are due to be remedied in the next or next-but-one update, which, I am told, will see some significant enhancements to the notes pane functions. The developer also promises new viewing modes in the second major release of Amode, planned for next year, I believe, which must surely mean the incorporation of a mind-mapping mode.
Amode is being marketed to businesses as an alternative or complement to mind-mapping software and appears to be generating some buzz in that sector. That will likely entail a healthy revenue stream for Mindsystems, which should mean that Amode will be developed for years to come, which in turn means that we should be safe in throwing our information into it.
All of this power and flexibility means that Amode is now taking care of most of my project needs. I write my reports in it, with each topic or sub-topic representing a single text section, exporting to MS Word only for the final formatting. I usually choose to display the tree in the calendar view, to structure my writing week. Project meetings are entered as topics and displayed in the calendar. I link various documents on my hard disc to these meeting topics, for easy reference during the meeting, while I take meeting notes in the notes or ink notes panes. When planning or monitoring the implementation of projects I import existing Gantt charts into Amode (if they are in MS Project format) or I create one afresh, each line on the Gantt chart equating to a topic or sub-topic, with dependencies applied. I then input progress against the Gantt chart into Amode as the project unfolds.
The only downside to Amode that I have discovered to date is that it is going to severely limit my ‘justifiable’ CRIMP opportunities ;-)
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jul 7, 2009 at 04:42 PM
Steve, thanks for the heads up. I have actually unsubscribed from BdJ in order to reduce my CRIMPing. I figured that if something is interesting enough, someone will be kind enough to ping me—you did :-)
Derek, I very much appreciate the detailed review. Indeed you have highlighted some strong points that I missed in my initial try-out, such as the resource management features. To me Amode seemed quite more simple than it probably is.
Nevertheless, I still think that it is more overhyped than needed, e.g. are all the various views really so different from each other? If mindmapping and timelining are implemented, I would indeed find it excellent value (at the normal price) but, for the moment, the promotional price seems more reasonable and I will probably purchase it.
From a marketing point of view, I would definitely suggest that MindSystems maintains a promotional price outside BdJ for some time (possibly a bit higher). I think that would encourage the software’s adoption, similarly to what Kinook did with UltraRecall in the year following its launch.
Perhaps here there’s an individual professional / corporate price gap: as an individual professional I’ve always found Mind Manager, Project Kickstart and the like as significantly overpriced, compare to many of the more moderately priced but very powerful applications that we often discuss here such as (more recently) MyInfo.
Alexander
Posted by Fredy
Jul 10, 2009 at 09:22 PM
Normally, the “discussions” on bitsdujour.com are without any interest, but for once, the ( up to date ) 25 postings upon amode there ( look into their “history” section since pay date was several days ago now ) give a lot of valuable hints into how-to-do and especially how-not-to-do. I had installed amode several weeks before ( = not in expectation of any 50 p.c. sale ), but shove it off my computer after 10 minutes, for precisely those reasons given lately on bitsdujour : i need a real tree on my screen, with a max of info, not some kind of multi-colored kindergarten allowing me a minimum of info only, any given needs of my left-right brain hemispheres notwithstanding, so amode in its current state is certainly not for me, not for 200 dollars, not for 100, and not for free.
And then, I do not want to give false info, but I had expected the usual 5 or 10 MB of data by installation, perhaps 20, but it was 200 or 300 MB : am I mistaken ? Was it only 150 ? Anyway, this is unacceptable for me ( having on each of my computers 2 GB with XP : so it’s not a technical problem, but another, more hidden, aestheticial one ).
Then, amode does not yet allow the shortening of subtrees ( what was the technical term for it again ? ) ; Ultra Recall does.
But here is my reason for which I haven’t swept to UR, it might be considered ridiculous but it isn’t : I need the complete title of my subject ABOVE my text, not only more or less shortened anywhere at the left in the tree, and extremely shortened in the tab title above… where precisely I need the title of my project or subproject, whereas in UR, the tab gives the very first letters only of your current subject but NOT your project or subproject.
Why my intransigence there ? Precisely for those left-right brain issues : I need my little intelligence for thinking on my subjects, not for remembering, “Where the h*** AM I ?!”
If anybody knows how to do in UR that the node title in full appears above your text, and that the current project title ( even shortened ) stays in the tab, even when you change your node ( within that project of course ), I would be VERY happy to hear from him, AND to buy UR ( at full price, and to h*** with those 50 p.c. on bitsdujour ).
And that brings me to thebrain.com. I know that a lot of people think that is the best of the best ( perhaps not for information gathering, but for serving as a thinking help at least ), so I spent more than an hour with it, not counting my reading those 100 hints which take the place of any not-web help function of it, and I was very willing not only to give it a try, but to be pleased with, and better, be enthousiastic about it.
Well, it is crap, in my opinion. It’s just an unidimensional graphic outliner, like all those mindmanager.com and others, with the difference of a mildly psychedelic screen layout, and ( not necessarily foreseeable ) hiding of all those branches the program decides you do not need at any given moment ; thus I spent the major part of my time to go back to those, i.d. to search where they were hidden, and I was hampered in my thinking process, not helped in any way. It seems to me “The Brain” intends to focus your thought attention, by ( very basic if not na?ve ) graphic means, whereas in fact it hinders you to see relationships which, by doing a scratch on paper, you would see without any problem.
Hence, my experience with “The Brain” is at the opposite of all that high ( but unsubstantiated ) praise of the program you can find in several forums, and therefore, I would be very happy if somebody could explain to me what the real advantage of this program might be. I am willing to re-install it on my computer just to see if you are right, and why I missed the strike of genius in it - but is there, or it is all about hype, as in most occasions ?
Returning and finishing with amode : I see that the makers of amode are not the makers of mindmanager, but just one of their distributors ( if I am right ). Hence I see a risk that they are going to sell to them, the mindmanager company. And from that time on, UR, IQ and others will be dead ( or living dead, whatever ), the mindmanager company having the marketing power to get amode whereever they want, and where, besides, their steep prices don’t matter at all, MS Office “compatibility” being the code word.
Just compare the amode graphics kindergarten to MS OneNote’s : You then see what amode developers are right after.
And I’m not pleased with this cluttering of our environment. The winner takes it all, and worse ( but we’re accustomed to this, ain’t we, folks ? ), the winner is far from offering the best product. Amode, with mindmanager makers’ money, will end up having the market, evernote people being ( up to now ) dumb enough to insist on a toilet paper roll interface, surfulator creator not thinking enough on people doing mostly other work of which web saving isn’t but a tiny part, and so on.
And since I’m speaking on behalf of all of us ( except for the interested parties ), to that guy who told me to shut up, kiss my a***.
Posted by Franz Grieser
Jul 10, 2009 at 09:47 PM
Fredy wrote:
>And since I’m speaking on behalf of all of us
No, you don’t speak on behalf of me. Definitely not.
Franz