This post is a part of a bi-weekly ‘9 Great Ways to…’ series. If you find some of the tools listed here to be worthy, be sure to digg the post. Also, you can subscribe to the RSS feed for the upcoming part of this series.
I spend a lot o my time taking a lot of information and trying to organize it in a way that is useful for me come exam time. Sometimes it is absolutely necessary to create flow charts or mind maps to get a grasp on all of the information I need. While I did use Freemind for a while, it lacks the ability to collaborate in real time and is not web based. Here are 9 great mind mapping and flow chart tools (that we could find!):
MindMeister focuses on enabling users to ‘create, share, import, export and collaborate’ on mind maps. Unlike other tools, they also offer a Premium service for $4/month which gives you the ability to create unlimited mind maps, export them in the Freemind format, embed them in blogs and sites, and do it all through a full SSL-encrypted, advertising-free session.
Gliffy is an online diagram editor (flow chart creator). Gliffy runs in your browser. With this service users can create colored flow charts and those flow charts can be shared with others. The service also supports floorplans for those of you designing a home or business. Gliffy gives free accounts with limited functionality and its full feature base can be unlocked for $2.50 per month.
Mindomo is another free and Flash-based alternative to creating mind maps which provides a fully Office 2007-inspired interface. Of all the ones listed, I found it the easiest to get used to given the familarity of its interface. In general, it’s one of the most customizable ones out there — supporting layouts, styles, colours, textures, and even icons.
Bubbl.us is a simple tool for brainstorming. Free to use, it allows you to save and keep a collection of your brainstorms and even share/work on them with your friends. It’s Flash-based, you can also get your brainstorms in a printable form, colour-code them, and best of all, it has enough keyboard shortcuts that one could make one without even touching the mouse.
Flowchart.com is a flow chart creator that is in private beta right now. Charts can be made online without any plugin and does have support for real time online collaboration between multiple users. The demo is promising, so you can sign up for an invite to the private beta if this a tool you may need.
Comapping is an online collaborative mind mapping system. I am really impressed by this site so far. I find Freemind really useful, and this seems like an online incarnation of that software with some extra features. Comapping allows for task management and status emails and online presentations. If you like mind mapping, give this a shot.
WriteMaps is a tool that’s meant for mapping websites and creating sitemaps, but its interface and features are general enough to use it for any reason. It features a fast AJAX-based interface and the ability to share your maps, a whole bunch of keyboard shortcuts, and an ‘Outline View’ option.
Mind42, which stands for ‘mind for two,’ is one of the few mind mapping tools based on AJAX. It features neat zooming and drag-and-drop features, and exclusively focuses on the sharing and collaborating aspect of mind maps. Currently in beta, it’s free and works on most platforms.
Kayuda provides users the concept of ‘workspaces.’ Each workspace includes a mind map with a node list, nav map, guide and layers. With Kayuda, users can create and share these workspaces and work on real-life mind maps with others. As they state: authors use it to create stories, gamers use it to create campaigns, businesses use it to collaborate on projects, and individuals use it to brainstorm ideas in a way that never gets lost.
If you know of any more great mind mapping and flow charting tools, be sure to leave it in the comments.
Opinion
Overall, while all the tools here are really great at what they do, a couple seem to appeal to me. First, I have to mention Mindomo because its interface and customization strikes as something brilliant, and second, Kayuda simple because of the user community they’ve built up and the realistic angle they’ve taken towards this whole thing. In all, all tools are worth checking out though.
So who’s the overall “winner”?
Whoops - the last bit got deleted in editing.
I find comapping to be the best by far especially in terms of online collaboration. The left to right mind mapping is great in that it provides great overview for brainstorming. And I like the ability to focus rather the scrolling like crazy as in all the other applications (very helpful for big complex maps).
Mindomo is also good but it doesn´t allow real time collaboration. Each save seems just to overwrites other’s work. But maybe I’m wrong and just misunderstood something.
Regardless Comapping does it for me.
Thanks for the insightful post and mentioning Gliffy. Just as a note, the free version of Gliffy does offer all of the functionality of the premium version. The only difference is that you can only create 3 private diagrams (you can always create unlimited public diagrams) and there is an image upload limit of 2MB.
Also, another great feature of Gliffy is that it allows you to publish your diagram, so you can easily put it in your web-page or blog. When you change your diagram, it automatically changes in the web-page or blog, too.
If you really want to know more great mind mapping and flow charting tools…
Web of Web :: webofweb.net
Mapul :: mapul.com/
Bubble Mind :: bubble-mind.com/
not mind mapping tools but can do mind maps and they’re web based:
Thinkature :: thinkature.com/
Touchgraph :: touchgraph.com/ (an odd one — read-only mind maps of relationships between web sites)
Web based but not Web 2.0 - expensive
ForceTen :: eedo.com/products/forceten.html
Thinkmap :: thinkmap.com (read only)
I’m not so sure about Comapping - it’s really a graphical outliner rather than a mind-mapping product - too rigid.
Vic
mind-mapping.org
The master list of mind mapping &
information management software
I find free form mind mapping is the best when it is paper based. I think many people are trying to force free form mind mapping on to computers and to use it as something more then just brainstorming ideas. Thats why I think Comapping is good because it provides a balance between free form and structure. That way im sure that the result at the end is something me and my team can try to transfer to something meaningful even weeks after we have created the map. Isnt´t mind mapping in essence to create and structure ideas so we can extract something meaningful Vic?
Comapping for me can do that. But I do agree that left to right structured form of mind mapping might not be everyones cup of tea.
Both have great points, I think it’s really dependant upon personal preference — if paper suits you best and is the most productive option of all [for you] — then paper it should be. On the other hand, of course, you have tools that are mentioned in this post, and whichever you find as your cup of tea seems like the best of all. In that sense, there’s no real “winner.” Some might even find no mind mapping tool the best tool - some might even settle from things like Freemind, etc. This list is just to showcase some options in the market. The use is up to the user.
Sid,
Dave Storrs of Team Kayuda here. Thanks for giving us the nod; we’re really proud of what we’ve built and the community that has grown up around it, and it’s nice to be appreciated.
You might be interested to check out the new features that we just deployed, including (among others): (a) full revision history for node text and (b) layers. Layers work a lot like in Photoshop–every node belongs to one or more layers, and you can turn layers on and off to filter out nodes that you don’t want to see right now. I’m finding it very useful in a project management capacity.
–Dks
CMap Tools concept mapping tool is great: http://cmap.ihmc.us/
Scott from WriteMaps here - thanks for the writeup!
Just to clarify, WriteMaps does not use flash at all. The app is built entirely with html/css/js.
Good list, thanks.
-S
[...] 9 Great Ways to Make Mind Maps and Flow Charts Online - Rev2.org (tags: technology free online reference web2.0 collaboration tools productivity) [...]
This is a great article. It’s been a few years that I realized that what’s missing to market leading mapmapping software like MindManager, VisualMind and others, is the possibility of online collaboration.
When I realized a huge mapping work for the preparation of the 2005 World Social Forum, no such tool had been identified, which could have made the work much more participative, as was hoped.
Next time, I’ll surely use one of the mentionned software.
I also encourage you to mention CMap, which, though not Web 2.0, is fully collaborative and comprehensive.
Long live rev2.org
[...] found a new mind-mapping application [via rev2] that I like. It’s called Mindomo, and it has an MS Office 2007 style interface, including [...]
[...] 9 Great Ways to Make Mind Maps and Flow Charts Online and 16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools are just that. [...]
[...] Here is a list of some of these great tools. [...]
[...] now - which is helpful (especially in relation to Michele Martin’s PLE posts). Today, I found this page on Rev2.org which gave me an excellent summary of several tools. I thought I would share in case others want to [...]
[...] 9 Great Ways to Make Mind Maps and Flow Charts Online - Rev2.org (tags: mindmap mindmapping tools) [...]
[...] Rev2.org provides an annotated list of these and other similar tools in the post 9 Great Ways to Make Mind Maps and Flow Charts Online. [...]
Hi,
I suggest taking a look to WiseMapping(www.wisemapping.com). WiseMapping is a free mind mapping.
I hope you find it useful.
Paulo
DoStorm.com - online application for brainstorming. Find idea, solution, answer in you subconsciousness.
Makes sense! Nice article! I’ll Digg right away….
[...] and flow chart services — includes an Office 2007 clone and some with great live collab features.http://www.rev2.org/2007/06/04/9-great-ways-to-make-mind-maps-and-flow-charts-online/NSES Correlation Charts ActionBioscience.orgNSES correlation chart: Content standards for grades [...]
OK, I recommend MindVisualizer here.
It depends on your requirements to choose an online solution or a desktop solution.