Thank you Pik0!!! Your post on mind map apps has been a God send.
I have played around with similar programs such as Visio. I spent some time trying to create more procedural descriptions which flow charting could be effective but stopped using it unless I needed a layout for a slide presentation. I never used a free flowing thought engine like this. After reading your post and watching the videos of Mr. Buzan, I went to the App store and bought Mindnode. I launch it and tried a few things but due to lack of apparent tools (don't usually read user manuals, and for iPad apps that works out since they usually don't have any) I gave up. I went back to buy iThoughtsHD and found that I already bought it. I launch it and good it had a help sample. I used it to play around and thought I would give this a real try. Luckily, I have a new project that I have been creating an outline. Half an hour later, I have a huge chart that would have covered the entire white board in my conference room. This thing is great, it allows you to put down your thoughts as quickly as you can create it. A diversion thought, no problem - start a new map and then go back. Click on it later and move it somewhere appropriate. The thing that makes this work for me is also how I can manipulate the iPad by flicking and pinching. If this type of methodology became main stream it could be the App that validates the tablet format in the business world.
That being said, back to reality. I live in the Windows world and in order to communicate with others I have to be able to use formats that integrate with what they use. Do you know of a counterpart program for the Windows environment? I began looking at Mindjet Mindmanager. Do you or anyone know anything about it? I'm assuming that if I create a map on iThoughts and save it in a format that can be read by Mindmanager, I can then expand on it by adding actions items scheduling etc. I'm not foolish in thinking I can go back and forth between the two programs, it would be nice to create a map (which again only the iPad excels at) transfer it, add and edit and expand, and then use the iThoughts as a "read only" tool.
