For those not familiar with mind maps, they are a visual technique for generating ideas and enhancing creativity. Developed by Tony Buzan, mind maps are great for brainstorming because they take advantage of the "right brain" creativity by using non-linear ideas, and graphics and drawings. When you write a text-only, top-down outline, your brain is in logical "left brain" mode. Opening up your idea generation to allow ideas to sprout in any direction, and to feel free to add color and drawings gets your creative juices flowing.
I use mind maps extensively in creative endeavors, including planning out and generating ideas for Head First books. So does my friend and co-author, Kathy Sierra. She blogged about this software recently after she saw a demo of Mind Manager on a tablet PC at ETech 2005. She said it almost convinced her to buy... gasp... a Windows machine just so she could mind map with a tablet and with pictures.
Good news - she doesn't have to! Hobie revealed that yes, MindJet is working on a Mac version of Mind Manager (yay!). So if we can just convince Steve Jobs to develop iTablet, we'll be set. In the mean time, I'll have my Wacom tablet next to my iBook, ready to go.
Elisabeth Freeman is an author and software developer. She is coauthor of O'Reilly's Head First Design Patterns and Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML.
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